Music history of Hungary
Encyclopedia
Little is known about Hungarian music prior to the 11th century, when the first Kings of Hungary
were Christianized
and Gregorian chant
was introduced. During this period a bishop
from Venice
wrote the first surviving remark about Hungarian folk song when he commented on the peculiar singing style of a maid . Church schools in Hungary taught Western Christian chanting, especially in places like Esztergom
, Nyitra, Nagyvárad, Pannonhalma
, Veszprém
, Vác
and Csanád
; and later schools began focusing on singing, spreading Latin hymns across the country.
Information about music education during this period is known thanks to manuscripts such as the Notebook of László Szalkai, Jacobus de Liège's Speculum musicae
(c. 1330-1340, which mentions the use of solmization
), the Hahót Codex, the Codex Albensis and the Sacramentarium of Zagreb. The Pray Codex
is a collection of "liturgical melodies ... in neumatic notation ... containing among other things the earliest written record extant of the Hungarian language
, the Funeral Oration, ... independent forms of notation and even independent melodies (Hymn to Mary)" .
The first known example of exchange between Hungarian and Western European music is from the 13th century, the "first encounter with the more secular melodic world of the Western world" .
The earliest documented instrumentation
in Hungarian music dates back to the whistle
in 1222, followed by the koboz in 1326, the bugle
in 1355, the fiddle
in 1358, the bagpipe in 1402, the lute
in 1427 and the trumpet
in 1428 . Thereafter the organ came to play a major role.
Though virtually nothing is known about them, Hungarian minstrel
s existed throughout the Middle Ages
and may have kept ancient pagan
religious practices alive . At the Synod of Buda in 1279 the church banned their congregation from listening to them, despite their having come to be employed by noblemen in courts. By the 14th century instrumental music had become their most important repertoire and minstrel singers had become known as igric . The golden age of courtly music (which had followed French models for most of the early Middle Ages before musicians from Flanders
, Italy
and Germany
arrived) was during the reign of Matthias Corvinus
and Beatrice
.
, lute
, drum
s and cimbalom... and used tenor
, discant
and contratenor" singers, meaning it was in the style of the motet
.
The 16th century saw the rise of Transylvania, a region the Turks never occupied, as a center for Hungarian music , as well as the first Hungarian publications of music, both published in Kraków
. István Gálszécsi's songbook was the "first Hungarian gradual to the Gregorian hymn-melodies and German choral music of which we can see new Hungarian translations", while the Cronica of András Farkas includes the first surviving historical song . About forty melodies are known from this era, and are already in a distinctively Hungarian style which took influences from across much of Europe in several dozen distinct forms that were "mostly notated in a rigid and clumsy way" but were "undoubtedly much more colourful and flexible in living performance" and were in reality "little masterpieces of melodic structure" . The most significant musician of this period was Sebestyén Tinódi, the "greatest stylist and master of expression of ancient Hungarian epic poetry... whose heritage the people’s music of two centuries was unconsciously nourished" .
Accentuated declamation was fashionable in music education during the early 16th century; a more rigid choir style is represented by a collection called the Melopoeiae, from 1507 . A collection by Johannes Honterus was the first Hungarian printed work with music, dating from 1548. These collections were enriched by "melodic configurations" that, according to Bence Szabolcsi, could be explained by the arrival of the "song material of the Czech Reformation, the melodic treasure of the German Reformation and the psalter
of French Huguenot
s" . The poet Bálint Balassi
remains well regarded for his poems from this period, which were based on Polish, Turkish, Italian and German melodies, and may have also been influenced by the villanella
. Some songs from this period, influenced by the music of the nobles and their minstrels from as far away as Italy, remained a part of the Hungarian folk tradition at least until modern song collection began. Religious and secular music were closely connected at this time, and documentation of the former grew with the publication of many songbooks filled with free psalm paraphrases called laud
s, facilitating the practice of communal singing among the nascent Protestant churches . This conflation of religious and secular song was much criticized from the pulpit, from the both the Protestant and Catholic churches. The latter allowed popular songs after a 1564 edict from Ferdinand I, which allowed the bishops to use them only after close scrutiny . They were again banned in 1611, however, and a Catholic collection of Hungarian church songs was not agreed upon until 1629, at the Synod of Nagyszombat. The collection, Benedek Szőlősy's Cantus Catholici, was published in 1651, and wasn't followed by a Protestant version for about 90 years .
Hungarian instrumental music was well known in Europe in the 16th century. The lutenist and composer Bálint Bakfark
was especially famous, known as a virtuoso player of the lute ; his works were collected and published as Intavolatura and Harmoniae musicae (published in 1553 and 1565 respectively) . He was one of the pioneers of a style based on vocal polyphony
. The lutenist brothers Melchior and Konrad Neusiedler were also noted, as was Stephan Monetarius, the author of an important early work in music theory, the Epithoma utriusque musices.
. Historic songs declined in popularity, replaced by lyrical poetry . Minstrels were replaced by courtly musicians, who played the trumpet and whistle, or cimbalom, violin or bagpipes; many courts and households had large groups of instrumentals . Some of these musicians were German, Polish, French or Italian, and even included a Spanish guitarist at the court of Gábor Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania. Little is known about the actual music of this time, however.
Instrumental music from the 17th century is known from the collections of various Upper Hungarian and Transylvanian collectors, such as János Kájoni, who collected the Cantionale Catholicum, Kájoni Codex, Organo Missale and Sacri Concentus . The collectors of the Vietórisz Codex, whose identities are unknown, and another anonymous collector from Lőcse, also published "the first examples of autonomous, developed virginal music, equally accomplished in style, melodic texture and technique of adaptation" . These songs were characterized by "flexible, finely shaded melodies, a tendency to create wider and looser forms, and a gradual independence of the forma (sic) principles of song melodies toward a clearly instrumental conception" . At the same time, rhythm became more complicated and notation more general. The Lőcse manuscript also notably presents an arrangement of dances, the first example of the Hungarian cyclic form ; this music and dance had similarities both to the Polish music
of the time as well as the subsequent development of the verbunkos style.
17th century Hungarian church music was revolutionized after the 1651 publication of the Cantus Catholici, in which genuine Hungarian motives played a major part. By 1674, the Hungarian Mass was also part of the Cantus Catholici, followed by the adoption of Calvinist psalm tunes in 1693 and Hungarian choral music in 1695 . János Kájoni Organo Missale of 1667 was the first experiment in the creation of a new kind of Hungarian church music, a style that strung together short motives that were shortened, extended or syncopated in a complex rhythmic structure . Italian religious music played an important role in this development, which was documented in an "unparalleled example of ancient Hungarian music", the Harmonia Caelestis
of Prince Pál Eszterházy , who tried to create a distinctively Hungarian style of church music using influences from opera
, oratio literature, the German music of Johann Kaspar von Kerll and Johann Schmeltzer, and the oratorio
and cantata
styles . Eszterházy's efforts did not last, as the following century saw an influx of muic from Western Europe under the Habsburgs.
Around the turn of the 18th century, however, the last national uprising of the period occurred, leading the spread of "Kuruc songs". These songs were authentically Hungarian and hold a "central position between the style of the ancient and the new folk music" . Their influences include elements of Polish, Romanian, Slovak and Ukrainian music in addition to Hungarian melodies.
and Székelyudvarhely developed choirs that adopted new elements like polyphony. György Maróthi of Debrecen
published several influential works, and his French psalm book became very popular . By around 1790, the four voice choirs were expanded to eight using accessory voices like accantus, subcantus and concantus, and the discant voice was systematically transpoed into a lower pitch, producing a new form of choral design with similarities to midieval organum
and fauxbourdon
. The same period saw the popularity of homophoning songs which are recorded in the students' song books; notation, however, was crude, and no extensive collection appeared until 1853, with the publication of Ádám Pálóczi Horváth’s Ötödfélszáz Énekek . These songs show that the mid to late 18th century was a period when the old Hungarian styles died out, and a new style appeared .
Many Hungarian musicians and composers of the 18th century preached closer cultural ties with Europe, not believing that Hungarian music could reach the levels of development in Italy and Germany . The aristocracy were interested in the court music of Louis XIV
, like the minuet
and rondeaux . Many of these people tried to popularize Viennese-style songs with Hungarian texts, or to use German and Italian forms; these people included the poet László Amadé, novelist Ignác Mészáros and the author and linguist Ferenc Verseghy . Hungarian music did, however, have an effect on composers from elsewhere in Europe. Joseph Haydn
's Rondo all' Ongarese (from the Trio in G major (No. 1), is an example, as is the finale of Beethoven
's Symphony No. 3
(Eroica), which uses a Magyar march, and Symphony No. 7
, which is a 2/4 tempo with a syncopated rhythm. Beethoven also used Hungarian idioms in the prologue of King Stephen and the epiloque for Ruins of Athens .
The 18th century also saw the rise of verbunkos
, a form of music that was used by army recruiters. Like much of Hungarian music at the time, it was focused on the melody, with a subordinate text; in spite of this, the vocals became a major part of verbunkos .
, headed after 1840 by Gábor Mátray, one of the "leading personalities of Hungarian musical life", did much to encourage this study . András Bartay's 1835 study of Hungarian harmonics, Magyar Apollo and his 1833-34 Eredeti Népdalok, were pioneering works in the field .
In 1838, a young Franz Liszt
was inspired to travel home to Hungary, studying the music of the country; he would go on to incorporate what he learned in many of his world-famous compositions . Other composers from this period included Béni Egressy
, who used 18th century secular songs in his compositions, Kálmán Simonffy, who was the "most original and most inventive" songwriter of the era, whose works "most nearly approached the ideal of 'popular melodic culture', as well as lesser-known figures like Gusztáv Szénfy, Gusztáv Nyizsnyai and Ignác Bognár . In spite of their desires to glorify Hungarian folk culture, the music these composers used remained primarily the music of the middle and upper classes . It was not until the very end of the century and into the 20th that the authentic music of ethnic Hungarians became a major part of compositions. Other Hungarian composers did not attempt to use verbunkos or other Hungarian styles in their music. German music
was a much stronger influence on the music of the Catholic Church and in the songbooks of Mihály Bozóky .
The playwright Elemér Szentirmay (also known as János Németh) was very popular in his time, known for his "form of expression and scale of popular character" whose "works surpassed in popularity everything written by his contemporaries" . The Hungarian operetta
first appeared in the 1860s, popularized by Ignác Bognár, Geza Allaga
and Jeno Huber, followed by Elek Erkel and György Bánffy; in the early 20th century, the Viennese style predominated in the work of Huszka
, Pongrác KacsóhKacsóh, Buttykay, Jacobi
, Kálmán
and Lehár . Aside from the popular operetta, the field of Hungarian opera
reached fruition in the 19th century. Ferenc Enkel was of great importance in his field, creating the first opera in the Hungarian language
using music from popular songs, the verbunkos tradition as well as the singing forms of Italian and French opera . There were other opera composers as well, though the most important was Mihály Mosonyi
, who did much to use Hungarian themes in his work .
The late 19th century saw a decline in the nationalistic tendencies of Hungarian music, which deteriorated "into the works of salon composers, into the poorly written genre of stylish 'Hungarian fantasies', 'Gipsy arrangements'" and other styles more influenced by foreign countries than Hungarian traditions . The result was increased antagonism between those enamoured of foreign music and the cultivators of Hungarian (and Roma-Hungarian) music, a dichotomy that "could only result in deceiving the country with the opium of semi-education on the one hand and superficial nationalism on the other" . Hans Koessler, a teacher with the Academy of Music, did more than anyone to accentuate the German classical elements in Hungarian music , though some of his students, like Ernst von Dohnányi, placed prominent Hungarian themes in their own works .
King of Hungary
The King of Hungary was the head of state of the Kingdom of Hungary from 1000 to 1918.The style of title "Apostolic King" was confirmed by Pope Clement XIII in 1758 and used afterwards by all the Kings of Hungary, so after this date the kings are referred to as "Apostolic King of...
were Christianized
Christianization
The historical phenomenon of Christianization is the conversion of individuals to Christianity or the conversion of entire peoples at once...
and Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...
was introduced. During this period a bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
from Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
wrote the first surviving remark about Hungarian folk song when he commented on the peculiar singing style of a maid . Church schools in Hungary taught Western Christian chanting, especially in places like Esztergom
Esztergom
Esztergom , is a city in northern Hungary, 46 km north-west of the capital Budapest. It lies in Komárom-Esztergom county, on the right bank of the river Danube, which forms the border with Slovakia there....
, Nyitra, Nagyvárad, Pannonhalma
Pannonhalma
Pannonhalma is a town in western Hungary, in Győr-Moson-Sopron county with approximately 4,000 inhabitants. It is about from Győr. Archduke Otto Habsburg's heart is kept at the Pannonhalma Archabbey, while his body was laid at the Capuchin Crypt in the old Imperial capital of Vienna.-History:The...
, Veszprém
Veszprém
Veszprém is one of the oldest urban areas in Hungary, and a city with county rights. It lies approximately north of the Lake Balaton. It is the administrative center of the county of the same name.-Location:...
, Vác
Vác
Vác is a town in Pest county in Hungary with approximately 35,000 inhabitants. The archaic spellings of the name are Vacz and Vacs.-Location:...
and Csanád
Cenad
Cenad is a commune in Timiş County, Banat, Romania. It is composed of a single village, Cenad.-Demography:...
; and later schools began focusing on singing, spreading Latin hymns across the country.
Information about music education during this period is known thanks to manuscripts such as the Notebook of László Szalkai, Jacobus de Liège's Speculum musicae
Speculum Musicae
Speculum Musicae is an American chamber ensemble dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in New York City in 1971 and is particularly noted for its performances of the music of Elliott Carter...
(c. 1330-1340, which mentions the use of solmization
Solmization
Solmization is a system of attributing a distinct syllable to each note in a musical scale. Various forms of solmization are in use and have been used throughout the world.In Europe and North America, solfège is the convention used most often...
), the Hahót Codex, the Codex Albensis and the Sacramentarium of Zagreb. The Pray Codex
Pray Codex
The Codex Pray, Pray Codex or The Hungarian Pray Manuscript is a collection of medieval manuscripts. In 1813 it was named after György Pray, who discovered it in 1770. It is the first known example of continuous prose text in Hungarian. The Codex is kept in the National Széchényi Library of...
is a collection of "liturgical melodies ... in neumatic notation ... containing among other things the earliest written record extant of the Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, the Funeral Oration, ... independent forms of notation and even independent melodies (Hymn to Mary)" .
The first known example of exchange between Hungarian and Western European music is from the 13th century, the "first encounter with the more secular melodic world of the Western world" .
The earliest documented instrumentation
Instrumentation (music)
In music, instrumentation refers to the particular combination of musical instruments employed in a composition, and to the properties of those instruments individually...
in Hungarian music dates back to the whistle
Whistle
A whistle or call is a simple aerophone, an instrument which produces sound from a stream of forced air. It may be mouth-operated, or powered by air pressure, steam, or other means...
in 1222, followed by the koboz in 1326, the bugle
Bugle (instrument)
The bugle is one of the simplest brass instruments, having no valves or other pitch-altering devices. All pitch control is done by varying the player's embouchure, since the bugle has no other mechanism for controlling pitch. Consequently, the bugle is limited to notes within the harmonic series...
in 1355, the fiddle
Fiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
in 1358, the bagpipe in 1402, the lute
Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
in 1427 and the trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
in 1428 . Thereafter the organ came to play a major role.
Though virtually nothing is known about them, Hungarian minstrel
Minstrel
A minstrel was a medieval European bard who performed songs whose lyrics told stories of distant places or of existing or imaginary historical events. Although minstrels created their own tales, often they would memorize and embellish the works of others. Frequently they were retained by royalty...
s existed throughout the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
and may have kept ancient pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
religious practices alive . At the Synod of Buda in 1279 the church banned their congregation from listening to them, despite their having come to be employed by noblemen in courts. By the 14th century instrumental music had become their most important repertoire and minstrel singers had become known as igric . The golden age of courtly music (which had followed French models for most of the early Middle Ages before musicians from Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
arrived) was during the reign of Matthias Corvinus
Matthias Corvinus of Hungary
Matthias Corvinus , also called the Just in folk tales, was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458, at the age of 14 until his death...
and Beatrice
Beatrice of Naples
Beatrice of Naples was the daughter of Ferdinand I of Naples and Isabella of Taranto. She was queen consort to both Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and Vladislaus II of Bohemia and Hungary so she was Queen of Hungary and Bohemia.-Biography:Beatrice received a good education at her father's court in...
.
16th century
The Nádor Codex of 1508 presents the first use of Gregorian melodies with Hungarian texts . The same period saw the local folk styles grow more diverse, while political authorities railed against secular music. Szavolcsi notes the author of the Sándor Codex (early 16th century), who described secular music as accompanied by "fiddleFiddle
The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...
, lute
Lute
Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
, drum
Drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
s and cimbalom... and used tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
, discant
Discant
Discant was a style of liturgical setting in the Middle Ages, associated with the development of the Notre Dame school of polyphony. It is a style of organum that includes a plainchant tenor part, with a "note against note" upper voice, moving in contrary motion...
and contratenor" singers, meaning it was in the style of the motet
Motet
In classical music, motet is a word that is applied to a number of highly varied choral musical compositions.-Etymology:The name comes either from the Latin movere, or a Latinized version of Old French mot, "word" or "verbal utterance." The Medieval Latin for "motet" is motectum, and the Italian...
.
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
. István Gálszécsi's songbook was the "first Hungarian gradual to the Gregorian hymn-melodies and German choral music of which we can see new Hungarian translations", while the Cronica of András Farkas includes the first surviving historical song . About forty melodies are known from this era, and are already in a distinctively Hungarian style which took influences from across much of Europe in several dozen distinct forms that were "mostly notated in a rigid and clumsy way" but were "undoubtedly much more colourful and flexible in living performance" and were in reality "little masterpieces of melodic structure" . The most significant musician of this period was Sebestyén Tinódi, the "greatest stylist and master of expression of ancient Hungarian epic poetry... whose heritage the people’s music of two centuries was unconsciously nourished" .
Accentuated declamation was fashionable in music education during the early 16th century; a more rigid choir style is represented by a collection called the Melopoeiae, from 1507 . A collection by Johannes Honterus was the first Hungarian printed work with music, dating from 1548. These collections were enriched by "melodic configurations" that, according to Bence Szabolcsi, could be explained by the arrival of the "song material of the Czech Reformation, the melodic treasure of the German Reformation and the psalter
Psalter
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the later medieval emergence of the book of hours, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons and were...
of French Huguenot
Huguenot
The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...
s" . The poet Bálint Balassi
Bálint Balassi
Bálint Balassi baron of Kékkő and Gyarmat, , was a multilingual Hungarian Renaissance lyric poet, who wrote mostly in Hungarian...
remains well regarded for his poems from this period, which were based on Polish, Turkish, Italian and German melodies, and may have also been influenced by the villanella
Villanella
In music, a villanella is a form of light Italian secular vocal music which originated in Italy just before the middle of the 16th century...
. Some songs from this period, influenced by the music of the nobles and their minstrels from as far away as Italy, remained a part of the Hungarian folk tradition at least until modern song collection began. Religious and secular music were closely connected at this time, and documentation of the former grew with the publication of many songbooks filled with free psalm paraphrases called laud
Laud
Laud may refer to:People with the surname Laud:* William Laud , Archbishop of Canterbury* Derek Laud , British political lobbyistPeople with the given name Laud:* Laud of Coutances , bishop of Coutances...
s, facilitating the practice of communal singing among the nascent Protestant churches . This conflation of religious and secular song was much criticized from the pulpit, from the both the Protestant and Catholic churches. The latter allowed popular songs after a 1564 edict from Ferdinand I, which allowed the bishops to use them only after close scrutiny . They were again banned in 1611, however, and a Catholic collection of Hungarian church songs was not agreed upon until 1629, at the Synod of Nagyszombat. The collection, Benedek Szőlősy's Cantus Catholici, was published in 1651, and wasn't followed by a Protestant version for about 90 years .
Hungarian instrumental music was well known in Europe in the 16th century. The lutenist and composer Bálint Bakfark
Bálint Bakfark
Bálint Bakfark ; 1507 – August 15 or August 22, 1576) was a Hungarian composer and lutenist of the Renaissance...
was especially famous, known as a virtuoso player of the lute ; his works were collected and published as Intavolatura and Harmoniae musicae (published in 1553 and 1565 respectively) . He was one of the pioneers of a style based on vocal polyphony
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
. The lutenist brothers Melchior and Konrad Neusiedler were also noted, as was Stephan Monetarius, the author of an important early work in music theory, the Epithoma utriusque musices.
17th century
During the 17th century, Hungary was divided into three parts, one the region of Transylvania, one controlled by the Turks, and another by the HabsburgHabsburg
The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...
. Historic songs declined in popularity, replaced by lyrical poetry . Minstrels were replaced by courtly musicians, who played the trumpet and whistle, or cimbalom, violin or bagpipes; many courts and households had large groups of instrumentals . Some of these musicians were German, Polish, French or Italian, and even included a Spanish guitarist at the court of Gábor Bethlen, Prince of Transylvania. Little is known about the actual music of this time, however.
Instrumental music from the 17th century is known from the collections of various Upper Hungarian and Transylvanian collectors, such as János Kájoni, who collected the Cantionale Catholicum, Kájoni Codex, Organo Missale and Sacri Concentus . The collectors of the Vietórisz Codex, whose identities are unknown, and another anonymous collector from Lőcse, also published "the first examples of autonomous, developed virginal music, equally accomplished in style, melodic texture and technique of adaptation" . These songs were characterized by "flexible, finely shaded melodies, a tendency to create wider and looser forms, and a gradual independence of the forma (sic) principles of song melodies toward a clearly instrumental conception" . At the same time, rhythm became more complicated and notation more general. The Lőcse manuscript also notably presents an arrangement of dances, the first example of the Hungarian cyclic form ; this music and dance had similarities both to the Polish music
Music of Poland
Artists from Poland, including famous composers like Chopin or Lutosławski and traditional, regionalized folk musicians, create a lively and diverse music scene, which even recognizes its own music genres, such as poezja śpiewana.- Beginning :...
of the time as well as the subsequent development of the verbunkos style.
17th century Hungarian church music was revolutionized after the 1651 publication of the Cantus Catholici, in which genuine Hungarian motives played a major part. By 1674, the Hungarian Mass was also part of the Cantus Catholici, followed by the adoption of Calvinist psalm tunes in 1693 and Hungarian choral music in 1695 . János Kájoni Organo Missale of 1667 was the first experiment in the creation of a new kind of Hungarian church music, a style that strung together short motives that were shortened, extended or syncopated in a complex rhythmic structure . Italian religious music played an important role in this development, which was documented in an "unparalleled example of ancient Hungarian music", the Harmonia Caelestis
Harmonia Caelestis
Harmonia Caelestis is a cycle of 55 sacred cantatas attributed to the Hungarian composer Paul I, 1st Prince Esterházy of Galántha and published in 1711. They are in the Baroque style and incorporate traditional Hungarian and German melodies. Each of the cantatas consists of one movement...
of Prince Pál Eszterházy , who tried to create a distinctively Hungarian style of church music using influences from opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
, oratio literature, the German music of Johann Kaspar von Kerll and Johann Schmeltzer, and the oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
and cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
styles . Eszterházy's efforts did not last, as the following century saw an influx of muic from Western Europe under the Habsburgs.
Around the turn of the 18th century, however, the last national uprising of the period occurred, leading the spread of "Kuruc songs". These songs were authentically Hungarian and hold a "central position between the style of the ancient and the new folk music" . Their influences include elements of Polish, Romanian, Slovak and Ukrainian music in addition to Hungarian melodies.
18th century
During the 18th century, students at Hungary's Calvinist colleges, some of whom, being minor nobles, lived in small rural villages, brought with them to their schools their regional styles of music. Colleges like SárospatakSárospatak
----Sárospatak is a town in Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén county, northern Hungary. It lies northeast from Miskolc, in the Bodrog river valley. The town, often called simply Patak, is an important cultural centre.- History :The area has been inhabited since ancient times...
and Székelyudvarhely developed choirs that adopted new elements like polyphony. György Maróthi of Debrecen
Debrecen
Debrecen , is the second largest city in Hungary after Budapest. Debrecen is the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar county.- Name :...
published several influential works, and his French psalm book became very popular . By around 1790, the four voice choirs were expanded to eight using accessory voices like accantus, subcantus and concantus, and the discant voice was systematically transpoed into a lower pitch, producing a new form of choral design with similarities to midieval organum
Organum
Organum is, in general, a plainchant melody with at least one added voice to enhance the harmony, developed in the Middle Ages. Depending on the mode and form of the chant, a supporting bass line may be sung on the same text, the melody may be followed in parallel motion , or a combination of...
and fauxbourdon
Fauxbourdon
Fauxbourdon – French for false bass – is a technique of musical harmonisation used in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, particularly by composers of the Burgundian School. Guillaume Dufay was a prominent practitioner of the form, and may have been its inventor...
. The same period saw the popularity of homophoning songs which are recorded in the students' song books; notation, however, was crude, and no extensive collection appeared until 1853, with the publication of Ádám Pálóczi Horváth’s Ötödfélszáz Énekek . These songs show that the mid to late 18th century was a period when the old Hungarian styles died out, and a new style appeared .
Many Hungarian musicians and composers of the 18th century preached closer cultural ties with Europe, not believing that Hungarian music could reach the levels of development in Italy and Germany . The aristocracy were interested in the court music of Louis XIV
Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV , known as Louis the Great or the Sun King , was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and Navarre. His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, began at the age of four and lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days...
, like the minuet
Minuet
A minuet, also spelled menuet, is a social dance of French origin for two people, usually in 3/4 time. The word was adapted from Italian minuetto and French menuet, and may have been from French menu meaning slender, small, referring to the very small steps, or from the early 17th-century popular...
and rondeaux . Many of these people tried to popularize Viennese-style songs with Hungarian texts, or to use German and Italian forms; these people included the poet László Amadé, novelist Ignác Mészáros and the author and linguist Ferenc Verseghy . Hungarian music did, however, have an effect on composers from elsewhere in Europe. Joseph Haydn
Joseph Haydn
Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...
's Rondo all' Ongarese (from the Trio in G major (No. 1), is an example, as is the finale of Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's Symphony No. 3
Symphony No. 3 (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E flat major , also known as the Eroica , is a landmark musical work marking the full arrival of the composer's "middle-period," a series of unprecedented large scale works of emotional depth and structural rigor.The symphony is widely regarded as a mature...
(Eroica), which uses a Magyar march, and Symphony No. 7
Symphony No. 7 (Beethoven)
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92, in 1811, was the seventh of his nine symphonies. He worked on it while staying in the Bohemian spa town of Teplice in the hope of improving his health. It was completed in 1812, and was dedicated to Count Moritz von Fries.At its debut,...
, which is a 2/4 tempo with a syncopated rhythm. Beethoven also used Hungarian idioms in the prologue of King Stephen and the epiloque for Ruins of Athens .
The 18th century also saw the rise of verbunkos
Verbunkos
Verbunkos is an 18th-century Hungarian dance and music genre. Erroneously, this genre was sometimes attributed to Gypsies, because usually they were the musicians, although the Magyars themselves were sometimes performers,as well....
, a form of music that was used by army recruiters. Like much of Hungarian music at the time, it was focused on the melody, with a subordinate text; in spite of this, the vocals became a major part of verbunkos .
19th century
By the middle of the 19th century, verbunkos was a major symbol of Hungarian culture, and numerous people published groundbreaking studies and collections of the field. The Musicians' Society National School of Music in PestPest (city)
Pest is the eastern, mostly flat part of Budapest, Hungary, comprising about two thirds of the city's territory. It is divided from Buda, the other part of Budapest, by the Danube River. Among its most notable parts are the Inner City, including the Hungarian Parliament, Heroes' Square and...
, headed after 1840 by Gábor Mátray, one of the "leading personalities of Hungarian musical life", did much to encourage this study . András Bartay's 1835 study of Hungarian harmonics, Magyar Apollo and his 1833-34 Eredeti Népdalok, were pioneering works in the field .
In 1838, a young Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
was inspired to travel home to Hungary, studying the music of the country; he would go on to incorporate what he learned in many of his world-famous compositions . Other composers from this period included Béni Egressy
Beni Egressy
----Béni Egressy was a Hungarian composer, librettist, translator and actor.- Biography :...
, who used 18th century secular songs in his compositions, Kálmán Simonffy, who was the "most original and most inventive" songwriter of the era, whose works "most nearly approached the ideal of 'popular melodic culture', as well as lesser-known figures like Gusztáv Szénfy, Gusztáv Nyizsnyai and Ignác Bognár . In spite of their desires to glorify Hungarian folk culture, the music these composers used remained primarily the music of the middle and upper classes . It was not until the very end of the century and into the 20th that the authentic music of ethnic Hungarians became a major part of compositions. Other Hungarian composers did not attempt to use verbunkos or other Hungarian styles in their music. German music
Music of Germany
Forms of German-language music include Neue Deutsche Welle , Krautrock, Hamburger Schule, Volksmusik, Classical, German hip hop, trance, Schlager, Neue Deutsche Härte and diverse varieties of folk music, such as Waltz and Medieval metal....
was a much stronger influence on the music of the Catholic Church and in the songbooks of Mihály Bozóky .
The playwright Elemér Szentirmay (also known as János Németh) was very popular in his time, known for his "form of expression and scale of popular character" whose "works surpassed in popularity everything written by his contemporaries" . The Hungarian operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
first appeared in the 1860s, popularized by Ignác Bognár, Geza Allaga
Géza Allaga
Géza Allaga was a Hungarian composer, cellist and cimbalist. He was a member of the Hungarian Royal Opera orchestra and published Cimbalom, his first textbook on the subject in 1889....
and Jeno Huber, followed by Elek Erkel and György Bánffy; in the early 20th century, the Viennese style predominated in the work of Huszka
Jeno Huszka
Jenő Huszka was a Hungarian composer of operettas. He was born in Szeged and died in Budapest.- Life :...
, Pongrác KacsóhKacsóh, Buttykay, Jacobi
Victor Jacobi
Victor Jacobi, Jakobi Viktor was a Hungarian operetta composer.He studied at Zeneakadémia in Budapest at the same time as the noted Hungarian composers Imre Kálmán and Albert Szirmai...
, Kálmán
Emmerich Kalman
Emmerich Kálmán was a Hungarian-born composer of operettas.- Biography :Kálmán was born Imre Koppstein in Siófok, on the southern shore of Lake Balaton, Hungary in a Jewish family.Kálmán initially intended to become a concert pianist, but because of early-onset arthritis, he focused on composition...
and Lehár . Aside from the popular operetta, the field of Hungarian opera
Hungarian opera
The origins of Hungarian opera can be traced to the late 18th century, with the rise of imported opera and other concert styles in cities like Pozsony , Kismarton, Nagyszeben and Budapest. Operas at the time were in either the German or Italian style...
reached fruition in the 19th century. Ferenc Enkel was of great importance in his field, creating the first opera in the Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
using music from popular songs, the verbunkos tradition as well as the singing forms of Italian and French opera . There were other opera composers as well, though the most important was Mihály Mosonyi
Mihály Mosonyi
Mihály Mosonyi was a Hungarian composer. Born Michael Brand, he changed his name to Mosonyi in honor of the district of Moson , with Mihály being the Hungarian equivalent of "Michael"...
, who did much to use Hungarian themes in his work .
The late 19th century saw a decline in the nationalistic tendencies of Hungarian music, which deteriorated "into the works of salon composers, into the poorly written genre of stylish 'Hungarian fantasies', 'Gipsy arrangements'" and other styles more influenced by foreign countries than Hungarian traditions . The result was increased antagonism between those enamoured of foreign music and the cultivators of Hungarian (and Roma-Hungarian) music, a dichotomy that "could only result in deceiving the country with the opium of semi-education on the one hand and superficial nationalism on the other" . Hans Koessler, a teacher with the Academy of Music, did more than anyone to accentuate the German classical elements in Hungarian music , though some of his students, like Ernst von Dohnányi, placed prominent Hungarian themes in their own works .