Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
MUSIC
Hungarian classical music enshrines the trinity of Liszt, Bartók and Kodály: Liszt was
the founding father, Bartók one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century, and
Kodály (himself no slouch at composition) created a widely imitated system of musical
education.WhenyoualsotakeintoaccounttalentedHungariansoloistssuchasAndrás
Schiff and ensembles such as the Budapest Festival Orchestra, it's clear that this small
nationhasmadeanoutstandingcontributiontotheworldofclassicalmusic.Afterclas-
sical,themusicalgenresmostreadilyassociatedwithHungaryarefolkandGypsy,both
of which have some excellent exponents, the former led by Muzsikás and the wonder-
ful singer Márta Sebestyén, and the latter by the likes of the cimbalom player Kálmán
Balogh.Theincreasingpopularityofjazzismanifestinthegrowingnumberofclubsin
Budapest and other larger cities, as well as several terrific summer jazz festivals held
around the country. Meanwhile, Hungarian popular music, while not exactly cutting-
edge,isbecomingmoreadventurousasanewgenerationofDJsandbandssoaksupthe
influence of Western European and American artists.
Classical music
FranzLiszt
(1811-86),whodescribed himself asa“mixture ofGypsyandFranciscan”, cuta
flamboyant figure in the salons of Europe as a virtuoso pianist and womanizer. His
Hungari-
an Rhapsodies
and other similar pieces reflected the “Gypsy” side to his character and the
rising nationalism of his era, while later work like the
Transcendental Studies
(whose origin-
ality has only recently been recognized) invoked a visionary “Franciscan” mood. Despite his
patriotic stance, however, Liszt's first language was German (he never fully mastered Hun-
garian), and his expressed wish to roam the villages of Hungary with a knapsack on his back
was a Romantic fantasy.
Thatwasleftto
BélaBartók
(1881-1945)and
ZoltánKodály
(1882-1967),whobeganex-
ploring the remoter districts of Hungary and Transylvania in 1906, collecting peasant music.
Despite many hardships and local suspicion of their “monster” (a cutting stylus and phono-
graph cylinders), they managed to record and catalogue thousands of melodies, laying down
high standards of musical ethnography, still maintained in Hungary today, while discovering
a rich source of inspiration for their own compositions.
Bartók created a personal but universal musical language by reworking the raw essence of
Magyar and Finno-Ugric folk music in a modern context - in particular his six String Quar-
tets - although Hungarian public opinion was originally hostile. Feeling misunderstood and
outofstepwithhiscountry'sincreasinglypro-Nazipolicies,BartókleftHungaryin1940,dy-
ing poor and embittered in the United States. Since then, however, his reputation has soared,
