Folk Music and Art Music in Hungary

Extract

When searching for Hungarian character in music, we must start out from a wider circle, where we can still find some traces of it, and then work towards increasing density. A linguist pays attention to words which can be found scattered in Latin documents or words which were picked up by foreign authors in a distorted or misinterpreted form. Sometimes one finds a phrase of melody also in a foreign musical work, the rhythm of which we feel to be of Hungarian provenance. Therefore it is necessary for us to examine the works of foreign composers, which by title or by theme, contain some Hungarian characteristics. It is possible that they have preserved Hungarian melodies, the Hungarian source of which cannot be found. On the other hand there are certain works which can approach the Hungarian character in music without taking over melodies at all. The existence of a special Hungarian musical idiom is proved by the fact that also foreigners can learn it, and can use it, as a language, well or badly. However, the nationality of the composer may be superimposed—especially in more serious works—on the foreign melodies he has borrowed. Beethoven's works based on Russian themes cannot be called Russian music, nor his Turkish March Turkish. In his Scottish songs he adapted even Scottish melodies to his own musical language. Still there is a ‘cantus firmus’ and, in some cases, we can speak about bilingual music when accompaniment and melody belong to two different musical languages.