Bálint Sárosi
Hungarian Gypsy Music: Whose Heritage?
Two French authors have been making an attempt to pronounce judgement
on an issue long since considered resolved and settled. Like Liszt almost
a century and a half ago, they interpret literally the use of the term
"Gypsy music" to describe folk-based Hungarian popular music,
and regard the po pular Hungarian musical idiom of the 19th and 20th centuries
as the handi work of the Gypsies. Before taking a look at the two studies,
let us first examine wheth er there are any aspects of 19th-century Hun
garian popular music which might be classified as part of a specifically
Gypsy tradition.
The Hungarian instrumental dance music of the early 19th century--so-called
"verbunkos" music--along with Hungarian popular songs ("magyar
nóta" in Hun garian) and the csárdás, are referred
to even by Hungarians themselves using one word, cigányzene (Gypsy
music), if a Gypsy band happens to be playing them. Anyone familiar with
Hungarian culture will need no explanation of the components of this term.
Cigányzene or cigány zene--does it matter whether it is written
as one word or as two? Translated into English or French, however, both
of these variants can only be rendered in one way, using two words: "Gypsy
music", or "musique tsigane". In the last few decades we
have come to know a great deal not only about "cigány zene",
but also about "cigány zene"--in other words the Gypsies'
own music--largely thanks to research done in Hun gary and to the efforts
of Gypsy folk groups operating in Hungary. Foreigners may perhaps wonder
how it is possible for one ethnic group simultaneously to have two such
distinct musical traditions in a country as small as Hungary. The latter
happens to be expressly vocal music which bore no relation whatever to
the 19th century romantic bourgeois thinking and feeling of Hungarian folksy
music. The fact is, however, that a growing number of Gypsies have taken
a liking to this Hungarian folksy music. This music--which is part of Hungarian
culture--is generally thought of as their own musical idiom by Gypsies,
in much the same way as most Gypsies in Hungary think of Hungarian as their
native language. But the music played and liked by Gypsies--called Gypsy
music--is only their music in the sense in which the Hungarian spoken by
them is their language.
That part of Hungary's oral musical tradition which had been rendered
suitable for consumption by the middle classes was considered by Liszt
to be the invention of the Gypsies. He and his contemporaries, highly educated
but unfamiliar with folk traditions, were ignorant of traditional Gypsy
music; and if they had ever heard it, they certainly would not have regarded
it as music. From what they noticed of the Gypsies, it would have been
easy to imagine that every Gypsy went about with a fiddle under his arm.
In reality, however, then and always, only a very small proportion of Gypsies
was involved with music--and moreover, especially at that time, not with
the music of their own people. In 1782, when the first census was taken
in Hungary (on an area more than three times the present), there were 43,787
Gypsies on record, of whom 1582 were musicians, i.e. 3.6 per cent. (Nowadays
the ratio is less than two per thousand, although it is also true to say
that "Gypsy music" has been in sharp decline over the past fifty
years.) The same period, the latter decades of the 18th century, saw the
start of the era of verbunkos music, which was to continue into the middle
of the 19th century and was the first great period of glory for the Gypsy
musicians of Hun gary. It was this glory which so enraptured Liszt and
led him to write his Hungarian Rhapsodies, followed--as a kind of explanation
of the Rhapsodies--by his book on "The Gypsies and their music in
Hungary" (Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie, Paris,
1859). According to generally familiar documentary evidence, the Hungarian
national movement gave a great boost to Gypsy musicians. Even if there
had been anything authentically Gypsy in their music prior to that time,
from then on their success depended on strict conformity to the requirements
of their Hungarian audience. It is inconceivable, even in jest, that Hun
garians would have converted from Hungarian to Gypsy music precisely at
the time of the national movement, at a time when people were particularly
sensitive to ensuring that every thing--language, dress, dance and also
music--was traditionally Hungarian, while at the same time in line with
current European taste. In his book Liszt nevertheless resolutely asserts
the view that Hungarian music was brought (from where? one wonders) and
wrought by the Gypsies. His views could hardly be the fruit of observation,
since the people who assisted him, on his visits home, to collect the raw
material relating to Hun gary for his book, likewise knew very little about
the mechanisms by which a musical tradition is formed. Liszt describes
the Gypsy musicians as he wanted, in his romantic imagination, to see himself.
His book to this day provides a model and a reference work for all those
who want to give the Gypsies a wedding cake, rose-tinted picture of themselves.
The Hungarians were not ashamed to call their musical entertainers
by their real name for all the world to hear. They felt no need to hide
them behind a façade of "Hungarianness"; they trained
them and tutored them, derived pleasure from their foreign tours and followed
with keen interest their not always unambiguous successes abroad. They
cursed their botch-ups, but they also--and the record bears witness primarily
to this--admired the suavely flamboyant style of the best performers. They
generously conferred the title "Gypsy music" even on music learnt,
note for note, from a score, if it appeared on a "Gypsy" programme.
Over the course of a century and a half the epithet "Gypsy" became
imbued with respect within the profession, even among musicians who otherwise
would not have taken kindly to being considered Gypsies on the street;
it meant musician (or, as the famous Bihari was known in the first half
of the 19th century, Hungarian folk musician). It is quite a different
story in the case of other peoples where the recognized masters of musical
entertainment are likewise traditionally Gypsies. In the case of the Turks,
the Greeks, the Albanians and the Romanians, the music played by the Gypsy
musicians is called "Turkish", "Greek", "Albanian"
or "Romanian" respectively. And this is entirely as it should
be, unless one harbours the absurd notion of robbing all these different
nations of their musical traditions and attributing as many types of music
to the Gypsies alone. No one needs imports by instrumentalists to satisfy
any need they may feel for traditional music. And in any case, where would
they have found so many different types of music, each perfectly suited
to the culture of the people in question? On the other hand, it is not
uncommon to find the organization, i.e. the performance, of musical entertainment
en trusted to alien itinerants. In such cases it is naturally not the employer
who adapts but vice-versa. The instrumentalist adjusts and together with
the locals, carries on whatever it is that they have devised and developed,
in the manner dictated by them.
Throughout human history the occupation of entertainer, and thus also
that of musical entertainer, has generally been regarded as a lowly one.
The only people willing to engage in such an activity were poor people,
living on the fringe of society and with little chance or expectation of
gaining respect in society, capable of complying totally with the taste
of the audience, indeed capable of complete self-abasement for the sake
of earning a living. The host community has never been interested in whether
or to what extent its musicians were authentically foreign; it just wants
the music to reflect faithfully the customary or required attitudes. In
Miklós Markó's album of Gypsy musicians (1896 and 1927 respectively)
one finds only
Hun garian gentlemen. In their dress and their demeanour, they represent
the social classes they serve, i.e., the Hungarian gentry and middle classes.
The one-time alien itinerants have themselves become firmly-rooted "locals".
To be able to assess properly the music played by them--particularly
if one takes into account the role of rural Gypsy musicians too--it is
essential to have a thorough understanding of the whole of the Hungarian
musical tradition, both written and unwritten, since that is the context
in which it emerged and developed. At the same time, it is not possible
to identify any single element of this music which might produce the conclusion
that it is of specifically Gypsy origin. The repertoire and style of rural
musicians is closely tied to local (and mainly vocal) traditions and customs.
Among the town musicians--the exponents of "Gypsy music"--on
the other hand, the main quality criterion from the middle of the 19th
century onwards has been the number of excerpts from opera, operetta and
other popular pieces of international music learnt from a score. Verbunkos
music, which characterized their first period of widespread success and
became the fashionable instrumental music of the early 19th century, developed
in the late18th and early 19th centuries out of traditional Hungarian dance
music, which had been played mostly by non-Gypsies (shepherds, peasants
and wandering musicians of various ethnic origin) and principally on the
bagpipes. This music must originally have been of a kind known and liked
by rural folk, since the verbunkos dances (from the German Werbung = recruiting)
were organized primarily to entice village lads to the colours. Verbunkos
music went out of fashion in the second half of the 19th century; at its
demise sheet music was needed to revive the few tunes which are still played
now and then by musicians today.
The folk-based popular music--the Hungarian nóta (slow lyrical
air) and the csárdás--the music of the masses considered
to be the typical Hungarian musical idiom from the middle of the 19th century--was,
like the earlier verbunkos music, also mainly the work of Hungarian amateurs.
From the moment it was conceived, it also quite naturally became part of
the Gypsy musicians' repertoire. It is this musical repertoire which the
world nowadays knows as "Gypsy music" in a more literal sense.
Among the many dozen of composers there were of course a few Gypsy musicians--after
all, they regard this style of music as their own. No-one would deny that
János Bihari (1764-1827), the famous verbunkos composer, or Pista
Dankó (1858-1903) were Gypsy musicians; but anyone who is familiar
with their work knows--as they themselves knew--that it was not Gypsy music
they were composing, but verbunkos music in the case of the former and,
in that of the latter, the nóta, i.e. Hungarian popular song.
Alain Antonietto's ambitious-sounding article appeared in issue 1/1994,
a special issue on music, of Études Tsiganes, an academic journal
published twice yearly in Paris covering issues relating to Gypsies. The
title of the article is "The History of Central European Instrumental
Gypsy Music". Antonietto has published articles relating to Hungarian
Gypsy music on a number of occasions in earlier issues of Études
Tsiganes (1985, 1986 and 1987). When the aforementioned issue of Études
Tsiganes fell into my hands, it occurred to me that we in "Central
Europe" would not dare to attempt the task of producing a summary
of such ambitious scope and significance. Let us therefore examine this
bold piece of work which, incidentally, contains no notes or bibliographical
references; it might nevertheless (given the benefit of the doubt) have
been very intelligent and illuminating.
Illuminating it certainly is. In it, all in one heap, one can find
every absurd notion about Gypsies and Gypsy musicians that uncritical laymen
with romantic longings have managed to think up over the course of the
past century and a half. The title of the study promises Central Europe,
but apart from one allegedly Slovak Gypsy bandleader, only Hungarians and
Ro manians are mentioned, and only to the degree that they have become
famous in western Europe--in other words, the article deals mainly with
Hungarians. The alleged Slovak bandleader lived in a Slovak town by the
name of "Lupka" and was called "Jozko Pito"--perhaps
somebody knows how to interpret at least one of these names, I, for my
part, have failed. On the other hand, there is sure to be no one who has
heard of a Transylvanian boyar of around 1558 by the name of Mircea Voda[Sinvcircumflex],
who was an admirer of the Gypsies. Although there was indeed a Mircea Voda[Sinvcircumflex],
he could not have been a Transylvanian boyar around the middle of the 16th
century for the simple reason that he died more than a centrury earlier--and
moreover, he was no Transylvanian boyar (because in Transylvania there
were no boyars), but a Wallachian Romanian voivode. The Hungarian nobleman,
György Zrínyi, who captured a Gypsy cimbalom-player from the
Turks, although not mentioned by name, is likewise made out to be a boyar.
Antonietto knows a great many details relating to Hungary and Romania,
but very superficially, and misunderstands the majority of these with complete
impartiality--as well as reiterating without question earlier misunderstandings
made by others. He throws all these undigested details into a hat, shakes
them up and then lays them out before us. The resulting mixture is what
he calls the history of Central European instrumental Gypsy music. The
only purpose to which he puts this malleable version of history is to show
that since time immemorial all music played on instruments, by either of
these two peoples, has obviously belonged to the Gypsies. He does however
know--after all, it is fairly common knowledge nowadays--that the first
Gypsies could only have made their appearance in Hungary towards the end
of the 14th century at the earliest; the earliest records we have of Gypsy
musicians, and early records in general are few and far between, date from
the late 15th century. But this does not seem to deter him from placing
Gypsy musicians in the court of King Andrew II (1176-1235), having the
military exploits of King Matthias (1458-1490) extolled in song by Gypsy
minstrels, or having Louis II (1516-1526) carouse away what was in the
royal treasury with Gypsy musicians before falling in the Battle of Mohács.
He includes among Gypsy musicians the likes of the 16th-century Hungarian
student Imre Cimbalmos (otherwise known by his Latin name, Emericus literatus
Cymbalista), and the outstanding 20th-century songwriter and nobleman,
Árpád Balázs. The latter he even endows with a famous
Gypsy bandleader as a father, in the shape of the well-known 19th-century
bandleader Kálmán Balázs. As we saw from the example
of Mircea, mentioned above, the author is just as cavalier in his treatment
of Ro manian history. For example, he makes the great Romanian Gypsy bandleader
of the 19th century, Barbu Lautaru, the inspiration for Liszt's Hungarian
Rhapsodies.
Bartók, Kodály and the famous Ro manian student of folk
music, Braxiloiu, are accused of nationalism by Antonietto because they
do not attribute the instrumental music of their respective nations to
the Gypsies and claim that peasant music is of higher value than the more
superficial, folksy bourgeois music which gave greater scope to Gypsy musicians.
He reels off a list of quotations by famous and not-so-famous personages
in praise of Gypsy bandleaders--praise from people whose only experience
of Gypsy bands would have been the one or two good ones they might have
heard at an international fair in Paris, or in an elegant restaurant in
Buda pest--and proceeds to draw the conclusion that the Gypsy musicians
created this music through reverie and improvisation, as he puts it, in
the "steppes of the Hun garian Puszta" and made it their gift
to the non-musical world. Well, while he may not have understood the relevant
literature on the subject, he clearly did not even take the trouble to
inform himself as regards the procedures relating to unwritten, improvised
music. If only he had asked just one Gypsy musician what is behind the
music that he plays, he could easily have found out that the virtuosity
which is indeed often deserving of admiration did not simply alight on
the Gypsy musician of its own accord in the middle of the Puszta. Even
if he was born with vast talent, he had to study and work very hard to
become a virtuoso. As for the question of the type of music and the level
of virtuosity, that does not depend on the fact that he is a Gypsy--in
this Gypsies and non-Gypsies are identical--but on the cultural environment
in which he lives and works.
The other study, which is not only ambitious, but aims to cover the
subject, was written and published in 1996. The author, Patrick Williams,
paid a short visit to Hun gary and subsequently wrote his work, Les Tsiganes
de Hongrie et leur musique (The Gypsies of Hungary and their Music, Paris:
Cité de la Musique/Actes Sud) over the course of a few weeks.
Exacly half of this short, 144-page book deals with "Gypsy music";
the other half is entitled "Le chant des Rom"--The songs of the
Roma. Even the manner in which the book has been divided implies that the
two are judged equal and form an equal part of Gypsy culture. The blurb
on the cover says as much. I quote:
What do the Gypsy violinist playing in a Budapest restaurant and the
songs of a Gypsy community living in deepest rural Hungary have in common?
Whose are the melodies and rhythms which so seduced Liszt and Brahms?
This book shows that there is not one but several types of Gypsy music
in Hungary, linked to two large Gypsy communities with very different forms
of musical expression: the instrumental music of the Romungro Gypsies,
an amalgam of Hungarian national feeling and Gypsy sentimentality (the
famous Rákóczi March could be regarded as emblematic of this
kind of music), and the songs of the Vlach Gypsies, which reflect life
in their community.
Arguing with shrewd sophistry, hovering on wings of literary affectation
over hazily presented facts, the author says basically the same in the
72 pages devoted to the subject. His discussion is modelled on Liszt's
book. Indeed he quotes Liszt so extensively and with such unerring feel
that if it were Liszt's errors one wanted to study, one would find them
all here together. Clearly this is not the place for facts, such as one
finds in more recent literature on the subject. And if there are some facts
which cannot be avoided, with a little ingenuity they can always be squeez
ed to fit the mould one already has to hand. For the sake of appearing
to be objective, Williams even makes several references to my book, Gypsy
Music (Corvina Press, 1978), although never on any point of substance.
If he had really looked closely, however, he would have found that we disagree
on a number of fundamental issues and he could at least have attempted
to refute my views. Any issues which might have warranted discussion by
him, are, however, simply disregarded. A typical detail is the Gypsy grievance
he attaches to the person of Panna Czinka, whose contemporaries, according
to him, considered her "ugly" just because her skin was dark.
In my book--if he did indeed read it--I quote almost verbatim from the
original document relating to this, dated 1795, and according to which
Panna Czinka, "was not beautiful" because of her extremely dark
and pockmarked skin and her goitre, but her audience loved her anyway because
of her amiable manner. Enthusiastic posterity has nevertheless compensated
Panna Czinka generously for her lack of beauty in real life: she is referred
to as the "beautiful Gypsy woman..." and for some this becomes
the clear truth of the matter. Two illustrations relating to Panna Czinka
are called into service in the book to persuade the reader. One of them
depicts a beautiful young woman playing the violin to a group of noblemen
with her band, (the artist, the ardently patriotic Hun garian, Imre Greguss,
obviously did not know that there was no clarinettist in the band of the
"beautiful Gypsy woman..."). The other portrayal of Panna Czinka
is a piece of pure fantasy in the trashy romantic style full of dashing
hussars and sabres and pipes, with an arbitrary birth date--1711--in one
corner. An author so receptive to kitsch could not fail to mention the
heart-rending, alleged custom of the Gypsy violinist Ede Reményi
to leave the elegant world of the salons and return to the company of his
Gypsy brethren from time to time to relax and play their "wild"
music together--because "professional Gypsy mu- si cians have one
kind of music for outsiders and another kind of music for themselves".
(In return for this astonishing piece of information we can let Williams
in on the fact that Ede Reményi--or, as he was known earlier, Hoffmann--was
not in fact Gypsy, nor did he learn the art of violin-playing in the Puszta.)
Williams takes his cue from Liszt in matters of taste as well. This
is obviously the explanation why he accords second place to the Gypsies'
own music. The blurb barely mentions it. He writes fine words about the
role of Gypsy folk music and its performance but there is no analytical
description. The latter would make it obvious that this purely vocal music,
accompanied at most by improvised rhythm instruments (in recent years also
by guitars) lacks weight if measured by Liszt's standards.
Of the innumerable errors into which this book falls, most of which
have long been clarified in the literature on the subject, the most astonishing
relates to the "af finity" between Hungarians and Gypsies. Williams
kindly reminds us that both peoples came from the East. We have for example
the Rákóczi March, enjoyed by Hun garian audiences--and therefore
gladly play ed by Gypsy musicians. Its "Gypsy-style" melody,
an augmented second followed by a half-step, which is similar to a Phrygian
cadence, would in fact indicate an "affinity" among all peoples
between Hun gary and Afghanistan. This one broad type of melody, used for
church singing as well as for common folk tunes, originated among Hungarian
peasants. Bihari too played a version--his contemporaries noted their admiration,
but did not consider it sufficiently original to write it down, as they
did with the much less significant, but more original Bihari melodies.
The definitive versions recognized by everyone and with which everyone
nowadays is happy are those of Liszt and, particularly, of Berlioz. Or
we have Brahms' Hungarian Dances, likewise mentioned above. The ma jority
of the original melodies on which these are based were composed (i.e.,
written!) in the 1850s and 1860s. We know who the original composers were:
Ignác Bognár, Miska Borzó, Béni Egressy, Ignác
Frank, Béla Kéler, N. Mérty, Adolf Nittin ger, Kálmán
Simonffy, Elemér Szentirmay, Mór Windt. There is not one
Gypsy among them. So how can this nevertheless be peculiarly Gypsy music?--someone
like myself, a narrow-minded "specialist", might ask. Of course
it cannot be, because any self-respecting Gypsy musician likes to play
Brahms' Hungarian Dances strictly true to the score.
We should also mention those rhythms which are only played by Hungarian
Gypsy musicians, and of which Williams, like Liszt, is so enraptured. However,
also just like Liszt, he omits to give us a concrete example. What else
should be mentioned here? Other elements/aspects of virtuoso playing on
a musical instrument? The high level of skill required to master the art
of the musical entertainer? These qualities do not belong to the Gypsies,
but to Gypsy musicians, who may consider themselves Rom ungro or any other
type of Gypsy in origin, but who have all undertaken as professionals to
serve Hungarian culture. What would they do with the part of Hungarian
culture which is theirs, if they claimed their rightful due? Do Williams
and company have any ideas? Or perhaps they feel that Gypsy musicians have
not received enough recognition in Hungary during the past century and
a half? They can take it from me that their recognition has been much,
much greater than is imagined in Paris.
It seems that these idiosyncratic views from abroad nevertheless have
some influence in Hungary. In the Hungarian daily Magyar Hírlap
of October 3, 1995, I read a statement by the director of a Gypsy artists'
ensemble (not Gypsy "band") in which he declared, "In my
opinion, if music is played by Gypsies, then that is Gypsy music."
That could be enlightening, if anybody could provide an acceptable explanation.
The above two authors have not been successful in doing so. I, meanwhile,
have visions of a utopian scene in which "Gypsies" are playing
Bach, Beethoven, Bartók...
Bálint Sárosi
is the author of Gypsy Music, Corvina Press, 1978, and Folk Music: Hungarian
Musical Idiom, Corvina Books, 1986.
