Music History of Hungary - 19th Century

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 Pest, 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 folk 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 19th 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 .