Music of Hungary - Characteristics

Characteristics

Unlike most Eastern European peoples, the Hungarian people, Magyars, emerged from the intermingling of Finno-Ugric and Eastern Turkish peoples during the fifth to eighth centuries CE. This makes the origins of their traditional music unique in Europe. According to author Simon Broughton, the composer and song collector Kodály identified songs that "apparently date back 2,500 years" in common with the Mari people of Russia; and, as well as the Mari, the ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl indicates similarities in traditional Hungarian music with Mongolian and Native American musical styles. Bence Szabolcsi, however, claims that the Finno-Ugric and Turkish-Mongolian elements are present but "cannot be attached to certain, definite national or linguistic groups". Nonetheless, Szabolcsi claims links between Hungarian musical traditions and those of the Mari, Kalmyk, Ostyak, northwest Chinese, Tatar, Vogul, Anatolian Turkish, Bashkirian, Mongol and Chuvash musics. These, he claims, are evidence that "Asian memories slumber in the depths of Hungarian folk music and that this folk music is the last Western link in the chant of ancient Eastern cultural relations".

According to Broughton, traditional Hungarian music is "highly distinctive" like the "Hungarian language, which invariably is stressed on the first syllable, lending a strongly accented dactylic rhythm to the music". Nettl identifies two "essential features" of Hungarian folk music to be the use of "pentatonic scales composed of major seconds and minor thirds" (or "gapped scales") and "the practice of transposing a bit of melody several times to create the essence of a song". These transpositions are "usually up or down a fifth", a fundamental interval in the series of overtones and an indication perhaps of the "influence of Chinese musical theory in which the fifth is significant".

According to Szabolcsi, these 'Hungarian transpositions', along with "some melodic, rhythmical and ornamental peculiarities, clearly show on the map of Eurasia the movements of Turkish people from the East to the West". The subsequent influence on neighboring countries' music is seen in the music of Slovakia and, with intervals of the third or second, in the music of the Czech Republic. Hungarian and other Finno-Ugric musical traditions are also characterized by the use of an ABBA binary musical form, with Hungary itself especially known for the A A' A' A variant, where the B sections are the A sections transposed up or down a fifth (A'). Modern Hungarian folk music evolved in the 19th century, and is contrasted with previous styles through the use of arched melodic lines as opposed to the more archaic descending lines.