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Hungarian Peasant and Folk Music Essay

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Hungarian Peasant and Folk Music

I. General confusion about Hungarian folk music.
Gypsy music Peasant music - the real Hungarian folk music - is not Gypsy music. Peasant music certainly had influence on the songs and playing of gypsies who lived in Hungary and performed in ensembles, though. Gypsy music used to be the basis of all generalizations about Hungarian music. It was Ferenc Liszt's monumental error to state that Gypsy music is the creation of gypsies. The so called 'gypsy scale' points to a southern oriental (Arabic) origin and may possibly have reached Hungary through the gypsies. This music falsifies Hungarian folk songs by introducing augmented intervals of the Gypsy scales, which scales were never used by peasants. …show more content…

The first widely-known Hungarian dances are composed by known composers and harmonized after the Viennese style. It is a mystery why they were labeled as Hungarian folk melodies. Popular art music is set on texts or poems, which is the commonplace language of the town reflecting the individual tastes and whims of their composers with a less beautiful and corrupt use of the language in comparison with the high, natural, illiterate musical and poetic artistry of peasant music having no individual authors or composers yet with a beautiful use of the language full with natural images and marvelous metaphors. Just an example: here is a quotation of one strophe from the old style of peasant music: "Sír elöttem az út, - Bánkódik az ösveny, - Még az is azt mondja: - Áldjon meg az östen" ("In front of me the trail is crying, - The path is lamenting, - Even it says: - God bless you") It does not work in English. The translation does not show the nicety of the language, its clear genuine sound, the sound of the words, which language is free from any stylized effects. I would even risk saying: the sound of the meaning. Popular art music is incompetent to carry poetry as this. And its music the same way: with its stylized lighter popular taste it cannot emulate that of peasant music, the music evolved and carried through the natural process of a long illiterate oral

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