Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0161/01616.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 25KB | 424 lines

$Unique_ID{COW01616}
$Pretitle{365}
$Title{Hungary
Chapter 7B.   Films, Music and Folk Arts}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Eugene K. Keefe}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{hungarian
folk
music
century
research
sciences
national
europe
arts
musical}
$Date{1973}
$Log{}
Country:     Hungary
Book:        Hungary, A Country Study
Author:      Eugene K. Keefe
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1973

Chapter 7B.   Films, Music and Folk Arts

Films

     After a promising start with silent pictures during World War I, the
Hungarian film industry suffered a considerable setback in the economic crisis
of the 1920s. It was during that time that the well-known directors Alexander
Korda, Michael Curtis, and Joseph Pasternak left Hungary to gain fame in
England and the United States.

     After the mid-1930s the sophisticated tastes of the middle and upper
classes brought about a regeneration of the film industry, which had been
reduced to producing third-rate musicals and melodramas. Some of the leading
novelists successfully wrote scripts and directed motion pictures; the novels
of Mor Jokai were adapted to the screen; and Hungarian films became popular in
other parts of Europe.

     The communist regime considers motion pictures to be one of the major
media for information and education and has devoted much energy and
considerable resources to their production and distribution. The films
produced in the Rakosi era, however, were blatant propaganda of no artistic
merit.

     The relaxing of restrictions in 1955 promised an artistic rebirth of the
Hungarian cinema, which was stifled by the crushing of the uprising in 1956.
Since the early 1960s several films of high artistic and technical quality
have been produced by a group of young, talented directors. Such film as Love,
directed by Karoly Makk, and Falcons, directed by Istvan Gal, have been called
cinematic masterpieces by international critics.

Music

     Until about 1905 Hungarian-composed music and national folk music
followed distinctly different paths. The former reflected mainly the influence
of West European musical idioms, even though rhythmic and melodic
characteristics of ancient folksongs and dances were discernible in some of
the compositions. Folk music was alien to the polyphonic development of
European music and survived in pure form only among the peasantry. Its main
characteristic was the Central Asian pentatonic scale and a descending melodic
structure that conformed with the rhythmic pattern of the Hungarian language.
Songs were learned by ear and passed from generation to generation. Hardly any
of this music appeared in written form until around 1900.

     Under the impetus of the romantic nationalism of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries groups of characteristic songs and dances were
composed that came to be regarded in Hungary and throughout Europe as the
national music of Hungary. These compositions were not true folksongs,
however, even though they were based on traditional folk rhythms and melodies.
Their source was an old military recruiting dance, the verbunkos. Inspired by
the ideal of Hungarian nationhood, the country's composers and music
instructors transplanted the melody and rhythm of the verbunkos into the
context of European musical idioms, notably four-four time and the major-minor
keys. The outcome was a striking musical style with great instrumental
flexibility, a broad but distinct melodic pattern, and a rich variety of
rhythms. The so-called Hungarian compositions of great musicians like Haydn,
Mozart, and Brahms reflect the distinct influence of the verbunkos style.

     The stylistic successor of the verbunkos were songs composed in the style
of peasant folksongs. They achieved spectacular success and popularity as a
result of their rendition by Gypsy players, whose debut as popular musicians
dates to the seventeenth century. In their highly ornamental and versatile
interpretations, these compositions assumed striking forms and were regarded
as genuine folk music both in Hungary and abroad.

     Ferenc (Franz) Liszt was one of the most celebrated musicians of
nineteenth-century Europe and a leading romantic composer. His symphonic
poems, rhapsodies, and church music, resplendent with heroic pomp and glowing
visions, are among the best musical expressions of romantic ideals. In his
Hungarian Rhapsodies, Saint Elizabeth's Legend, and Coronation Mass, Liszt
dramatically expressed that Hungarian musical substance that had emerged with
the adaptations of the verbunkos and the peasant folksongs. He founded the
Hungarian Academy of Music, where he was noted for his accomplishments in the
pedagogy of the piano. He is still revered by his compatriots as a symbol of
Hungarian musical creativity.

     During the second half of the nineteenth century adaptations and
commercialized versions of traditional folk music continued largely to
represent Hungarian music abroad. The compositions of Jeno Hubay and Enro
Dohnanyi, however, were also well known in the metropolitan cities of Europe.
Audiences in Vienna, Budapest, and other parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
thrilled to the operettas of Ferenc Lehar, Pongrac Kacsoh, and Imre Kalman;
many of them are still popular.

     An authentic national music came into being at the beginning of the
twentieth century from the pens of Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly. Their music
celebrated the resolution of the basic problem of the Hungarian culture
ethos-the expression of an Eastern cultural heritage in European form. The
spectacular acclaim of Bartok and Kodaly also revitalized the Hungarians'
sense of solidarity with Western culture.

     Bartok and Kodaly devoted their early years to the intensive study of
folksongs. They traveled from village to village in every region, recording
dances, ballads, and songs, many of which pointed to the pagan past and
revealed the Magyar musical heritage in its pure form. Bartok, who died in
1945, is considered one of the great modern musicians. In the context of its
time, his music is novel in rhythm and harmony and singularly expressive in
melody.

     Kodaly renders the lyric depth and fiery pathos of folksong themes in the
framework of classical compact forms. He initiated new concepts in choir
techniques that revitalized choral singing and developed a system of musical
education for children utilizing choral singing as a base. Under Kodaly's
influence, new choirs and folksong ensembles gained national repute in the
1930s and have since become an outstanding feature of Hungarian musical life.

     For the young composers of the post-World War II era, folklore influence
in music is an exhausted style that they reject. Instead, they experiment with
the various contemporary styles and techniques, revert back to classical forms
and, often, attempt to merge the old with the new. Outstanding among the young
composers is Sandor Szokolay, whose opera Blood Wedding, based on the play by
Garcia Lorca, is performed all over the world.

     Hungarian youth, like young people elsewhere, have embraced rock music as
their own form of musical expression. One Western source estimated that some
4,000 rock ensembles performed regularly at various youth gathering places in
1971. Rock music is seen by the young as one of the few outlets of free
self-expression open to them. The authorities have tolerated the rock boom
despite occasional public condemnations of its bourgeois decadence.

     Musical life in the early 1970s was active and varied. Its focus,
however, was on performing rather than composing. Amateur orchestras and
chamber music groups were found in all cities and larger towns. The five
largest cities each have a professional orchestra, which presents concerts in
their home city and in neighboring towns.

     A large number of Hungarian performing artists have gained international
reputations. Among the best known are conductors Antal Dorati, George Szell,
and Georg Solti, pianist Geza Anda,