The Music of Hungary in the 16th Century

The Nador Codex of the 1508 presents the first use of Gregorian melodies in Hungarian texts. The same time saw the indigenous traditional styles grow more varied, while political authorities railed against secular music. Szavolcsi notes the author of the Sandor Codex early 16^th century, who sees secular music to be accompanied by fiddle, drums, cimbalom and lute and used tenor discant and contratenor singer, meaning it was the style of the motet.

The 16^th century saw the rise of the Transylvania, a place the Turks never occupied as the center for the Hungarian music, as well as the first Hungarian publications of music, both was published in Krakow. Istvan Galszecsi’s song book was the first Hungarian gradual to the Gregorian hymns melodies and German choral music of which we can see the new Hungarian translations while the Cronica of Andras Farkas includes the first existing record songs. About forty melodies are known from this period, and are already in differently Hungarian patterns that took influences from all over the Europe in several dozen different forms that were mainly notated in a strong and clumsy way but were undoubtedly much more colourful and easy in living performance and were in reality little masterpieces of melodic structure. The most important artist of this era was Sebestyen Tinodi Lantos.

Highlighted declamation was fashionable in the music industry during the early 16^th century, a more strong choir pattern us represented by a collection known as the Melopoeiae, from the 1507. A collection by Johannes Honterus was the first Hungarian printed work with music, tracing from 1548. These collections were improved by melodic outlines that according to Bence Szabolcsi, it could be explained by the arrival of the song material of the Czech Reformation, the melodic treasure of the German Reformation and the psalter of the French Huguenots. The poet Balint Balassi remains well known for his poems from this era, which were based on Polish, German and Turkey melodies, and may have also been influenced by the villanelle. Some of the song from this period, influenced by the music of the pioneer and their minstrels from as far away as Italy, remained a part of the Hungarian folk tradition at least until the current song collection started. Religious and secular music were closely linked at this period, and documentation of the previous grew with the publication of many song books filled with free psalm paraphrases known as the lauds, enabling the practice of the communal singing among the nascent protestant churches. This conflation of the religious and the secular song was much criticized from alter, from both the protestant and the catholic churches. The latter allowed the famous songs after a 1564 law from the Ferdinand I, and allowed the bishops to use them only after the close scrutiny. They were again stopped in the year 1611, though, and a catholic collection of Hungarian church songs was not agreed upon until the 1629, at the Synod of Nagyszombat. The collection includes the Benedek Szolosy’s catholic that was produced in 1651, and was not followed by a protestant version for about 90 years.

The Hungarian instrumental music was popular in Europe in the 16^th century. The lutenist and the composer Balint Bakfark was particularly popular, known as a virtuoso players of the lute, his works were collected and produced as Intavolatura and Harmoniae musicae which was published in 1553 and 1565 respectively. He was one of the pioneers of s style based on the vocal polyphony. The lutenist brother Melchior and Konrad Neusiedler were also noted, as was Stephen Monetarius, the writer of an important early work in music theory, the Epithoman utriusque musices.