The Music of Hungary in the 18th Century

During the 18^th century, students at the Hungary’s Calvinist College, some of whom, being minor noble, lived in small villages, brought with them to their schools their regional pattern of music, colleges such as Sarospatak and Szekelyudvarhely established choirs that adopted the new elements like polyphony. Gyorgy Marothi of Debrecen produced several powerful works, and his French psalm book became very popular. In around 1790, the four voice choirs were expanded to eight using accessory voices such as subcantus and accantus and concantus, and the discant voice was systematically transposed into a lower pitch, producing a new form of choral fashion with similarities to medieval organum and fauxbourdon. The same time saw the popularity of homophoning songs that are recorded in the student song books; notation, though, was crude and no extensive collections emerged until 1853, with the publication of Adam Paloczi Horvathos Otodfelszaz Enekek. These song showed that the mid to the late 18^th century was a time when the old Hungarian pattern died out, and a new pattern appeared.

Several Hungarian artists and composers of the 18^th century preached closer cultural ties with the Europe, not believing that Hungarian music could reach the levels of improvement in Italy and Germany. The aristocracy was interested in the court music of Louis XIV, like the minuet and rondo, many of these people tried to popularize the Viennese-style songs with Hungarian texts, or to use the German and Italian forms; these people included the poet Lazlo Amada, novelist Iganc Meszaros and the writer and linguist Ferenc Verseghy. Trio in G Major No. 1, is an instance, as it is the finale of Beethoven’s Symphony No.3 (Eroica), which uses a Magyar march, and Symphony No.7, which is a 2/4 tempo with a syncopated rhythm. Beethoven also used the Hungarian idioms in the beginning of King Stephen and the epilogue for Ruins of Athens.

The 18^th century also saw the rise of the verbunkos, a form of music that was used by army recruiters. Like much of the Hungarian music at the period, it was focused on the melody, with a subordinate text; in spite of this, the vocals became a major part of verbunkos.