The Music of Hungary in the 19th Century

During the middle of the 19^th century, verbunkos was a major sign of Hungarian culture, and many people published ground breaking studies and collections of the files. The Musicians Society national School of Music in Pest, lead after 1840 by Gabor Matray, one of the leading personalities of Hungarian musical life, did much to support this study. Andras Bartay in 1835 studied the Hungarian harmonic, Magyar Apollo and his 1833-34 Eredeti Nepdalok, were pioneering works in the field.

In 1838, a young Franz Liszt was motivated to travel home to Hungary, studying the music of the country; he would go on to incorporated what he learned in many of his world-popular compositions. Other composers from this time included Beni Egressy, who used the 18^th century traditional songs in his compositions, Kalman Simonffy, who was the most original and most creative songwriter of the decade, whose works most nearly reached the ideal of famous melodic culture, as well as lesser-known figure such as Gusztav Szenfy, Gusztav Nyizsnyai and Iganc Bognar. Despite of their desires to glorify the Hungarian traditional culture, the music these composers used remained mainly the music of the middle and upper classes. This was not until the very end of the 19^th century and into the 20^th century that the verbunkos or other Hungarian patterns in their music. German music was a much rigid influence on the music of the Catholic Church and in the song books of Mihaly Bozoky.

The playwright, Elmer Szentirmay, also known as Janos Nemeth was also very popular in his time, known for his form of expression and scales of famous character whose works surpass in popularity everything written by his colleagues. The Hungarian operetta first emerged in the 1860s promoted by Ignac Bognar, Gaza Allaga and Jeno Huber, followed by Elek Erkel and Gyorgy Banffy, in the early 20^th century, the Viennese pattern predominated the work of Huszka, Pongrac KacsohKacsoh, Jacobi Kalman, Lehar and Buttykay. Apart from the famous operetta, the field of Hungarian opera reached fruition in the 19^th century. Ferenz Erkel was of great as the singing forms of the Italian and the French opera. There were other opera singers as well; however the most important was Mihaly Mosonyi, who did much to use Hungarian themes in his work.

The late 19^th century saw a change in the nationalistic trend of Hungarian music, which deteriorated into the works of salon composers, into the poorly written genre of stylish Hungarian imaginations, Gipsy arrangements and other patterns more influenced by foreign countries than Hungarian traditions. The result was increased dislike between those captivated of the foreign music and the cultivators of Hungarian (and Roma-Hungarian) music, a contrast that could only result in deceiving the country with the opium of semi-education on the one hand and superficial nationalism on the other. Hans Koessler, a teacher with the Academy of music, did more than anyone to accentuate the German classical elements in Hungarian music; however some of his students such as Ernst von Dohnanyi placed prominent Hungarian themes in their own works.