Verbunkos

Music of Hungary
General topics
Portal
Genres
Specific forms
Media and performance
Music awards
Music charts Mahasz
Music festivals
Music media

Print media

  • Metal Hammer

Music television

Nationalistic and patriotic songs
National anthem "Himnusz"
Other Szózat
Székely Himnusz

Verbunkos (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈvɛrbunkoʃ], other spellings are Verbounko, Verbunko, Verbunkas, Werbunkos, Werbunkosch, Verbunkoche; sometimes known simply as the hongroise or ungarischer Tanz (Bellman 2001) is an 18th-century Hungarian dance and music genre.

The name is derived from the German word Werbung, a noun derived from the verb werben that means, in particular, "to recruit"; verbunkos—recruiter. The verbunkos is typically in a pair of sections, slow (lassú), with a characteristic dotted rhythm, and fast (friss), with virtuosic running-note passages. In some cases, this slow-fast pair alternates at greater length (Bellman 2001). This music and dance was played during military recruiting, organised by press gangs, which was a frequent event at these times when the Habsburg Emperors, who were also Kings of Hungary, were frequently at war. The character of the music, derives from the military march tempo.

Despite its name, the melodies originate from Hungarian folk and popular music and has been sometimes attributed to Gypsies, because the accompaniment was usually played by Gypsy musicians in characteristic Gypsy style (Bellman 2001; Head 2005, 89; Loya 2011, 17).

The Gypsy composer János Bihari (1764–1827) remains the most well-known composer and interpreter of verbunkos. Eighty-four compositions of his remain (Sisa 1990, 301). Bihari was an accomplished violinist during his lifetime, and he played in the court in Vienna during the entire Congress of Vienna in 1814. Another composer of verbunkos was József Kossovits (d. c. 1819).

In the second half of the 19th century verbunkos appeared in opera. However, already with the establishment in 1837 of the Hungarian National Theatre in Pest the verbunkos style had begun to change under the influence of the first director of the theatre and Hungary's most important operatic composer, Ferenc Erkel, whose most successful operas were Hunyadi László (1844) and Bánk bán (1861) (Sisa 1990, 301).

Béla Bartók's Contrasts (1938), a trio for clarinet, piano and violin, is in three movements, the first of which is named Verbunkos. His Violin Concerto No. 2 is also an example of verbunkos style.

Slovácko verbuňk

The Slovácko verbuňk is also an improvised folk dance in the South Moravia and Zlín districts of the Czech Republic, and was inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO (Anon. n.d.).

See also

Sources

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, February 26, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.