Meet the Hungarian folk music and its traditional instruments

The Hungarian folk music is an integral part of the culture of the Hungarians. The development of folk music has always been in parallel with the social and cultural development of the country, thus it is an essential part of the Hungarian identity.

The Hungarians always felt that folk music is a link with the past that they have to continue, preserve and enrich. It is the Asian heritage that has been the nourishing ground for the music, but the European attempts for musical development have also become the motives for the Hungarian folk music. Let’s get to know more about the Hungarian folk music, including its characteristics, the prominent figures in its collection and the typical Hungarian folk instruments.

What are your 1st thoughts when it comes to the Hungarian folk music ? Is it the theme song of the Magyar Népmesék (Hungarian Folktales)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6htgqDQtl9U

Or is it the traditional instruments that serve as the background music for social gatherings? In the followings, we are going to examine what folk music is for the Hungarians and what are its particularities.

As mek.oszk.hu reports, Béla Bartók defined folk music in the following way:

“Folk music is the sum of all those melodies which were used in some kind of a human community over a smaller or larger area for a certain length of time, as spontaneous expressions of musical instinct. To put it simply, folk music is composed of melodies which were sung by many people and for a long time.” (Népzenénk és a szomszéd népek zenéje [Our Folk Music and the Folk Music of the Neighbouring Peoples], p. 3, Budapest, 1952.)

What do we know about the origins of the Hungarian folk music?

We would suppose that because of the fact that the Hungarian language is a Finno-Ugric language, it might have some connections with the Finnish music, too. However, according to Ilmari Krohn, who dealt with the collection of Finnish folk songs, it is not possible to draw a parallel between the two nations’ folk music, because the Finnish music is diatonic and among its ancient melodies, there are only examples to pentachord.

In fact, it was two Hungarian composers who decided to carry out a thorough research about the roots of the music, as in the 19-20th century, people started to recognize the importance of the notation and the collection of folk songs. Although these songs existed before as well, but the number of recorded sources were trifling.

As doktar.hagyomanyokhaza.hu and kiszely.hu report, it was Béla Vikár who made a breakthrough in the collection of folk songs by revolutionsising it with the usage of the phonograph.

Therefore, Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, Hungarian composers, guided by Béla Vikár, started their journey to collect folk songs in the 20th century.

They realised that the melodies belonging to the Eastern cultural heritage appeared in the music collection of the Slovaks, the Croatians and the Romanians, too. Béla Bartók pointed out that the evidence he had gathered from around VI-VII AD proves that the ancestors of the yürük coming from Anatolia lived in the territories between Europe and Asia. Therefore, they lived close to the ancestors of the Hungarians living next to the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea at that time.

It is clear from this that those characteristics of the Hungarian folk music, that have no relations with the European or the neighbouring nations, have to be Eastern.

In 1982, Du Yaxiong, Chinese music researcher, carried out his research in the Chinese territory populated by Ujgur and Jugar nations. It was him who brought to light that the Jugar and the Hungarian folk songs have much in common: it is not only the pentatoic scale, but the descending melodic line, the quint changes and the recurring melodies that are also among the common characteristics.