Liszt, unquestionably the greatest son which this Hungary has yet produced, has paid a tribute to that race, the gypsies, apparently the weakest of all earth’s people, which with conscientious fidelity tells the story of what they really are and what he himself owes to them. The description of his Hungarian fatherland, of his beloved countrymen, and then of the manner of life and ideas of those restless wanderers, their mysterious origin and still more mysterious endurance as a people, the mystery of their moral duration, if one may so call it, in all their outward change and constant privation, the atmosphere of poetry, or of the actual world-spirit, as one might say, which surrounds them, as it does all the simple products of nature—all this one must read in the volume, “The Gypsies and their Music in Hungary.” For tender love, delicate observation, faithful portraiture, deep intellectual perception, ethical criticism and genuine poetico-ideal clearness, one can find no parallel to the manner in which he has described for us this apparently God and world-forsaken people, maintaining their right to exist. It is a beautiful heart and soul-tribute which the great artist has paid them.
One part of this volume, his visit to the gypsies, confirms in every particular what we have said above of the influence of their art upon him, and of the divine, free inspiration and untrammeled genius of music as the direct outcome of the primitive force of the world itself. We shall let our volume tell the story. It is a variegated picture, and as Salvator Rosa among the robbers is once said to have studied the absolute unrestraint and individuality of their natural life, and the consequent incomparable variety of character and characteristics of landscape, figures, groups, costumes, colors and forms, so we shall find in this highly colored picture at least one of the numerous germs and shoots which, in Liszt, developed into such a strong and vigorous tree. From these genuine children of nature he acquired at least the one indispensable element of all art-creation, a complete freedom and absolute consecration of the entire nature to it.
Liszt relates that on his first return to Hungary, in the summer of 1838, he wished to refresh his youthful recollections with some of their liveliest impressions, and to see again these gypsy bands in the woods and fields, in the picturesque promiscuity of their marches and halting-places, with all the contrast of the union of ages, passions and varying moods, free from any conventional gloss or mask, rather than in the stifled city streets, whose dust they gladly shake off, preferring to wound their feet with the thorns and stubble of the heath than with the rough pavements. “I visited them in their outdoor kingdom, slept with them under the open heavens, played with the children, made presents to the maidens, gossiped with their rulers and chiefs, listened at concerts given to gratuitous audiences, by a hearth-fire whose place chance determined.” Salvator Rosa among the robbers! Thereupon follows a description which strikingly contrasts the extreme naturalness of these wandering hordes with the splendor of cities, particularly of the world-ruling Paris, and with the education and polish of the child of the salon, who was nevertheless an artist, and who could say of himself: “Afterwards I became myself a wandering virtuoso in my fatherland, like them. I was, like them, a stranger to the people. Like them, I pursued my ideal in a complete devotion to art if not to nature.”
Stretched out upon the close, crisp fleeces of their lamb skin mantles, out of which they prepare a couch of honor resting upon freshly plucked and fragrant flowers, before it a row of lofty ash trees, whose wide-spread branches seemed to support the blue sky, stretched out like a broad pavilion and ornamented with curtains of vapory clouds, at his feet a mossy turf, sprinkled with the brightest meadow-flowers, like those tapestries of the Mexican Caciques, he spent hours listening to one of the best of the gypsy orchestras, whose playing was animated by the beauty of the summer day and the abundance of its favorite drink, and accompanied with indescribable ardor the dances of their women, who shook their tamborines with gentle cries and fascinating gestures. During the intervals of rest, so he says, he heard the creaking of the poorly greased axles of their wagons, which had been removed to one side to leave more room for the dancers and the huzzas of the boys in their own jargon, which the musicians politely translated into “Elyen Liszt Ferencz” or “hurrah for Franz Liszt.” Then came shouts of delight at sight of a meal, composed of meat and honey, a noisy cracking of nuts by white-toothed children, and bright laughter, mad leaps, somersaults and a wild whirl and bustle—a genuine lyric of untamed nature and caprice. Actual battles were fought over favorite delicacies, such as some sacks of peas, around which tattered Megaras with disheveled hair, bleared eyes, toothless jaws, hands trembling like aspen leaves, danced incredible sarabands for these gifts which promised to satisfy their greediness. The men to whom he had given beautiful horses, laughingly showed their dazzling teeth and cracked their finger-joints like castanets, threw their caps high in air, strutted about like peacocks and then commenced the fiery rhythms of their dances with a vigor which soon became a frenzy and at last reached that delirious whirl which forms the culminating point of the ecstacy of the dervish dances. Truly a tempting bit for the brush of a genuine Netherlander, but can any one paint their music as well? We shall see, but we will first continue the narrative which leads us to the very verge of this singular, unrestrained and apparently purposeless nomadic existence.
He conversed for a long time with the old men of the tribe and besought them to tell him some of their experiences from their own recalling. Their memory, however, did not extend beyond the limits of the living generation and he was obliged to help them in recalling the course of events so that they could keep them in regular order. Once they have secured the thread of a story, so this close observer informs us, they experience extraordinary pleasure and seem to regain, in all their original freshness, feelings which have been long concealed under later impressions. The less frequently this occurs, however, the greater is the delight with which they again sound the strains of the old time and with growing enthusiasm, often with a bizarre kind of poetry, and with imagery tinted with a constantly increasing oriental glow, they describe the scenes which they have drawn from their recollections.
The description itself was only the expression of momentary and accidental passion, not of a well considered purpose or regularly developed plan, hence these impetuous, unrestrained, unsubdued impulses make dissimulation unnecessary. The originality of the occurrence consists chiefly in the more or less energetic or fanciful passion of the hero who accompanies it with impromptu accessories. The remarkable simplicity of these natural relations prevents that sequence of events, that change of circumstances, that development of the emotions like germinating seeds, which in their maturity are turning points in our destiny. Too quick, prompt and self-willed for patience or perseverance, they as quickly seize what they desire; they take swift revenge for any assault; sometimes, like a wounded animal, they bear away the shaft that has pierced them and to conceal their wounds forsake their tribe. Our narrator further mentions that they observe a haughty and timid silence, a feeling of manly shame, as it were, about their own feelings, and speaking of their companions they only allude to the dead or the faithless, and a word, a nod of the head or a gesture suffices for all they have to say. Thus Liszt could obtain only individual adventures in love-intrigues, strife and crafty tricks, and in these the most important thing, namely, the part played by the principal himself and the controlling passion at work, were persistently and regularly concealed, and yet in spite of all the craftiness which the necessity of procuring alms has taught them they manifest a very poetical sense in picturing the scenes of which they were witnesses, so much so indeed, that the little narratives “can be strung upon the same thread, like pearls of the same color.”
The picture becomes gayer and more animated when he returns to his friends the second time. It was on those same plains of the Oedenburg county where he was born. He had not forgotten his old hosts and they still thought well of him also, for when he left the plain old church, after the mass, where he had prayed so fervently as a child, in which all his neighbors had loudly sung in honor of this same boy, who, the good dames of the village prophesied, would come back in “a carriage of glass,” that is, in a glistening equipage, a great crowd of gypsies swarmed about him and received him with every manifestation of joy and delight, prepared to do him honor.
Their orchestra was soon ready in a neighboring oak-grove. Barrels placed on end and covered with boards formed a table and around it “Roman couches” were made of stacks of hay, one of them a genuine throne of thyme, butterfly-shaped flowers, flax blooms in elegant half-mourning, anemones in white tunics, wild mallows, cornflowers, irises, and golden bells, a “flowery mound fit to offer to Titania.” Nightshades, with their broad, shield-shaped leaves spread a colossal fan about the rural festival. And then follows a description of nature, the counterpart of which may be found in music: “Bees, attracted by the fragrance of the fresh hay, forsook their hives in the neighboring tree-trunks by swarms. Crickets chirped in the rye and wheat fields. Hornets and wasps buzzed their contralto. The dragon-flies came in flights with a whirr like the rustling of taffeta robes. The quails and larks sang. The frightened sparrows called out. The little emerald frogs croaked among the rushes of the brook and a whole swarm of shelterless insects flew about us with the most confused sounds. What polyphony! What ethereal music! What smorzandos on organ points! All this must have floated before Berlioz when he composed the ‘Dance of the Sylphs.’” But, say we, such a picture of the surprisingly varied activity of creative nature must have filled the daring and at all times active fancy of the same artist who quickly makes the living human heart, with all its foolish pride and restless longings, realize “the pain and pangs of almighty nature,” as he terms it, with an effect as wonderfully vivid as only a Salvator Rosa or a Ruysdael could paint it. Farther on we have a genuine Inferno in mere word-pictures.
“Night came before they were weary. To light up the darkness a dozen pitch torches blazed in a circle. The flames arose like cylinders of glowing iron, for not a breath stirred the atmosphere laden with heat and the fragrance of invisible aromatic herbs that had been mowed down in the morning. To our half-closed dreamy eyes the torches appeared like columns supporting the dark canopy of the heavens. The smoke wavered in the air, now concealing and anon revealing the golden stars. The darkness was like a solid wall around a fantastic wood palace, while the gnarled tree-trunks with their curiously twisted branches stood out like statuary. The children leaped about like gnomes and stripped the bushes. The scene constantly grew more strange and fantastic. The women appeared like specters when they suddenly emerged from some dark corner with eyes gleaming like coals and with magical beckoning hands to tell us our ‘good fortune.’ That evening the phrase was not a meaningless one.” As a happy close, one of those humorous scenes occurred which are never wanting among the children of simple nature.
“On the next morning, the men would not hear of an immediate separation, and gave us their company as protectors, some on horseback, some running on foot, to the nearest village. The closeness of the day before was followed by a rain storm but they refreshed themselves with parting drinks and glowed with delight, rejoicing in the fitful rushes of the rain. In their turned lamb’s skins they looked like bears on raging steeds, for they spurred their horses so furiously that they leaped about like carps. The abandon of these people, could scarcely be kept within bounds any longer. They reached a tavern not far off, and here this extraordinary carnival came to an end with a morning serenade under a huge shed, and pretending that it did not rain, the symphony began with an animated flourish, con estro poetico, but the circulating morning’s wine and the liquor of the day before infused them with fresh vigor and soon led to a rinforzado con rabbia. The thunder growled in the distance like a continuous bass. The high beams and the half-fallen walls of the shed gave back such an echo that every sound struck upon the ear with redoubled power. Passionate passages and feats of virtuosity followed each other and were confusedly mixed. This musical morning roar was rent into tatters of tones, and in the stormy finale it seemed as if all the sounds were piled upon each other like a mountain ridge. One could hardly tell whether the old building had not tumbled in, so deafening was the instrumentation of this concert, which certainly would not have received a favorable verdict from any conservatory, and which I myself must declare was somewhat daring.” With this spirited description, this vigorous picture of life closes.