We have spoken at length of the gypsy music of the Hungarians brought to us by Brahms, Liszt and Sarasate (violinist and composer). We also told you that the Hungarians were Magyars. Adjoran Otvos, in the League of Composers Review says: “Bartók and Kodály have accomplished a pioneer work of quite a different nature, an exploration into the folk music of Hungary which has yielded a collection of historic significance, the most important and only authentic one made in that country.
“Bartók, poor and supported only by a scholarship, started in 1905, an investigation of the music of his race. Spending a week with a friend in the country, he heard a servant, while at work, singing a tune quite different from the hybrid (mixed breed) gypsy airs which pass for Magyar music, in Hungary and elsewhere. He contrived to conceal himself and day after day, while the servant worked, recorded a number of songs whose primitive character, he at once recognized. With this impetus, he embarked on a tour which lasted over two years, as long as his money held out. On his journeys among the peasants he met Kodály, out on a similar mission of research. Without previous inkling of each other’s aims, they proceeded together, recording the ancient songs of the Magyars in the compilation which is famous today.”
Ernest von Dohnányi
Ernest von Dohnányi (1877) a noted pianist and composer of Hungary has spent most of his life in Berlin and has toured Europe and America in piano recitals. He has written many works for orchestra, chamber music, piano and opera, all of which show more influence of Brahms than of men of his own land. He has been engaged as conductor of the State Symphony Orchestra of New York for the season 1925–26.
A twenty-eight year old pupil of Béla Bartók, Georg Kosa, shows decided gifts in his first orchestral work, Six Pieces for Orchestra.
Czech School
The Czech school founded by Smetana and Dvorak and Zdenko Fibich (1850–1900) and continued by Vitezslav Novak (1870), Josef Suk (1874), and Vaclar Stepan (1889), has had a rebirth in the 20th century. Leos Janacek, although over seventy, is the leading spirit; Rudolf Karel (1881), a pupil of Dvorak, Bohuslav Martinu, a follower of Stravinsky, and Ernest Krenek (1902), a pupil of Schreker, and Alois Haba (1893), pupil of Novak and Schreker are the working forces. (Janacek died in 1928.)
The Quarter-Tone Man
Alois Haba first wrote chamber music, then he tried some interesting experiments for which he is known as the “quarter-tone man.” We have heard of quarter-tones among the Hindus and Arabs (Chapter VI) and as the human ear has become more educated, the possibility of dividing the scale into quarter-tones is much discussed, and seems to be the next step in developing music along the line of overtones (see above). Did you ever realize that as with eyes that are far-sighted or near-sighted, ears may vary too, in the amount they hear? Most people think that every one hears alike, but this is not so. Stravinsky was one day sitting with a friend on the shore of a Swiss Lake near which he lived. The friend said the water was calm and still, but Stravinsky heard, a definite musical sound! Many of these musical sounds unheard by our ears he has shown us in his music. In the same way it is said that Haba has an extraordinarily keen ear and in trying to express what he hears, he has written two string quartets in the quarter-tone system. Stringed instruments are not in tempered scales and lend themselves to any division of the interval, into third-tones, as Busoni tried, and quarter-tones as Haba has written. But he has gone further and has made a piano on which quarter-tones may be played. This may prove to be the basis of music of the future, or it may be merely one of the numerous experiments without lasting value.
