The Gypsies have an extraordinary gift for music. They do not study it as an art, as we do, and cannot even read musical notes, but they imitate and memorize, and reach a high degree of skill in playing, particularly the violin. They have such great power of imitation, that they rapidly learn to play the instruments, and accustom themselves to the folk music they find wherever they wander. However, they always keep something of their own sadness and wildness. In Spain, they accompany themselves on the guitar, and mark the rhythm with castanets, as do the Spaniards themselves, borrowing the Spanish folk songs which they sing in their own way. In Russia, England, Turkey and everywhere they do the same with the folk music of those countries.
The special traits, then, of the music of the Gypsies, are found rather in the way they play, interpret and express the music of others, than as composers of their own music. Yet they use strongly marked rhythms, florid ornamentation, and scales that are Oriental, which show us from where they came. Here is one of their most used scales:
There are many kinds of scales among the Gypsies,—a mixture of the Oriental scale with the pentatonic, and with the European major and minor.
The Hungarian Gypsy has made more music than any other branch of the Gypsy people. In fact, when we hear music that makes us exclaim, “Oh, that is real Gypsy music!” it is almost always Hungarian. At least one quarter of the inhabitants of Hungary, a name which comes from the barbarian tribe of Huns, are Magyars, descendants of Tartars and Mongolians of Asia, who settled in the land of the Huns in the 9th century. In the national music of Hungary, we find it hard to tell just what is Magyar, and what is Gypsy, because the two have intermingled for so long.
The important thing is that this Magyar-Gypsy folk music has been the inspiration of hundreds of trained composers, like Haydn (see the Gypsy Rondo from his piano trio, also arranged for piano alone), Franz Liszt who wrote many famous Hungarian Rhapsodies, Hector Berlioz who made the Hungarian Rakoczy March famous, Johannes Brahms who used many folk songs in his compositions and wrote a set of Hungarian Dances. Even Bach, perhaps the greatest of all composers, seems to have been influenced by the Gypsy music as played on the Hungarian cembalo.
No Hungarian Gypsy orchestra is complete without a cembalo, which looks something like an old-fashioned square piano with the top off. This is strung with metal strings covering a range of four octaves, and is played with two small limber hammers. The cembalo players perform with great rapidity and agility; they are able to play scales, arpeggios, trills, and the tricks of Gypsy music with great skill and ease. It is not known just when this instrument came into use, but it is a descendant of the dulcimer and psaltery, instruments we hear of in the Bible, and in Arabia and Persia, probably brought into Europe during the Crusades.
The czardas (pronounced chardas) is an old Hungarian dance in which are all the national characteristics of this folk music, well marked in syncopated rhythms (rhythms out of focus, page [144], Chapter X), strong accents, many ornaments. The Gypsies dance the czardas every time they get a chance, for they love it. It has two contrasting parts, one is called lassan which is very slow and sad, and the other called friska which is very fast and fiery.
Panna Czinka, a Gypsy Queen, who lived in the 18th century was the daughter of the chief of a band of Gypsies and she inherited his title when she was very young. She married a ’cellist of her tribe and went all through Hungary, Poland and Roumania playing on a wonderful Amati violin, in a very wonderful way. She brought the Rakoczy March to the people, although it is not known whether or not she composed it. She always wore men’s clothes of most picturesque type and when she died she requested to have her beloved violin buried with her! Long after her death she was still an inspiration to young Gypsy fiddlers, who all longed to play as beautifully as Panna Czinka.