The Poles, members of this family, have had a great national existence, and their national music echoes its history and its character. The heartstirring strains of their mazurkas make many a bosom beat and ache as they remind the listeners of past times. Polish music is the voice of a light-minded, brave-hearted people who lived in a gay turmoil and drained with eager lips and reckless spirits the cup of glory and of joy. The Polish polkas and mazurkas, with their changing and fugitive rhythmus and their lively, uneven time, admirably embody the light and graceful spirit of this people.
In striking contrast to the character and music of the Slavic peoples are the character and music of the Hungarians. Living on the confines of the East and West, this people belong to the former by descent and to the latter by civilization. Between two elements, they have been exposed to the attacks of both, and their history records only a continual struggle for existence as a nation. This prolonged warfare has made nationality the uppermost thought in the life of the Hungarian: it is the influence controlling all his ideas, his feelings, his poetry and his art. His music embalms a thousand years of struggle for it, and every note of its wild, melancholy strains breathes tales of war and sorrow, of hope and triumph. The music interpreting such an intense nationality ought to be a peculiar one; and it is. A foreigner, having once heard it, can never mistake its sounds for those of any other national music.
But to understand the Magyar music you must apprehend the Magyar's character. He is a singular mixture of East and West, habitually passive and melancholy, yet easily roused to the wildest excitement. His step is slow, his face pensive, his manners imposing and dignified; yet when once roused he rushes forward with a furious impetuosity which his enemies have learned to estimate and dread. His eloquence is wonderful, and after success he throws aside his solemnity and gives himself up with wild abandon to the feast, the dance and the song. All this various character he has imparted to his national music: it is full of pathos and earnestness, yet often impetuous and even hilarious. The "Rákótzy" is so perfectly national that it thrills like a shout from the Hungarian heart, and it is no wonder that the Austrian government found it necessary to forbid it to be played on public occasions, and even to confiscate all printed copies of it. "When I hear the 'Rákótzy,'" said a famous Hungarian, "I feel as if I must arise and conquer the world." As my readers can easily procure a copy of it, it would be a kind of sacrilege to give so grand a march shorn of any of its noble proportions; and I can with far more justice give an example which embraces two of the most predominant traits of Hungarian songs—the Scotch catch introduced in the middle or end of the bar, instead of at the beginning as in Scotch music, and the beautiful modulations from the major to the minor key of the minor third—a change very unusual in any national music but the Hungarian:
HUNGARIAN AIR.
We cannot leave Hungarian music without noticing the fact that it has been greatly influenced by the gypsies of that country, by whom it is mainly cultivated as an art. In Hungary, indeed, there is no stately festival, no public rejoicing, no private merrymaking, without some gypsy band; and it would be impossible to find more sympathetic interpreters of its intense and passionate spirit. But if professional musicians, they are nomadic ones: they wander through all the towns and villages of Transylvania and Wallachia, and are everywhere welcome. In dance-music the life and impetuosity of their musical movements, their varying rhythms and the strange thrill of their wild dissonances are absolutely enthralling. Charles Boner, in his work on Transylvania, says that even the aged find it impossible to resist the dance when a gypsy band invites them to it. Their prelude is slow and sonorous, the music quickens, there is a rush of tones, the fantastic melody hastens on at a head-long pace—every one, old and young, is under its spell.
Many of the Hungarian gypsies are composers as well as performers. Pougrátz and Patikárus are names beloved wherever the "Czardas" is listened to; and where, in Hungary, is not the "Czardas" listened to? No one can play a "Czardas" like a gypsy, and he is often rewarded for it in the most exaggerated manner; for he soon has his audience so excited that they call for it again and again, and heap recompense on recompense, until, in their passionate delight, the last ducat, the last watch, ring, and even horse, has been bestowed. The gypsies of Hungary conclude all pieces ending in the minor key by substituting the major chord for the minor chord; for instance, a passage written thus,
they finish thus: