Music of Hungary

[3] Instruments traditionally used in Hungarian folk music include the citera, cimbalom, cobza, doromb, duda, kanászkürt, tárogató, tambura, tekero and ütőgardon.

Bartók collected folk songs from across Central and Eastern Europe, including Croatia, Czechia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Serbia, whilst Kodály was more interested in uncovering a distinctively Hungarian musical style.

[7] Musical life in the areas controlled by the Ottoman Turks declined precipitously, with even the formerly widespread and entrenched plainsong style disappearing by the end of the 17th century.

Outside of the Ottoman area, however, plainsong flourished after the establishment of Protestant missions in around 1540, while a similarly styled form of folk song called verse chronicles also arose.

Modern Hungarian folk music began its history with the Habsburg Empire in the 18th century, when central European influences became paramount, including a "regular metric structure for dancing and marching instead of the free speech rhythms of the old style.

[15] The ethnic Csángó Hungarians of Moldavia's Seret Valley have moved in large numbers to Budapest, and become a staple of the local folk scene with their distinctive instrumentation using flutes, fiddles, drums and the lute.

[3] The rhythmic patterns and embellishments of the verbunkos are distinctively Hungarian in nature, and draw heavily upon the folk music composed in the early part of the century by Antal Csermak, Ferdinand Kauer, Janos Lavotta and others.

[11] Verbunkos was originally played at recruitment ceremonies to convince young men to join the army, and was performed, as in so much of Hungarian music, by Roma bands.

Characteristics of verbunkos include the bokázó (clicking of heels) cadence-pattern, the use of the interval of the augmented second, garlands of triplets, widely arched, free melodies without words, and alternately swift and slow tempi.

[16] Bihari and others after his death helped invent nóta, a popular form written by composers like Lóránd Fráter, Árpád Balázs, Pista Dankó, Béni Egressy, Márk Rózsavölgyi and Imre Farkas.

[18] The Serbian region of Vojvodina is home to a large Hungarian minority Transylvanian folk music remains vital part of life in modern Transylvania.

The instrumentation of these bands, based on Transylvanian and sometimes the southern Slovak Hungarian communities, included a fiddle on lead with violin, a kontra (a 3-string viola also called a brácsa), and bowed double bass, and sometimes a cimbalom as well.

Famous instrumentalists include fiddlers Csaba Ökrös and Balázs Vizeli, cimbalomist Kálmán Balogh, violinist Félix Lajkó (from Subotica in Serbia) and multi-instrumentalist Mihály Dresch.

[3] Hungary's most important contribution to the worldwide field of European classical music is probably Franz Liszt,[15] a renowned pianist in his own time and a well-regarded composer of 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies and a number of symphonic poems such as Les préludes.

Along with Liszt and his French Romantic tendencies, Ferenc Erkel's Italian and French-style operas, with Hungarian words, and Mihály Mosonyi's German classical style, helped set the stage for future music, and their influence is "unsurpassed even by their successors, because in addition to their individual abilities they bring about an unprecedented artistic intensification of the Romantic musical idiom, which is practically consumed by this extreme passion".

A number of violinists from Hungary have also achieved international renown, especially Joseph Joachim, Tivadar Nachéz, Jenő Hubay, Edward Reményi, Sándor Végh, Franz von Vecsey, Ede Zathureczky, Emil Telmányi, Tibor Varga and Leopold Auer.

[3] Pozsony produced the first music drama experiments in the country, though the work of Gáspár Pacha and József Chudy; it was the latter's 1793 Prince Pikkó and Jutka Perzsi that is generally considered the first opera in a distinctively Hungarian style.

Though these operas used foreign styles, the "idyllic, lyric and heroic" parts of the story were always based on verbunkos, which was becoming a symbol of the Hungarian nation during this time.

[17] At the end of the 19th century, Hungarian music was dominated by compositions in the German classical style, while Viennese-style operettas gained immensely in popularity.

Starting in about 1947, a revival in folk choir music began, ended as an honest force by 1950, when state-run art became dominant with the rise of Communism.

Music was uniformly festive and optimistic, with every deviation arousing suspicion; this simplicity led to a lack of popular support from the public, who did not identify with the sterile approved styles.

[11] Miklós Rózsa, who studied in Germany and eventually settled in the United States, achieved international recognition for his Hollywood film scores as well as his concert music.

[26][27] As the communist system was falling apart, the Hungarian Record Company (MHV) was privatized and smaller independent labels such as Bahia and Human Telex were formed.

The workings of the scene culminated in events like Budapest Parade, the largest such street festival in Hungary, that was held yearly from 2000 to 2006, attracting more than half million visitors.

Anima Sound System, one of the most influential bands on the scene, was created in 1993 playing dub and trip-hop influenced by acid jazz and ethnic music.

Neo has won a worldwide reputation for their unique electro-pop style and the "Mozart of pop music" award (Cannes, 2004) they received for their soundtrack album called "Control".

Mainstream hip hop is dominated by the pioneer of Gangsta rap in Hungary, Ganxsta Zolee, and there are also other famous ones including FankaDeli, Sub Bass Monster, Dope Man, and LL Junior.

As lyrical innovators and phenomenal parodists, they gained wide popularity for an extremely explicit criticism of Budapest public transport company BKV, as well as hilarious wordplays and self-irony.

Other important, active bands: Hold X True, Fallenintoashes, Embers, Suicide Pride, Subscribe, Road, Shell Beach, Hatred Solution, Blind Myself, Superbutt, Stillborn (Hatebreed tribute).

The city is home to an annual folk festival called Táncháztalálkozó ("Meeting of the Táncházak", literally "dance houses"), which is a major part of the modern music scene.