The verbunkos is typically in a pair of sections, slow (lassú), with a characteristic dotted rhythm, and fast (friss), with virtuosic running-note passages.
This music and dance was played during military recruiting before the Habsburg emperors, who were also kings of Hungary, introduced conscription in 1849.
A group of a dozen hussars performed the dance in different parts, with the leading sergeant opening with slow movements, then the lower officers joining for more energetic parts, and the youngest soldiers concluding the dance with jumps and spur-clicking.
Béla Bartók's Contrasts (1938), a trio for clarinet, piano and violin, is in three movements, the first of which is named Verbunkos.
[citation needed] The Slovácko verbuňk is also an improvised folk dance in the South Moravia and Zlín districts of the Czech Republic, and was inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity of UNESCO.