Hungarian Rhapsodies

Composer: LISZT, Franz
  • Liszt was inspired to compose his Hungarian Rhapsodies after visiting a Roma (“gyspy”) encampment in Hungary and hearing performances by Roma bands.1

“The first violin spins out all the twists of fancy and moods of the virtuoso, whose technique often in no way resembles ours. The cimbalomist must follow this course, provide a rhythm for it, set off the accelerations and ritards, the strength or slackening of the beat. With the dexterity of a juggler, he races the little wooden mallets across the brass and steel strings, which in this primitive design take the place of the complicated piano mechanism we set in motion by means of ivory, mother-of-pearl, and tortoiseshell keys.”

“The cimbalom player, like the first violinist, has the right to develop certain passages and to improvise endless variations at his pleasure … He forces the other to surround, assist, yes, even to follow him blindly, whether he fancies a funeral hymn or a mad lively song.”

Liszt on Roma orchestras, from Des Bohémiens e de leur musique en Hongrie (1859)2
  • Liszt called the first iteration of his Hungarian rhapsodies material “Magyar dallok” (Hungarian National Melodies). The rhapsodies contain Roma melodies, some Hungarian (Magyar) folk tunes he hear Roma musicians play, and also some quotations of popular contemporary melodies which Liszt probably mistook for folk music when he heard the Roma bands perform and improvise upon them.3
  • Liszt composed 19 Hungarian rhapsodies for piano, and arranged a number of them for orchestra. The numbering of the orchestral set does not correspond to the numbering of the piano versions, and some were transposed.4

Sources

  1. Maria Eckhardt, Rena Charnin Mueller, and Alan Walker, “Liszt, Franz,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed November 7, 2019, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000048265.
  2. Josiah Fisk and Jeff William Nichols, ed., Composers on Music: Eight Centuries of Writings(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997), 110.
  3. Maria Eckhardt, Rena Charnin Mueller, and Alan Walker, “Liszt, Franz,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed November 7, 2019, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000048265.
  4. Maria Eckhardt, Rena Charnin Mueller, and Alan Walker, “Liszt, Franz,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed November 7, 2019, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000048265.

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