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ABSTRACT
So-called ‘Gypsy music’—music associated with the Romani people—was perceived within European culture in two different ways: as able to be assimilated and as not able to be assimilated. The first involved the incorporation of Gypsy music into the construction of the national music of certain countries, becoming thus part and parcel of the national culture. The second occurred where discrimination against Roma included their ‘exoticization’ and ‘racialization’. The former, the national perspective, is discussed by Piotrowska in the case of Hungary. The process of constructing national identity in Hungary—stimulated by political aspirations to differentiate the country within the Habsburg Empire—took a radical form in the early nineteenth century, leading to the manufacture of national symbols such as folk costumes, cuisine and music. And it was Gypsy music that served an emblematic role in that context, due also to the success of Franz Liszt's 1859 book Des Bohemiens et de leur musique en Hongrie. At the same time, and later, however, Gypsy music was defined as music composed by Hungarians but merely adopted and played by Hungarian Romani musicians. This view was fervently propagated by, among others, Béla Bartók. The discrimination against Gypsy music included presenting it as something belonging to an ostracized, exoticized and racialized Other rather than welcomed one. The balance between the assimilationist and non-assimilationist perspectives on Gypsy music reveals the broader European phenomenon of a combination of fear and fascination with regard to Romani culture. Music by the Other is both admired and despised, longed for and rejected, but never viewed indifferently.
Notes
1 See Anna G. Piotrowska, Gypsy Music in European Culture: From the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries, trans. from the Polish (Boston: Northeastern University Press 2013).
2 The term ‘Roma’ refers here to Roma, Sinti, Kale and related groups in Europe, including persons who identify themselves as Gypsies.
3 Franz Liszt, Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (Paris: Libraire Nouvelle 1859).
4 See Bálint Sárosi, Gypsy Music, trans. from the Hungarian by Fred Macnicol (Budapest: Corvina Press 1978).
5 Roma were associated with such features as sensuality, wild emotionality, love of freedom and fierce independence, immoral, criminal, and even subhuman behaviour, as well as having ‘inborn’ and bountiful musical talent. See Maira Balacon, ‘Style Hongrois Features in Brahms's Hungarian Dances: A Musical Construction of a Fictionalized Gypsy “Other”’, PhD thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2005, iv.
6 Széchenyi, an influential Hungarian statesman, was politically engaged around 1825, publishing widely and advocating the economic, social and cultural development of his native homeland.
7 The international fame of the dish called ‘goulash’ reflects this process: ‘goulash’ was picked out, among other things, as characteristic of Hungarian culture.
8 Hector Berlioz, Correspondance générale, vol. 3 (September 1842–1850), ed. Pierre Citron (Paris: Flammarion 1978), no. 1029. Unless otherwise stated, translations into English are by the author.
9 Irén Kertész Wilkinson, ‘Gypsy music’, in Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, vol. 10 (London: Macmillan 2001), 613–20 (614).
10 Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann, Histoire des Bohémiens, ou Tableau des moeurs, usages, et coutumes de ce peuple nomade, trans. from the German by M. J. (Paris: Chez Joseph Chaumerot 1810), 111.
11 See Detlef Altenburg, ‘Liszts Idee eines ungarischen Nationalepos in Tönen’, Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 28, 1986, 213–23 (219).
12 The book was translated, for example, into Hungarian as A czigányokról és a czigány zenéről magyarországon by József Szekély (Pest 1861) and by Gabor Bencsik (Budapest: Magyar Mercurius 2004); into German as Die Zigeuner und ihre Musik in Ungarn by Peter Cornelius (Mainz: Schott's Sohne 1861) and by Lina Ramann (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel 1883); into English as The Gipsy in Music by Edwin Evans (London: William Reeves 1926); and into Italian as Gli Zigani by Miriam Donadoni Omodeo (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura 2006).
13 Béla Bartók, ‘Gypsy music or Hungarian music?’, Musical Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 2, 1947, 240–57 (240–1).
14 Patrick Williams, Les Tsiganes de Hongrie et leurs musiques (Paris: Cité de la Musique/ Arles: Actes Sud 1996).
15 Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, trans. from the German by Mary Whittall (Berkeley: University of California Press 1985), 83.
16 Richard Taruskin, ‘Nationalism’, in Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, vol. 17 (London: Macmillan 2001), 689–706 (699); James Parakilas, Ballads without Words: Chopin and the Tradition of the Instrumental Ballade (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press 1992).
17 Istvan Vali, a Hungarian pastor, was struck, while staying at the University of Leiden, by the fact that some of the students coming from the island of Malabar spoke a language similar to the one he had heard spoken by the Roma; see Angus Fraser, The Gypsies, 2nd edn (Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell 1995), 192–3.
18 Grellmann, Histoire des Bohémiens, 14.
19 The Greek islands—mistakenly described as ‘Little Egypt’—were in the fourteenth century one of the stops on the itinerary of the Roma, following their longer stay in Constantinople. Claims by Roma that they came from ‘Little Egypt’ also led to the false belief that they were the heirs of the Egyptian pharaohs. See Fraser, The Gypsies, 51–4.
20 Jonathan Bellman, ‘Toward a lexicon for the style hongrois’, Journal of Musicology, vol. 9, no. 2, 1991, 214–37 (218).
21 More than thirty musical stage works inspired by Hugo's novel had appeared by the end of the nineteenth century. See Arnaud Laster, ‘Victor Hugo’, in Joël-Marie Fauquet (ed.), Dictionnaire de la musique en france au XIXe siècle (Paris: Fayard 2003), 597–601 (600).
22 See Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, La Gitanilla, in Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Novelas Ejemplares (Garden City, NY: Colleccion Hispanica/Doubleday 1962), 23–90.
23 Meira Weinzweig, ‘Flamcenco fires: form as generated by the performer-audience relationship’, in Matt T. Salo (ed.), 100 Years of Gypsy Studies: Papers from the 10th Annual Meeting of the Gypsy Lore Society, North American Chapter, March 25–27, 1988 (Cheverly, MD: Gypsy Lore Society Publication 1990), 223–32 (226).
24 Alison Weber, ‘Pentimento: the parodic text of “La Gitanilla”’, Hispanic Review, vol. 62, no. 1, 1994, 59–75 (61).
25 Bernard Leblon, Gypsies and Flamenco: The Emergence of the Art of Flamenco in Andalusia, trans. from the French by Sinéad ní Shuinéar, 2nd edn (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, Gypsy Research Centre 2003), 33.
26 Quoted in Lech Mróz, Dzieje Cyganów-Romów w Rzeczypospolitej XV–XVIII w. (Warsaw: DiG 2001), 124.
27 Teodor Narbutt, Rys historyczny ludu cygańskiego (Vilnius: A. Marcinowskiego 1830), 78.
28 Teodor Narbutt, Rys historyczny ludu cygańskiego (Vilnius: A. Marcinowskiego 1830), 78.
29 Ignacy Daniłowicz, O Cyganach: wiadomość historyczna, czytana na posiedzeniu publicznem cesarskiego Uniwersytetu Wileńskiego, dnia 30 czerwca 1824 roku (Vilnius: A. Marcinowskiego 1824), 61.
30 Laure Adler, Życie codzienne w domach publicznych w latach 1830–1930, trans. from the French by Renata Wilgosiewicz-Skutecka (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Moderski i S-ka 1999), 52.
31 Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1995), 88.
32 Narbutt, Rys historyczny ludu cygańskiego, 121.
33 Camille Crittenden, Johann Strauss and Vienna. Operetta and the Politics of Popular Culture (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2000), 182.
34 Camille Crittenden, Johann Strauss and Vienna. Operetta and the Politics of Popular Culture (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 2000), 187.
35 Albert Thomas Sinclair, ‘Gypsy and Oriental music’, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 20, no. 76, 1907, 16–32 (20).
36 Albert Thomas Sinclair, ‘Gypsy and Oriental music’, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 20, no. 76, 1907, 18.
37 Albert Thomas Sinclair, ‘Gypsy and Oriental music’, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 20, no. 76, 1907, 23.
38 Albert Thomas Sinclair, ‘Gypsy and Oriental music’, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 20, no. 76, 1907, 22.
39 Albert Thomas Sinclair, ‘Gypsy and Oriental music’, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 20, no. 76, 1907, 19.
40 Albert Thomas Sinclair, ‘Gypsy and Oriental music’, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 20, no. 76, 1907, 21–2.
41 François-Joseph Fétis, Histoire générale de la musique depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu'à nos jours (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1869).
42 First published as an article by K. Freigedank [i.e. Wagner], ‘Das Judenthum in der Musik’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, no. 19, September 1850.
43 Liszt's daughter Cosima married Wagner in 1870.
44 Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, vol. 2 (London: Cassell 1937), 193.
45 Ben Arnold, ‘Liszt as reader, intellectual, and musician’, in Michael Saffle (ed.), Liszt and His World. Proceedings of the International Liszt Conference held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 20–23 May 1993 (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press 1998), 37–60 (37).
46 Even in 1859 it was obvious to many of Liszt's friends that Princess Caroline von Sayn-Wittgenstein (who would prepare the book's second edition, published Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel 1881) was responsible at least for the section on the ‘Israélites’; see Emile Haraszti, ‘Franz Liszt—author despite himself: the history of a mystification’, Musical Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 4, 1947, 490–516.
47 Apparently, at the end of the seventeenth century, Johannes Christopherus Wagenseil, for example, believed that Romanies were in fact of Jewish origin. See Tadeusz Pobożniak, Cyganie (Cracow: Polska Akademia Nauk 1972), 4.
48 See Alan Walker, Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years 1848–1861 (New York: Knopf 1989), 388.
49 See Richard Wagner, Wagner on Music and Drama, ed. Albert Goldman and Evert Sprinchorn, trans. from the German by H. Ashton Ellis (New York: E. P. Dutton 1964), 55.
50 Quoted in Walker, Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 389.
51 Carl Engel, ‘The music of the Gipsies (concluded)’, Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, vol. 21, no. 450, 1 August 1880, 389–91 (391).
52 Carl Engel, ‘The music of the Gipsies’, Musical Times and Singing Class Circular, vol. 21, no. 447, 1 May 1880, 219–22 (220).
53 Julie Brown, ‘Bartók, the Gypsies and hybridity in music’, in Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh (eds), Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music (Berkeley: University of California Press 2000), 119–42 (122).
54 Béla Bartók, Béla Bartók: Weg und Werk. Schriften und Briefe, ed. Bence Szabolcsi (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1972), 363–78.
55 Béla Bartók, ‘Cigányzene? Magyar zene?’, Ethnographia (Budapest), vol. 42, no. 2, 1931, 49–62. For the English translation, see Bartók, ‘Gypsy music or Hungarian music?’, 243.
56 Bartók, ‘Gypsy music or Hungarian music?’, 244.
57 Bartók, ‘Gypsy music or Hungarian music?’, Bartók began with the inaccurate dates, commented directly on the choice of material, and also raised the question of (in)appropriate piano accompaniment.
58 ‘The Bartók-Möller polemical interchange [1931–1932]’, in Benjamin Suchoff (ed.), Béla Bartók: Studies in Ethnomusicology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 1997), 142–57 (153–4).
59 Bela Bartók, ‘On Hungarian music’, in Benjamin Suchoff (ed.), Bela Bartók: Essays (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press 1992), 301–3 (301). Originally published as ‘A magyar zenéről’, Auróra (Budapest), vol. 1, no. 3, 1911, 126–8.
60 Bartók, ‘On Hungarian music’, 301.
61 Bartók, ‘Observations on Romanian folk music’, in Suchoff (ed.), Bela Bartók: Essays, 195–200 (198). Originally published as ‘Observări despre muzica poporală românească’, Convorbiri literare (Bucharest), vol. 48, no. 7/8, 1914, 703–9.
62 Bartók, ‘Hungarian folk music’, in Suchoff (ed.), Bela Bartók: Essays, 58–70 (70). Originally published as ‘La musique populaire hongroise’, La Revue musicale, no. 11, no. 1, 1921, 8–22.
63 Bartók, ‘Gypsy music or Hungarian music?’, 252 (‘performance of the Gypsies is lacking in uniform character’).
64 Judit Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest (Berkeley: University of California Press 1998), 60.
65 Henry Cart de Lafontaine, ‘Spanish music’, Proceedings of the Musical Association, vol. 34, no. 1, 1907, 25–45 (32).
66 Karol Szymanowski, Pisma, vol. 1: Pisma muzyczne (Cracow: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne 1984), 172.
67 Sinclair, ‘Gypsy and Oriental music’, 28.
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Anna G. Piotrowska
Anna G. Piotrowska studied musicology at Jagiellonian University in Cracow and at Durham University in England. Her research focuses mainly on the sociological and cultural aspects of musical life. She is the author of three books in Polish: Romantyczna wizja postaci Cygana w twórczości muzycznej XIX i pierwszej polowy XX wieku (The Romantic Vision of the Gypsy in the Music of the Nineteenth and the First Half of the Twentieth Century) (Musica Iagellonica 2012), Topos muzyki cygańskiej w kulturze europejskiej (Topos of Gypsy Music in European Culture) (Musica Iagellonica 2011) and Idea muzyki narodowej w ujęciu kompozytorów amerykańskich pierwszej polowy XX wieku (The Idea of National Music in the Works of American Composers of the Early Twentieth Century) (Adam Marszałek 2003). She has also published numerous articles in Polish, English, German, Slovak and Georgian. She is currently associated with the Department of Theory and Anthropology of Music at the Institute of Musicology, Jagiellonian University, Cracow. Email: [email protected].