Performing socialist Hungary in China: ‘modern, Magyar, European’

Abstract

This paper reconstructs the ways in which the Hungarian People’s Army Performing Arts Ensemble arranged its repertoire to perform socialist Hungary in the autumn of 1956, during the Ensemble’s tour in the People’s Republic of China. The paper performs a close reading of a single archival document, the program of the Ensemble’s début performance before non-European socialist audiences that took place in Shenyang on September 21, 1956. The repertoire featured a simple chronological, quasi-historical overview of musical and dance traditions from Hungary. It offered a vague, highly stylized set of references to Hungary’s military traditions. It attempted to realize the triple formula of a new, ‘modern, Magyar, European,’ art form, and foregrounded a plebian (‘peasant-‘) progressive-patriotic theme with hints of ethnic nationalism. The program provided the absolute minimum of the standard Stalinist fare, resolutely avoided any reference to the USSR or Russia, and, most fascinating, closed with a self-ironical dance piece featuring a powerful allegorical story of socialism with a ‘Hungarian face,’ something that represented a resolute break with the Stalinist aesthetic canon and reinforced the group’s political commitment to a socialism that is ‘modern, Magyar and European.’

Keywords:

• China
• close reading
• Europe
• Hungary
• modernity
• performing arts
• repertoire
• Stalinism

Notes

¹ ‘A honvédség központi müvészegyüttesének /ének-,tánc-és zeneegyüttes:/ kérdése,’ N.d. Military History Institute, Military History Archive, Budapest, 272–7.

² Emphasis added.

³ The ‘népi-urbánus’ opposition is arguably the most consequential political, social-historical, and aesthetic divide splitting Hungarian cultural and intellectual life at least since the interwar years. See, for example, Mihály Szegedy-Maszák, ‘Szellemi élet. A polgári társadalom korának művelődése II. (1920–1948),’ chapter 9 (428–59) in László Kósa, Magyar művelődéstörténet (Budapest: Osiris, 1998), especially 439–41. On its contemporary reverberations, see Éva Kovács, ‘A nemzet einstandolása? Töprengések egy történészvita közben,’ CAFÉ BÁBEL 20 (2013): 35–44.

⁴ E.g. the dance troupe had to drop a very ambitious piece, developed specifically for this tour, from its repertoire simply because it would have produced too much of a logistical burden due to its costume design. See Cs. Gy [Csizmadia, György], ‘A kínai út előtt. Beszélgetés Böröcz Józseffel,’ Táncművészet VI, no. 9 (September 1956): 390–1 (390).

⁵ Ibid., 390.

⁶ Ibid., 390.

⁷ György Csizmadia, ‘ÚTRA KÉSZEN ...,’ Szabad Nép, 31 August 1956: 4.

⁸ Sándor Asztalos, ‘A kínaiak szemével és fülével,’ Magyar Nemzet, 24 August 1956.

⁹ http://honismeret.hu/?modul=oldal&tartalom=1220168 (accessed 9 June 2015). To understand the symbolic power of the museum steps and the poem, it is important to remember that the ‘National Song’ is a standard, required part of elementary school curricula in Hungary, memorised by all students in their pre-teens. The opening line of the poem’s refrain – ‘On your feet now, Hungary calls you!’ – is widely paraphrased in everyday speech. Arguably, ‘National Song’ is the single most widely known poem in Magyar. See also Lajos Rácz, ‘Adalékok a magyar-kínai katinadiplomáciai kapcsolatok történetéhez,’ Hadtudomány (2010): 1–21.

¹⁰ The other venue was Károlyi Kert, a public park in downtown Budapest, a historically less symbolic, but no less central, outdoor location. The two performances attracted at least 15,000 spectators. See, e.g. Éva Bieliczkyné Buzás, Nemzeti dal – bemutató. http://fonix-sarok.hu/nemzeti-dal-bemutato/ (accessed 28 November 2017).

¹¹ Ortutay’s diary commemorates the event this way: ‘By the way, the entire city is abuzz [with the news] that I will be the secretary general, or the executive vice president [of the National People’s Front]. When I gave the speech in front of 5000 people on the steps of the National Museum, before the Petőfi-Kodály choir piece, the National People’s Front sent me a car, and the driver already asked me to choose him [as my personal driver].’ Gyula Ortutay, Napló 2. 1955–1966 (Budapest: Alexandra, 2009), 120.

¹² (rajki), ‘ITT AZ IDŐ, MOST VAGY SOHA!,’ Népszava, 7 September 1956.

¹³ I have not been able to locate an online video recording of the People’s Army Men’s Choir’s performance of Kodály’s ‘National Song.’ To give a sense of the music, the following link connects to a recent performance by another men’s choir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XL0Yyl-a5 g (accessed 9 June 2015).

¹⁴ István Péterfi, ‘NEMZETI DAL. Kodály Zoltán új művének bemutatása,’ Szabad Nép, 8 September 1956: 4.

¹⁵ Ibid.

¹⁶ ‘On your feet now’ is the first line of the refrain of the poem – the way in which popular conversation tended to refer to it. Kodály paraphrases another widely known line of the same poem, ‘National Song.’ The brilliance of the use of the 1848 revolutionary poem in the pre-revolutionary moment of September 1956 re-inscribes the references to the national ‘shame and dirt’ in the post-war, post-Holocaust, post-genocide context. Archive of the Army Ensemble.

¹⁹ This is how the article is signed. The author could not be identified. Emphasis in the original. (rajki), ‘ITT AZ IDŐ ...’.

²¹ Csizmadia, ‘ÚTRA KÉSZEN ...,’ 4. Emphasis in the original. Csizmadia, ‘ÚTRA KÉSZEN ...,’ 4.

²³ Mr Mészáros contributed this sheet to the Ensemble’s archives in conjunction with the preparations for the 50-year commemoration of the tour in 2006; I received it from the archive soon thereafter. This is a doubly invaluable document. Not only is it the only programme among the 104 performances I have found; it is the programme of the Ensemble’s first performance, ergo it can be seen as the clearest reflection of the ways the Ensemble’s artists envisioned, the ways in which they would perform Hungary to Chinese audiences before they had any chance to adjust their programmes based on audience feedback.

²⁴ I have not been able to find videos of the remaining five items.

²⁵ It is likely that it was written music that soon became popularised for its patriotic meanings. Apocryphal arguments suggest that it may have been ‘written music’ – but it is clear that it spread folklorically by the early nineteenth century. http://mek.oszk.hu/02100/02115/html/4-836.html (accessed 10 June 2015).

²⁶ Ferenc Erkel’s musical score was submitted to an 1844 competition to set to music to Ferenc Kölcsey’s 1823 poem, ‘Hymnus.’

²⁷ Lóránt Péteri, ‘Kodály és az államszocializmus művelődéspolitikája (1948–1967),’ Forrás (2007): 45–63, especially 50. See also Miklós Hadas, ‘A nemzet prófétája. Kísérlet Kodály Zoltán pályájának szociológiai értelmezésére,’ Szociológia 4 (1984): 469–90, and József Révai, Marxizmus, népiesség, magyarság (Budapest: Szikra, 1949).

²⁸ Ervin Havas, ‘Az első napok a Kínai Népköztársaságban,’ Néphadsereg, October 1956, n.d., 8.

²⁹ It starts with a piece that indexes the 1703–11 uprising via Berlioz’ 1846 elaboration, then we move on to Erkel’s nineteenth-century opera, then it moves on to another nineteenth-century piece, to Liszt’s late nineteenth century, late-romantic nationhood, to Kodály’s mid-twentieth-century interpretation of the mid-nineteenth-century iconic romantic-nationalist poem ‘National Song,’ and so on.

³⁰ Gy. Cs., ‘A kínai út előtt ...,’ 391.

³¹ Ibid.

³² For instance, Bartók conducted years of extensive fieldwork in Romanian folk music, he learnt Romanian, was a widely recognised contributor to the scholarly study of Romanian folk music, and composed a number of works based on Romanian folk melodies. See, e.g. Tiberu Alexandru, ‘Bartók Béla és a román népzene,’ Korunk 8 (1970): 1164–7; Ágnes Herczku, ‘A folklore ereje. Bartók szemével látni és láttatni,’ Előadás a Charta XXI Megbékélési Mozgalom által szervezett ‘Egymás szemében – Közép-Európai Identitások’ című konferencián (Brussels: European Parliament), 27 November 2013. http://www.hagyomanyokhaza.hu/page/11403/ (accessed 11 June 2015).

³³ Vitézi Ének Alapítvány, Honvéd Táncszínház (1948–2007) [The Army Dance Theatre, 1948–2007] (Budapest: Vitézi Ének, n.d.). Alapítvány. http://www.folkarchivum.hu/archivum/htsz/dok/A_Honved_Tancszinhaz_rovid_tortenete.pdf (accessed 6 June 2015).

³⁴ ‘A honvédség központi ...’.

³⁵ See, for instance, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQCAKgOwGNw (accessed 10 June 2015).

³⁶ Notice also the absence of both the Hungarian and the Chinese national anthems.

³⁷ Oral-history interview with László Seregi, conducted by the author.

³⁸ Ibid.

³⁹ Miklós Rábai, ‘A Magyar Néphadsereg Művészegyüttesének bemutatójához,’ Szabad Hazánkért (April 1956): 22–3 (23).

⁴⁰ Oral-history interview with László Seregi, conducted by the author.

⁴¹ Anecdote related by Tibor Vadasi, who would become art director of the Ensemble’s dance troupe after 1957. Vitézi Ének, A Honvéd Táncszínház.

⁴² That one-to-one, allegorical reading is of course reinforced by the title of the piece where the ‘camp’ can be read as both the army camp depicted in the piece, and as a pun on the ‘socialist/peace camp,’ a centrepiece of geopolitical rhetoric in Eastern and East-Central Europe at the time.

⁴³ József Maklári, ‘ÁTÜTŐ MAGYAR SIKER – MUKDENBEN,’ Népszava, 9 October 1956. (Mukden is an older name of the town called, since the end of World War II, Shenyang. It is unclear why Maklári refers to it by its colonial name.

⁴⁴ Unfortunately this source contains no bibliographic reference.

⁴⁵ Review of the Ensemble’s performances in Shenyang. For the Hungarian translation, see Figure 2.

⁴⁶ See, e.g. Rácz, ‘Adalékok a magyar-kínai katinadiplomáciai kapcsolatok történetéhez,’ quoting Gábor Mészöly, 50 év (Budapest: Zrínyi, 1999), 24; A Honvéd Táncszínház (1948–2007), 4, http://www.folkarchivum.hu/archivum/htsz/tortenet.php (accessed 22 November 2017); Kánya Andrea, ‘Mikor felléptünk, szinte a csillárról is lógtak az emberek,’ Honvédelem, 12 October 2009, http://www.honvedelem.hu/cikk/16792 (accessed 22 November 2017), as well as about a dozen oral-history interviews conducted with members of the Ensemble who were on the tour between 2006 and 2015, as part of this research.