"It was only Italy where books flourished in the past, and now Pannónia is also sending her beautiful songs"
(Janus Pannonius)1
Was there such a thing as the Hungarian violin? Can we talk about the history of the Hungarian violin? Did violins, just like books, reach Pannónia, and if they did, who shaped them in Hungary and how did they look like? Did Hun
garian violin making have masters who helped the national art of violin mak
ing and the teachers of Hungarian violin making and the teachers of Hungarian, violin by making w orthy pieces of art? Because it would certainly not occur to anyone to deny that both our violin virtuosos, and our teachers indeed achieved w orld fame at epoches. The names of József Bőhm, Miksa Hauser, Ede Remé
nyi, Károly Huber, József Joachim, Lipót Auer, Jenő Hubay, József Bloch, Kár
oly Flesch, Ferenc Vecsey, Ede Zathureczky2 are also known beyond Hungary's borders. Beside them, the violin playing by Panna Cinka, János Bihari, Károly Boka, Ferkó Patikárius, Károly Fátyol, Ferenc Bunkó, Ferenc Sárközi, Béla Radics, and Imre Magyari3 was also famous in many a distant land. Should we then suppose that all of this did not have any effect on Hungarian vio lin making? Is it conceivable that a worthy generation of Hungarian violin makers was not born or did not evolve under the masters of Hungarian violin playing? I don't think it is conceivable that such a thing would be considered as tenable. In
1 Janus Pannonius (1434-1472) The passage comes from page 175 of the book selected and edited by Tibor Kardos, entitled "The Poems of Janus Pannonius". Hungarian transla
tion by Anzelm Károly Berczeli (Budapest 1978).
2
József Böhm, violin virtuoso and educator (1795-1876), Miksa Hauser violin virtuoso (1822-1887), Ede Reményi (Hoffman), violin virtuoso (1828-1898), Károly Huber, violin vir
tuoso, composer and educator (1828-1898), József Joachim violin virtuoso and educator (1831-1907), Lipót Auer, violin virtuoso and educator (1845-1930), Jenő Hubay, violin vir
tuoso, composer and educator, József Bloch (1862-1922), Károly flesch, violin virtuoso and educator (1873-1944), Ferenc Vecsey, violin virtuoso (1893-1935), Ede Zathureczky, violin virtuoso and educator (1903-1959).
3 Panna Cinka (Czinka?), famous gypsy violinist (1711-1772), János Bihari, composer-violin- ist (1764-1827), Károly Boka, gypsy musician (1808-1860), Ferkó Patikárius (Dudás), gypsy musician (1827-1870), Károly Fátyol, gypsy violoncellist (1830?, 1834-1888), Ferenc Bunkó, leader of gypsy band -1814?, 18137-1889), Ferenc Sárközi (Gárdonyi), leader of gypsy band (in the years of 1840-1860), Béla Radics, leader of a gypsy band (1867-1930), Imre Magyari, Leader of gypsy band (1899-1940).
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deed, in our case we are not talking about one or two excellent virtuoso, or some globe-trotting Gypsy musicians, but the availability of reliable information on the continued activities of many decades - stretching to more than a cen
tury - of many generations whose activities were first-rate, even looking at it in a global context. We cannot then consider it a happenstance that in the recent past the question was formulated with a dramatic force: Where are the Hungarian violin makers?4 László Reményi, in his response written to György Garay5 summarized his opinion on the situation of Hungarian violin making this way: First of all, I have to underline the fact that right now we face not a decline but a complete extinction, a bottom, which had never been encoun
tered during the glorious 250-year history of Hungarian violin making."
"This artistic branch of manufacturing-.flourished in the second part of the past century in Hungary, but it still enjoyed world fame in the first half of this century. There were flourishing workshop where excellent, masterly cre
ations were made. The decline of this manufacturing set in after the Second World War, and it came almost to a complete end during the fifties."6
We cannot have the task here to weigh the present situation. We could certainly demonstrate certain changes. What here seems to be more justified is to analyse if it is legitimate to talk about the history of Hungarian violin mak
ing; whether a specific Hungarian style of violin making exists, and if it does, about what significant stations do we know at the present time, and what kind of tasks should we, the successors, assume in the course of further research?
It is quite evident then that these research activities are not going to be per
formed by anyone else, and, in case they would be, then the result are not necessarily going to be favourable.
We do not wish to show at all the results of Hungarian violin making as if it ran a course which differs radically from the specific European evolution, disregarding its results or which is completely autonomous. It is evident that what we undertake here is only so much that we examine those individual epoches in our history of civilization in which there were significant, from the point of view of the history of Hungarian violin, events in the history of our subjects, the history of violin making in Hungary. It is evident that it would be equally erroneous to discuss the history of violin playing without a discussion of violin making, just as it would be wrong to examine the latter separately from the art of violin playing. For this reason, although we would like to dis
4 Kálmán Strém. Where Are the Hungarian Players of String instruments? Budapest. 1977.
g László Reményi, renown Hungarian maker of violin (1895-1964), György Garay, violin virtuoso. Professor at the Ferenc Liszt Conservatory between 1949 and 1961.
An exchange of letters took place at the occasion of making a plan for setting up a laboratory in which violins were also to be examined. A copy of the letter is included in the study by this author. Sándor Erdélyi: The History Of The Reményi Firm, Budapest.
1974. 27. Manuscripts Archives of the Musicology Institute at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
cuss first of all the more notable stages of violin making, albeit only in its outlines, we still wish to complete the discussion w ith the provable relations and effects of the art of violin playing or the teaching of violin in Hungary.
Thus, the history of the Hungarian violin contains the historic aspects of the art of violin playing, the teaching, as well as the making, of violin, and although we could certainly adduce many more glorious days, this suffices, we are sure, to prove our p o in t In some of our earlier studies we have already tried to call the attention of competent persons to the importance of the ques
tion, but, we have to admit, this remained almost w ithout any result. The artis
tic branch of the manufacturing of violins which, according to the quotation earlier, "came almost to a complete end during the fifties", little by little loses its privilege acquired justly long tim e ago to figure even in the most humble entries in our encyclopaedias.8
The lim its imposed upon the size of this study do not allow us to review the development of the musical instrument that have us the title; hence, as a starting point, we should accept to see a "violin-type of instrum ent" inter
preted as a string instrument. However, we should say of this musical instru
ment changing frequently its shape, technology, the number of its strings, etc., that its functions had a much more stable character. These instruments, no matter what names they were given in the societies in which they were em
ployed, had a more or less very sim ilar role. They follow the individual mem
bers of the society from birth to death; they accompany ceremonies, they are the symbols of power, and the magical and working tools of the unknown beings of the netherworld just as well as of the very mundane actors of every
day life. We know this very well both from the records on ancient, historic peoples, and the many ethnographic works. However, it was often doubted that we, Hungarians, had also widely used musical instruments already prior to the Conquest of the Carpathian Mountains. As to the "v io lin ", it has been pre
cisely lately when the nature of the "ancient Hungarian musical instrum ent", often stressed earlier, became questionable.
We have to see it clearly that the world "vio lin " used in a modern sense, and the objects, are so unequivocal only for ourselves since both the world - and not only the Hungarian word "v io lin " - and the instrument itself have been changing shape constantly, and they are changing even today. It is quite possible that this change does not always become evident w ithin the short life span of man. However, if we don't go back in tim e to more than the fist
7 Sándor Erdélyi: "A contribution to Kálmán Strém's study" Budapest, 1977 (In the volume cited.) "A critique and valuation of bow instruments; In: the Violin. Budapest. 1982. pp.
158-170.
8 The Dictionary of Music {Budapest, 1931) edited by Bence Szabolcsi and Aladár Tóth, as well as its 1965 revised edition mentions even more Hungarian violin makers, among them, evidently, appraising" first of all, the activities of Sámuel Nemessányi. No Hungar
ian violin maker made it to the new edition of the Brockhaus-Riemann Music Dictionary (Budapest, no date).
72
edition of Comenius' first known work, "Orbis pictus'"9 in 168510, or perhaps, even before that, the age of printing volumes I - I li11 (II: 1618)12 of Praetorius' Syntagma musicum, the illustrations show evidence of the many types of the string instruments and the great number of their varieties.13 This was charac
teristic all over Europe, and the "Orbis pictus", printed in Hungary, is a w it
ness to it. Of course, the conditions in Hungary of the sixteen hundreds differ greatly from those in earlier centuries. This is so at the examination of certain given social phenomena, and it would not be a riskless enterprise to project back, in a heedless way, the phenomena of musical life to an earlier epoch.
Indeed, human societies provide innumerable examples for the effects of both preservation and change. And if, in our case, we make all these to refer to the application of violin and to its forms of appearance, we can certainly discover this duality. It is rather change which dominates in the evolution of the musi
cal instrument, whereas it is rather eternity which dominates in its functions.
True, completely new functions emerge as well, and we can find kinds of mu
sical instruments almost unaltered among the self-made instruments of folk musicians.15
The peculiar history of Hungarians may be an explanation for the phe
nomenon that, similar to the examination of several other historical-social phe
nomena, from tim e to time, we swing from one extreme to the other also in the discussion of some of the questions of our musical past. However, it is evident that in history - and, this way, in the history of music - a single cause, and a single explanatory principle, cannot suffice even if it is Finno-Ugric, or if it happens to have a Turkish origin. This certainly applies to our instruments
g
Johannes Amos Comenius (1592-1670) compiled his Orbis sensualium pictus during his stay in Sárospatak, and he also printed some sections of it in the town.
10 The first, complete edition of the above work by Comenius was published in Nuremberg in Latin and German.
11 Michael Praetorius (Schulthess) (1571 or 1572 - 1621) German composer. 3 volumes of his Syntagma musicum, planned to come out in 4 volumes, appeared in which Wittenberg and Wolfenbüttel are given as the places of publication.
12
The second volume of Praetorius's quoted work was published in Wolfenbüttel in 1618, and there was a second edition already in the musical instruments of the era and con
tains their detailed illustrations as well.
13
Among the illustrations we find equally the lyres, the violas, the violins and also the baryton.
From the different editions of Comenius's oeuvre we can demonstrate both the various kinds of violin and viola, depending, in all probability, on which kind of musical instru
ment was better known in the area of activities of the given publisher.
The use of the violin in the orchestra, and, later, its use as a solo instrument, also belong to the new functions. Iconographical and ethnographical research activities equally show musical instruments that appear again and again in different eras and peoples.
of music, and to the Hungarian violin as well. The migration preceding the Conquest of the Magyar land, and the history of the peoples that lived in the Carpathian Basin prior to the Conquest by Hungarians, are at least as im por
tant in the discussion of our im portant problem as underlining the role of the churches, but at least of both Eastern and Western churches. Nothing can prove it perhaps better that this is so than tw o passages taken from the first Code of Saint Stephan the First: "And since each people live by its own laws, so we too, administering our land based on God's w ill, follow ing the example set by the ancient and recent emperors, have determined for our people, through de
liberations on legislation, how it should lead an honourable and peaceful life."16 However, since the models taken over can become general only slowly: "Those who, upon entering the church to participate at the holy mess, m urm ur to each other during the celebration, disturb others by telling triflin g stories and not paying attention to the holy readings and the spiritual nourishment, shall be reproached and driven out of the church ignominiously if they are old, or shall be tied up in the porch in front of everybody, and then punished fo r their tem erity by flogging them and shorn their hair off if they are young."17 Here, there is an evident clash in the laws between the traditionally accepted form s and the new form s on the verge of acceptance. We encounter something iden
tical in the introductory lines w ritten to Anonymus' Gesta Hungarorum18: "If the so noble Hungarian nation would hear, as if in a somber, its ancient o ri
gins, and its individual acts of heroism from the phoney tales of peasants or the silly songs of minstrels, it would be a very repugnant and indecent th in g."19 We would get to know here not less than that at that tim e it should have existed a society which could have been called popular - presumably, com posed of laymen - another layer which was more skilled - more or less profes
sional - and yet another group of educated individuals - professionals - w ho exercised the same activity - they fulfilled the same function - only at different levels of skills. On the basis of these quotes, we cannot only discover the functions and different layers of culture, but Anonymus also helps us in direct
ing light to the musical customs of the epoch. He w rites the follow ing on the Conquest of the Carpathian Basin by the Hungarians: "They feted there every day in all merriment in king A ttila's palace, sitting side by side. It was there where the music of the "kobozes", the pipes, and all the songs of the waits reverberated in such a nice harmony."20 In addition to the different cultural layers, the musical instruments are already mentioned here, and, at that, both
16 Codex of Stephan I (Preface to the royal codex) around 101. In: Emma Lederer, ed. Collec
tion Of Texts To Study The History of Hungary, v. 1. (Budapest. 1964. p. 16) 17 Idem, p. 2!.
18 Anonymus. Gesta Hungarorum. (Book on the acts of Hungarians, by the notary of King Béla.) Translation by Dezső Pais. (Budapest. 1977)
19 Idem, p. 77.
20 Idem, p. 120.
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the string and the w ind instruments. We cannot say that the talk here is about the violin, although the original "cytara" instrument allows for different inter
pretations. Nonetheless, a more detailed description of the instrument is not necessary here, due to the point of view given earlier according to which "When the Hungarians migrated to Europe from Asia at the end of the ninth century, they clearly did not use musical instruments other than Asian in the beginning.
Now, the m ajority of the Asians' musical instruments were mostly w ind instru
ments (flatilia) or musical instruments which produced sound w ith the help of the mouth, such as the horns (Buccinae), the pipes (Tybiae), the Jew 's harp (?) the jinglers (sistrum)..."22 This is contradicted by a passage from a legend which reports on Saint Stephan's death, or, rather, those variations which deal partly w ith Saint Stephan's, partly w ith Saint László's death.23 The surviving frag
ments - which, up till now, escaped the attention of historians of music most of the tim e - report doubtlessly on instrumental music, and many of them refer to the existence of "cythara." It is not necessary here to determine the instrum ent exactly and in all details in order to come to the conclusion that this could not but describe a string instrument. We should note that György Pray also makes a reference to such an instrument at the end of the above quote in which he says that "... there were very few and far between the number of those (i.e., the number of the instruments (ES) on which they used to play by hand...",24 however partly the term "very few and far between" and partly the unconditionally Asian origin are - from the point of view of the Hungarians taking them over - at least debatable. Indeed, Djahani, the scholar and statesman from Bokhara reports25 in about 870 AC that the M.DZS.GH.R-s
21 In the translation of cytara, chytara, etc., one finds the term koboz just as that of the lyre, and the different linguistic forms of violin (hegedű, hegedő, hegedő, etc.). W ithout exam
ining in detail the translated terms such as "mandolin", "gitár", and "citera", it becomes evident that the "magyarization" of the texts tried, more often than not, to conform to the literary requirements and in the process the historical fidelity (fidelity to the history of music) is pushed to the background. A further, and not an easy, task is to make an at
tem pt at determining the probably kind of the musical instrument after a thorough exami
nation of concrete texts.
22 Part of a letter written by György Pray. Quoted by Dezső Legány in The Chronicle of Hungarian Music (Budapest. 1962. p. 15)
23
Szentpétery Emericus, ed. Scriptores rerum hungaricarum... H I. (Budapest. 1937. 1938.)
24 Part of a letter written by György Pray. Quoted by Dezső Legány in The Chronicle Of Hungarian Music (Budapest. 1962. p. 15)
25 Djahani lived around 920, and wrote his detailed historical work in Arabic in which w e find the oldest description on he Hungarians before the conquest of the Carpathian Basin. The original text did not survive. The sections to which references were made come from the writings of Ibn Rusta which he took word by word from the original sources. All the details can be found in a book, "The Predecessors Of The Hungarians And On The Conquest Of The Land" (Reports of contemporaries^and chroniclers) edited by György Győrffy. (Buda
pest. 1986. pp. 84-94)
(the Hungarians - ES.)26 "have the habit of attacking the Slavs"; "they plunder the Slavers all the tim e "27, and then he w rites on the same Slavs "They have different lyres, tambours and flutes. Their flutes have a length of tw o elbows,
(the Hungarians - ES.)26 "have the habit of attacking the Slavs"; "they plunder the Slavers all the tim e "27, and then he w rites on the same Slavs "They have different lyres, tambours and flutes. Their flutes have a length of tw o elbows,