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The Kodály Method: studying music the Hungarian way

The Gypsy Influence in European Music

by Jonathon Brown

FUEGO BOHEMIO/TROUPE CARAVANE photograph by Laurent Tri In the 1930s there was a popular song entitled 'Play to me, Gypsy!'; my Father told me of the habit his friends had of completing their own version by singing -

Oh play to me, Gypsy,
Oh play till I'm tipsy!

This jovial irreverence conceals an important instinct: namely that we associate music and revelry as integral to the Gypsy character. And it is true, we cannot consider Gypsy music as an accessory - no, it is at the heart of their life.

Indeed, for some centuries it has been a spice within European 'art' music in general. Even in the seventeenth century the international traffic of musicians - far more extensive than you might suppose - meant that for instance English virginal music was known in Hungary and Romania just as you can hear the influence of far-flung Gypsy tunes in the Celtic fiddle or bagpipe music of Scotland or Ireland; some dance movements in Bach respond to Gypsy inflection even if not so entitled; Haydn wrote a so-called 'Gypsy' piano trio and flashes of Gypsy zing splash the pages of Beethoven occasionally - for instance in the op.69 'cello sonata. With the early and late Romantic composers - starting with Schubert and most of all with Liszt and including Berlioz, most prolifically Dvořák and Brahms, Joachim, and others, leading to Dohnányi - things take off and not only is there a submerged Gypsy element unfurled by some performers but not others, now with these composers there is explicit use of Gypsy themes, devices, harmonies and mood. It is a zest to be heard in taverns and streets with a wonderful energy that served to wire their centrally placed Vienna with the raw influence of the east, an energy that they sought to tame a shade and yet use to shock the salons of sophistication in Paris or St Petersburg just a little. The components of melancholy and longing, dance and heartfelt song, combined with an excess of stamp and sweep, from a marginalised culture to boot, made for a wild cocktail that suited the Romantic muse to the letter. A certain genre of Gypsy music, sometimes under the banner of 'Hungarian', emerged as a vivid, distinctive and enticing style within the European tradition of classical music.

Original Carmen poster This much we know. But we're far less conversant either with the origins of this music, its true essence, or with what has happened since, especially in our age where we take more care to discover, define and preserve the distinctions of folk music - yet with the unforeseen effect that they then become somewhat specialised. Not that Liszt or Brahms lacked respect for the Gypsy dances they set, but they were capable of inventing their own if need be, 'in spirit'; in contrast to Bartók who, with help from Kodály and pioneering a use of the gramophone, set out to record native music directly onto a body of recordings that give us unique documentation of what the country and nomadic peoples of Hungary and elsewhere actually played. He collected over 6,000 tunes and found that they were based on scales, harmonies and rhythmic patterns far removed from those that had evolved in the mainstream in Europe.

We here discern an interesting evolution of perspectives: Liszt's book on the part played by Gypsy influence within Hungarian music (published in 1859) supposed a far deeper involvement between the two than that found and recorded by Bartók in the years before and after the First World War. Liszt was happy to use the word 'Hungarian' - as in his piano rhapsodies - to signal 'Gypsy'. Bartók's conclusions were that there was a folk music among the Gypsies which, while it may have infiltrated and transformed the national music, had also an undiscovered and quite separate identity. Yet in this sea of exchange and infiltration whose tides have beginnings hundreds of years and thousands of miles away, we must not be too purist; even if the so-called reference to Gypsy music by Liszt and his followers may seem, to the student of Bartók and Kodály and their successors, to be decorative and ultimately fake or false, it is the prevalent evocative power of such successful music that set the scene for the more scientific approach that followed.

The origins of what music Gypsies play are as far flung as their own origins... which are generally agreed to have been in North Central India. The migrations that characterise and indeed create their lives, started over two thousand years ago and we know they had reached Persia by 100BC. The name 'Gypsy' comes much later - perhaps five or six hundred years ago - when it was assumed they were from Egypt, since their migration from India to Europe had taken them by the Nile delta. The word Gypsy appears for the first time in English in the early 1500s and for instance Shakespeare assumes their Egyptian origin. The more modern term 'Roma' pays heed to the fact that however migratory they may still be, their base is the Romania they went on to from Egypt; though their language, Romany, bears traces of being a dialect of Hindi. Yet in Moldavia (now part of modern Romania), it is only 150 years since their status as slaves was rescinded. Quite so: their history has been one of misunderstanding and consequent persecution, which brings to their creative character a level of passion and extremes that has kept their music so vivid.

Traces of what was to become Gypsy music linger in Indian music of Rajasthan but the Gypsies' own music inevitably evolved as they travelled. Its richness is the richness of their itinerary, its charm the charm of the people. But, as a force of spirit as well as of sound, it is mostly the Gypsies who influenced their hosts, less so the other way around, helped indeed by the fact that one of their principal sources of income in other lands was as the preferred musicians for weddings and funerals. Of course, the Gypsies played their jokes on the hosts or outsiders - mixing languages to confuse their audience, holding back a popular melody till the final verse, and so on - but as ever it is the power of true music that wins through and their music gave new impetus and inspiration always to the music of the hosts; this is true of Jewish music, then Turkish, and then most durably the music of the Balkans. Indeed, it is when the migration finally runs out of land, so to speak, in Spain, that there is most dispute as to how much flamenco owes to the Gypsies and how much the other way round, in the clash and marriage of eastern and basic Andalusian music there on the very rim of Europe.

In terms of instruments, perhaps the longest-serving friend of the Gypsy has been the violin and it has been through the violin and through that emphatic rhythmic characteristic that their music has most infiltrated the European classical tradition. However, we should not overlook the way in which for instance in the Balkan tradition there is a taste for use of brass bands and, conversely, in the later stages of their centuries-long journey to the Atlantic, the guitar has emerged as the voice of both plaintive and rhythmic expression. The 'voice' - yes, and of course, at every stage there has also been the robust and versatile, improvisatory use of song and chant, texts and melodies handed from generation to generation.

In the twentieth century Gypsy music, as a music so attuned to dazzling effect and improvisatory panache, has naturally had an influence that is perhaps stronger in jazz than in the more exactly notated 'classical' music that is the successor to Brahms. (That is said despite the wonderful presence Gypsy music in the music of Ravel, Kodály or Enescu or, of course, Bartók.) Rather is it perhaps the figure of guitarist Django Reinhardt who - with the violinist Stephane Grapelli - carried the greatest torch for Gypsy music and its guiding presence in a new Gypsy jazz that was distinct from any American model. Reinhardt was himself a Sinto and that Roma influence swept all before it.

Who do we have today? The range is as impressive as it may be confusing! At one end of the scale are the most popularised groups such as The Gypsy Kings, a band made up of the sons and nephews of Jose Reyes, the great singer who collaborated for many years with Manitas de Plata. Their music continues the tradition of assimilation, with strong spicing from flamenco and rumba, but has perhaps moved along that route too fast for some purists. A more clearly historical modern approach however can be heard in the playing of Greek Roma musicians such as Yianni Saleas and Kostas Pavlidis, where the Turkish influence (technically, that of koumpanea) is to the fore. From the record label Opre (based in Switzerland) come recordings destined both to preserve traditional playing as well as to help nurture new ideas, especially in the Balkan and Russian tradition, while on New Earth we find some of the recordings done over the past decades 'in the field', as they say, by Deben Battacharya. Note that some of Bartók's early gramophone recordings survive and are commercially available.

Play to me Gypsy! - indeed, it is an unstoppable music whose history is the history of many peoples. And like so much today, with the self-consciousness inherent in recording and broadcasting, not to mention fame and money - and indeed in well-meaning academic research - its truly creative future may be as parlous as all the other initiate skills and arts that have thrived on a sort of close-knit tradition of ephemerity, till now...