Hungarian
In the style of Hungarian folk music.
What it means
The marking calls for a performance in the style of Hungarian music, as it was taken up in European art music especially of the nineteenth century. The Italian form is all'ungherese.
A distinction must be made here. What counted as “Hungarian” in the nineteenth century rested above all on the urban entertainment music of that time, played by bands, less on peasant folk music. This was only systematically collected and researched in the early twentieth century and differs in many respects from what had previously been widespread as the Hungarian style.
Characteristic of the style to which the marking refers are the alternation between slow, freely shaped and fast, dance-like parts, characteristic dotted rhythms, rich ornamentation, and a pronounced freedom of tempo.
In the notation
The marking stands above the staff at the beginning of the relevant section. The typical figures are often written out, but some freedoms in tempo and ornamentation are not notated and are left to the performer.
Musical use
The instruction is used in arrangements and compositions that allude to Hungarian music, as well as in movements that take over elements of this style. In nineteenth-century music, the adoption of Hungarian turns of phrase is widespread in piano, violin, and orchestral music.
The designation refers to music in the Hungarian style as it was popular in the nineteenth century and often connected with the music of Roma bands. Typical are the alternation of slow and fast parts, dotted rhythms, augmented seconds, and rich ornamentation. Brahms wrote Hungarian Dances, Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies. Later, Bartók and Kodály distinguished this urban style from actual Hungarian peasant music.
Performance practice
Listen to recordings to get to know the style, for notation captures it only incompletely. Shape the slow parts freely and the fast ones taut. Play dotted rhythms sharply. And distinguish whether a work refers to the nineteenth-century entertainment style or to peasant folk music — the manner of performance is different.