Table of Contents
Lili Veronika Békéssy: Everyday and representation in music. Pest-Buda 1857. Press research.
István-Csaba Németh: György Ruzitska
Rudolf Gusztin: The Institutionalisation of the Choral Movement in 19th Century Hungary (1850-1867)
Katalin Kim
Senior Research Fellow
Deputy director of the Institute for Musicology, RCH
Head of Department for Hungarian Music History
Research Centre for the Humanities
Eötvös Loránd Research Network
19th-century Music History of Hungary Under Construction in the Information Age
View the presentation (PDF, 4MB)
Additional examples
Senior Research Fellow
Deputy director of the Institute for Musicology, RCH
Head of Department for Hungarian Music History
Research Centre for the Humanities
Eötvös Loránd Research Network
19th-century Music History of Hungary Under Construction in the Information Age
View the presentation (PDF, 4MB)
Additional examples
Lili Veronika Békéssy:
Everyday and representation in music. Pest-Buda 1857. Press research.
The present research offers a new approach in terms of describing urban musical life with the case study of Pest-Buda in 1857. As part of the Habsburg Empire, Pest-Buda was the administrational, economical, infrastructural, and cultural centre of the Hungarian Kingdom. The research questions the statement that as part of the „passive resistance” after the revolutions of 1848/49, there was no lively or active musical life; and if there was, it mostly happened in order to establish a Hungarian national musical life.
The present research shades this statement based on comparative source processing from a microhistorical perspective. Besides aiming to show the until recently unknown venues of music, their repertoire, and the actors of the musical life including institutions, ensembles, and soloists, the research offers a comparison regarding Konzertwesen in and out of the Habsburg Empire. With the day-by-day processing of one year’s (1857) press and archive material, several new questions and problems arose.
As a counterpoint to the everyday life, the political representation also has to be mentioned. The outstanding event of 1857 was Franz Joseph I and Elizabeth Wittelsbach's first joint tour in Hungary, which was preceded by several months of preparations throughout the country. In the course of my previous research, examining the role of music in political representation, I dealt with this visit based on the comprehensive processing of the Pest-Buda press in German and Hungarian languages. The research offers case studies in order to prove evidence of the double loyalty in musical representation, especially the first joint visit of Franz Joseph I’s and Elisabeth’s in Hungary, in 1857.
Research method, Sources & Selected Bibliography (PDF)
Example video from the press database (MP4 video, 4MB)
1) Press collage:
István-Csaba Németh:
György Ruzitska
Georg / György Ruzitska [in some of his autographs signed as Ružitska or Ružicžka, respectively] was born in the year of the Great French Revolution in the capital of the Habsburg Empire. He imbibed Classical music with the air of the Imperial City, so to speak, then, in 1810, at the outset of his professional career, he went to Transylvania. There, in the South-Eastern province of the Empire, he served throughout his entire remaining lifetime—as a true all-round musician, in various roles and functions—the Western-type modernization of local art music culture.
As a common saying, still in use among our North-Western neighbors, claims “co Čech, to muzikant” [If you are Czech, you must be a musician; actually meaning: every Czech is a musician]. Based on some historical facts, this timeless maxim mainly applies to the outstanding instrumentalists and composers of Czech-Moravian origin who, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, flooded the entire Habsburg Empire, including Hungary and Transylvania. In addition, as such, it perfectly applies to Ruzitska as well. Born into a Viennese musician dynasty of Czech-Moravian descent, he committed himself to cultivating the art music culture of the Hungarian community of Transylvania. Thus, his life path and career offer a prime example of nineteenth-century migration of musicians, within the monarchy. In his individual case, moreover, migration does not simply proceed from the center to the peripheries; instead, it connects two provinces, with a touch of the center. An important touch, as the Kaiserstadt of almost incommensurable significance in terms of its irradiation and influence, the cradle of the musical Classicism that bears its name, provided the scenery for the events during the most impressionable period, during the first two decades of Ruzitska’s lifetime.
View György Ruzitska page on Magyarország Zenetörténete Online [mzo.zti.hu]
Rudolf Gusztin:
The Institutionalisation of the Choral Movement in 19th Century Hungary (1850-1867)
Male choirs established in a number of European countries following the German model transcended the framework of simple, self-organized singing in a relatively short period of time and grew into serious musical institutions. In the middle of the nineteenth century, the choral movement began to develop in Hungary as well, having an organized form already by the second half of the 1860s and being supported by musicians such as Kornél Ábrányi, Ferenc Erkel, Franz Liszt, and Mihály Mosonyi. Although male choirs in Hungary had become an important part of the system of musical institutions by the second half of the century and the significance of the choral movement in music history is thus unquestionable, basic research on the subject is still missing. Neither is there sufficient primary literature related to the choirs (Kornél Ábrányi), nor do later studies engaged in an overview of the archival and other primary sources document the beginnings of the movement. Furthermore, the contemporary press material has not yet been systematically considered.
As part of a large-scale project, the Department of Hungarian Music History (Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute for Musicology) (official Hungarian name: Magyar Zenetörténeti Osztály, Bölcsészettudományi Kutatóközpont, Zenetudományi Intézet) has started to collect and process the very abundant and diverse sources. Besides the historical summaries of the different choral societies, there are also letters, minutes, financial reports, booklets, music sheets, photos, objects, etc. The research focuses on the relationship of politics and music with a special target on the issue of national identity in the pluricultural Kingdom of Hungary.
1) Gusztáv Keleti: „Az 1865-iki dalárünnepély a pesti Városligetben” [Choral festival at the Városliget in Pest, 1865], in Vasárnapi Újság 14 August, 1892, OSZK EPA
2) Mihály Munkácsy: „Dalverseny az 1868-iki debreczeni dalárünnepélyen” [Singing competition at the choral festival in Debrecen, 1868], in Vasárnapi Újság 14 August, 1892, OSZK EPA
3) Publications
Pál Horváth:
Franz Doppler: Ilka és huszártoborzó [Ilka and the Recruiter of Hussars] (1849). Critical Edition.
Franz and Karl Doppler born in Lemberg (Lviv, Ukraine), have earned recognition already at a very young age in Pest-Buda, the first important stage of their musical career. During the 1840s, but mainly in the 1850s they were dominant figures of the European musical circles. The Dopplers (especially Franz) are considered by music historians to be among the founders of the Hungarian opera genre. Franz Doppler's comic opera became certainly his most successful work. With its specifically Hungarian theme, the comic opera Ilka és a huszártoborzó [Ilka and the Recruiter of Hussars] was presented in 1849 and remained on the institution’s repertoire for over eighty-eight performances as well further twenty-two performances in the Hungarian Royal Opera House, where the opera company of the National Theatre moved after the 1884 taking over this production, too. As one of the most successful Hungarian operas, Ilka was given at a number of different places as well as; in a unique manner among the 19th-century Hungarian operas it became the only one performed not only on the territory of historical Hungary but also in several European cities including Vienna, Hanover, and Olomouc. Its performance numbers at the Pest National Theatre were only rivalled by those of the most successful operas by Ferenc Erkel (Hunyadi László and Bánk Bán). Nevertheless, Erkel’s works actually remained unknown all along Western European stages and their Viennese presentation met with difficulties whereas Doppler managed to accomplish an almost impossible task.
1) Karl Doppler/Doppler Károly (1825-1900). Portrait by Strohmayer Ferenc Károly.
2) Franz Doppler/ Doppler Ferenc (1821-1883). Portrait by József Knopp.
3) Franz Doppler: Ilka és a huszártoborzó [Ilka and the Recruiter of Hussars] (1849). Autograph score (National Széchényi Library's Music Collection) and one page of the critical edition of the opera (publication date: 2024).
4) Franz Doppler: Ilka és a huszártoborzó [Ilka and the Recruiter of Hussars] (1849). Playbill of the Opera (December 29, 1849).
Szabolcs Illés:
The beginnings of early music in Hungary: Revival of Haydn oratorios. The first “historical concerts” in Hungary from 1872
The amateur musical associations, slowly formed on the Viennese model, played a very important role in the spread of the Hungarian oratorio cult, including the works of Haydn, already in the first half of the 19th century. The turbulent period of the War of Independence and the Reconciliation in 1867 brought changes in the structure of the associations, which were slowly re-establishing themselves after a period of forced inactivity in cultural life, both in national and social terms. At the same time, interest in the national past and its cultural heritage was also heightened by the Romanticism sweeping across Europe. All this had a significant impact on the reception of Haydn's oratorios, which reappeared in the repertoire of amateur ensembles after thirty years, from 1872 onwards: although critics praised these performances, the works themselves were clearly described as "outdated", "old music" that should be preserved as part of the heritage of the past, but not performed too often in order to maintain the primacy of the contemporary compositions. Haydn's oratorios, later with the rediscovered works of Handel and Bach, thus from the beginning became part of the emerging early music repertoire, and a defining element of the oratorio cult reinforced by the work of Emil Lichtenberg and his ensembles in the early 20th century.The article by Szabolcs Illés with the help of contemporary concert reviews describes this transformation, which is also important for the history of the early music performance in Hungary.
Zsolt Vizinger:
The professionalisation of quartet playing in Pest-Buda in the 19th-century. Press research and concert database.
Pest-Buda already had two permanent ensembles during the 1830s (the Táborszky and the Szervacinszky quartets). In the 1850s, ambitious programs, explicitly labeled as “quartet concerts,” were performed by the short-lived Ridley-Kohne quartet. However, it was only in 1876, that the first Budapest-based quartet was founded that remained stable for the years to come. Although this ensemble, which was led by Dragomir Krancsevics and disposed of an excellent playing technique, was referred to in the press as the “Budapest quartet,” only the second violinist was of Hungarian origin and native of Pest. The case of the Hubay-Popper quartet – established ten years later, in 1886 – was quite similar: of its members, Jenő Hubay was only the one to be born and having studied in this city.
Sources: Handbills (epartment of Hungarian Music History, RCH, Institute for Musicology; National Széchényi Library, Map, Poster and Small Print Collection; Kiscell Museum) and 19th-century Press (announcements & reviews).
1) Handbills for Chamber Music Concerts, 1879–1899. Department of Hungarian Music History, RCH, Institute for Musicology.
2) Screenshots from the concert database.
Biographical Database. Personalities of the Regional Musical Theatre. Traveling Directors and Musicians 1860–1920
A new international database in English, being developed as part of our Visegrad Grant project.
Development of professional concept, professional supervision Kim Katalin.
Members of the Visegrad Grant research group: Jana Laslavíková, Mgr. Jana Magdaléna Májeková, PhD student (Slovakia) Tomasz Pudłocki (Poland), Jiří Kopecký és Lenka Křupková (Czech Republic). The website of the project.
Writing the Data Introducing Guide in English Aksza Sára Grosz. Editing (linguistic and content proofreading of source data), workflow coordination: Sára Aksza Grosz. Programming: Zsolt Kemecsei. Technical coordination: Zsolt Vizinger. Data entry Sára Aksza Grosz, Beáta Simény, Mirjam Winter, Máté Gergely, Szabolcs Illés, data checking Beáta Simény.
Sára Aksza Grosz: Statistics in PDF
1) Screenshots from the database.
