Gypsy music

“ In Bukharest one can hear genuine Tzigany orchestras and genuine gypsy music, of which that heard in London and New York is only a mild imitation. In every restaurant and café there is a band—sometimes only two or three and sometimes a dozen musicians—constantly playing those ravishing rag-time barbaric melodies that have been conceived in the semi-savage brains of some gypsy genius. ”

“ Then, think of the Gypsy music,—the dances, the songs, and the wonderful violin playing! So wild, so weird, so out-of-doors is it, that we are thrilled by the very thought of it.
Where did these folk come from? Who are they? What are they? They have spread over most of Europe, and are found in Hungary, Bohemia, Roumania, Italy, Spain, Germany, Russia, England, Turkey, and even America. They are a race and they have a language of their own. Theirs is a mixture of the ancient Prakrit or Indian, with the different languages with which they have come in contact in the course of many centuries. ”

“ The gypsy has no country, but his sentiment of nationality is strong and persistent, and his music is as peculiar as his language and customs. It is true that he steals the music of the country in which he sojourns just as readily as he steals the poultry from the roost or the linen from the line, but he always imparts to it some echo of his far Eastern home and some flavor of the tent and the hedgerow. ”

“ To this life, odd as he is, the gypsy belongs, and to be sometimes at home with him by wood and wold takes us for a time from “the world.” If I express myself vaguely and imperfectly, it is only to those who know not the charm of nature, its ineffable soothing sympathy,—its life, its love. Gypsies, like children, feel this enchantment as the older grown do not. To them it is a song without words; would they be happier if the world brought them to know it as words without song, without music or melody? ”

“ Sometimes he is constrained to think that the possessor of such a face has the mingled souls of saint and siren. The light undertone of melancholy which pervades gypsy beauty, gypsy music, gypsy manners, has an extremely remarkable fascination for all who perceive it. Even when it is almost buried beneath ignorance and animal craft, it is still to be found in the gypsy nature after diligent search. This strange race seems overshadowed by the sorrow of some haunting memory. Each individual belonging to the Tsiganes whom I saw impressed me as a fugitive from Fate. ”

“ The gypsy music is particularly charming. There are also a clever sextette, “We are six noblemen”—indeed, there is an unusual amount of six and seven part writing in the opera; the “Song of the Bee,” a delightful melody for Queen Topaze with a particularly characteristic accompaniment, likewise a brilliant bolero; a lovely romance in the last act for Rafael, and a somewhat dramatic narrative song for him in the first act; and a skilfully constructed trio for Annibal and the two gypsies. ”

“ No Hungarian Gypsy orchestra is complete without a cembalo, which looks something like an old-fashioned square piano with the top off. This is strung with metal strings covering a range of four octaves, and is played with two small limber hammers. The cembalo players perform with great rapidity and agility; they are able to play scales, arpeggios, trills, and the tricks of Gypsy music with great skill and ease. ”

“ They imitate the curious æolian harp effects of the most characteristic instrument of the Gypsy orchestra, the cembalon, a large, shallow box with strings about as numerous as those of the pianoforte, and played with two little mallets, with which the player produces the weird arpeggios or rapid, broken chords and the improvised runs characteristic of Hungarian Gypsy music; and they also prepare the player and listener for the rapid movement into which the slow melody passes over, finally to dash into the very frenzy of emotional and physical excitement. ”

“ In the wild rhythms of the gypsy dance, in the fierce splendour of the patriotic hymn, the player and audience alike are fired with excitement. The passion rises, the tumult waxes furious; a tremendous sweep of the bow brings the music to an end; and then we can say that we have heard Remenyi."
The gypsy dance and the patriotic hymn! And yet he was weighed in the balance with Wilhelmj, who played the grandest and best music in the most refined, musicianly manner, and whose tour in America marked an epoch in the musical life of the country. ”

“ Yet Brahms was able to discipline this music with modern techniques without robbing it either of its personality or popular appeal. “He has maintained,” continues Niemann, “and preserved the essential, individual genuine features of gypsy music in his musical idiom: the dances sound like original Hungarian folk music ... and for this reason they delight and enchant everybody: the amateur by their natural quality, the specialist by their art.” ”

“ There are people who believe there is no mystery, that an analysis of the gypsy sorceress would have shown an ignorant outcast; but while nature gives chiaro-oscuro and beauty, and while God is the Unknown, I believe that the more light there is cast by science the more stupendous will be the new abysses of darkness revealed. These natures must be taken with the life in them, not dead,—and their life is mystery. The Hungarian gypsy lives in an intense mystery, yes, in true magic in his singing. You may say that he cannot, like Orpheus, move rocks or tame beasts with his music. ”

“ In Arab singing, such effects are applied simply to set forth erotomania; in negro minstrelsy, they are degraded to the lowest humor; in higher European music, when employed, they simply illustrate the skill of composer and musician. The spirit of gypsy singing recalled by its method and sweetness that of the Nubian boatmen, but in its general effect I could think only of those strange fits of excitement which thrill the red Indian and make him burst into song. ”

“ The Magyars have a perfect passion for this gypsy music, and there is nothing that appeals so powerfully to their emotions, whether of joy or sorrow. These singular musicians are, as a rule, well taught, and can play almost any music, greatly preferring, however, their own compositions. Their music, consequently, is highly characteristic. ”

“ The music is true gypsy music with very much movement and highly phantastic colouring, reminding us sometimes of Liszt and Bizet.
The best parts of the opera are the choruses of the village maidens in the first act, the charming cradle song, the violin solo and the love-duet in the second and the splendid gipsy music in the last act.
Nossig's libretto is very inferior to the music; its rhymes are often absolutely trivial. ”

“ The indescribably wild and thrilling character of gypsy music is thoroughly appreciated by the Russians, who pay very high prices for Romany performances. From five to eight or ten pounds sterling is usually given to a dozen gypsies for singing an hour or two to a special party, and this is sometimes repeated twice or thrice of an evening. “A Russian gentleman, when he is in funds,” said the clerk of the Slavansky Bazaar in Moscow to me, “will make nothing of giving the Zigani a hundred-ruble note,” the ruble rating at half a crown. ”

“ This superiority of the women to the men extends to everything, unless, perhaps, we except that gift of music for which the gypsies as a race are noticeable. With regard to music, however, even in Eastern Europe (Russia alone excepted) , where gypsy music is so universal that, according to some writers, every Hungarian musician is of Romany extraction, it is the men, and not, in general, the women, who excel. Those, however, who knew Sinfi Lovell may think with me that this state of things may simply be the result of opportunity and training. ”

“ The gypsies are proved to have been in Hungary as early as the thirteenth century, and their musicians were celebrated in the sixteenth, some of their names still living in the memory of the people. What has been preserved of genuine old Hungarian music (some melodies of Timody Stephens) has no charm save its antiquity. These and other facts—but, above all, the impression produced on him by the music itself—have convinced M. Franz that the gypsy faculty is one not only of execution, but creation. Gypsy art proceeds from the sentiment, the genius, of the Tzigany race. ”

“ But having been brought into close contact with a travelling band of Hungarian gypsy musicians who visited England some years ago, she developed a passion for music that showed her to be a musical genius. The gypsy musicians of Hungary, who are darker than the tented gypsies, are the most intelligent and most widely-travelled of even Hungarian gypsies—indeed, of all the Romany race, and with them Sinfi soon developed into the “Fiddling Sinfi,” who was famous in Wales and also in East Anglia, and the East Midlands. ”

“ In dance-music the life and impetuosity of their musical movements, their varying rhythms and the strange thrill of their wild dissonances are absolutely enthralling. Charles Boner, in his work on Transylvania, says that even the aged find it impossible to resist the dance when a gypsy band invites them to it. Their prelude is slow and sonorous, the music185 quickens, there is a rush of tones, the fantastic melody hastens on at a head-long pace—every one, old and young, is under its spell.
Many of the Hungarian gypsies are composers as well as performers. ”

“ These rhapsodies reflect the weird romanticism of that most mysterious and fascinating of races, the Gypsies, as successfully as Chopin's music reflects the crushed aspirations of his unhappy country, Poland. Although they are called Hungarian, they are [87] neither derived from nor founded upon national Hungarian music, but are purely of Gypsy origin. The Hungarians, however, have adopted the Gypsies as their national musicians, and it is by reason of this adoption, or, in order to express through the title this mutual assimilation, that Liszt has called these rhapsodies "Hungarian." ”

“ I looked into myself and discovered with ineffable delight, pure and without blemish, all the treasures of childhood’s recollections.”
He then gives a description of Raiding, his birthplace, accompanied with the warmest and heartiest praise of Hungary and its people. To them, though of older stock, belong the gypsies, apparently the most scattered and wasted of all people on earth, and yet a homogeneous [44] race which more than all others has its own peculiar gift and has given it to the world as its contribution to the aggregate of human culture—the gypsy music. ”

“ The scene now changes to a street in the city. A great fair is in progress, and the gypsies, as usual, resort to it. Arline enters at their head, joyously singing, to the accompaniment of the rattling castanets, "Come with the Gypsy Bride;" her companions, blithely tripping along, responding with the chorus, "In the Gypsy's Life you may read." They disappear down the street and reappear in the public plaza. Arline, the Queen, Devilshoof, and Thaddeus sing an unaccompanied quartet ("From the Valleys and Hills") , a number which for grace and flowing harmony deserves a place in any opera. ”

“ It opens with a languorous subject for clarinet which is soon assumed by other woodwind, then by the strings and after that (in a quickened tempo) by the full orchestra. A passionate gypsy tune follows in the strings; and this is succeeded by an abandoned dance melody in first violins and the woodwind, and an Oriental-type improvisation in solo flute. Now the mood becomes more frenetic, with a rapid succession of whirling folk-dance tunes and rhythms that are carried to a breathtaking climax. Relaxation finally comes with a gentle Oriental melody in clarinet, but this is only a passing phase. ”

“ I could not find the gypsy, and was almost in despair. On the morning of the fourth day, the invalid suddenly rose in her bed and cried aloud:
"'There she is, I hear the gypsy's violin—oh, now I can die peacefully! Open the window, Gontram, so that I can hear the music better.'
"I did as she said, and now the tones of the violin reached my ears. The dying girl listened breathlessly to the sweet sounds. When the song was over, Aimee took my hand and whispered:
"'Bring her up and beg her to play at my bedside.'
"I hurried into the street and asked the gypsy to fulfil the wish of the dying girl. ”

“ Tzigany orchestras are the fashion in European restaurants these days, and their wild, weird, passionate music has a fascination and an exhilaration that comes from none other. These gypsies number perhaps a quarter of a million and are related to the tribes that wander about Hungary. They preserve their distinctive habits, customs, and dress as well as their racial purity with fierce jealousy. No Tzigany ever marries any but a gypsy; and they are faithful until death to the members of their own race, although their transactions with the rest of the population are usually open to suspicion. ”

“ I will sing to your music, and you shall study music till you are the greatest violin player in all Hungary."
[126]
"When a Gypsy child comes into the world they say his mother lays him on the ground and at one side places a purse and at the other a violin," said Banda Bela. "To one side or other the baby will turn his head. If he turns to the purse he will be a thief, if he turns to the violin he will earn his living by music. ”

“ In Hungary the gypsies have always been the puppeteers, travelling about with their rough little figures and accompaniment of music. From Moldavia137 comes a report of gypsy players at Christmas time in the olden days, one man crying out through the streets, “To the puppets, to the puppets!” followed by two other gypsies with a little theatre of marionettes. In these shows at the time of the Turkish wars in 1829 miniature Turks and Cossacks were made to belabor each other.
In Russia religious puppet plays were very common. ”