Hungarian folk-music

Collecting folk-music in the past

• Hungarian folk-music is the name of those compositions which are present in the

Hungarian culture complex with specific features.Today, over 1000 folk-songs are well-know.In 1889 Mr. Béla Vikár started collecting the Hungarian folk-music. Be-fore that there

had been only unimportant collecting movements. Later Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and László Lajtha followed in Vikar’s steps.

• Thank to them, today we can listen to these folk-songs and folk-musics and they didn’t get lost. Moreover they systematized these songs. It’s due to them that the system of classification of Hungarian folk-songs was developed. It was proved that this work had been complex.

• They collected and systematized about 40000 songs. Today we know about 300000 folk-music used in Béla Bartók’s and Zoltán Kodály’s own compositions. Kodály also introduced this kind of music in the education which is called Kodály method.

Béla BartókZoltán KodályLászló Lajtha

Collecting Folk-music today

• Affter the golden age of collecting folk-music other people searched for music, and today it is present mainly in Transylvania.

Relations of Hungarian folk-music

• Bartók and Kodály compared Hungarian folk-music with other folk-music. They found old style of music in central Asia and in Turkey. On the contrary Hungarian folk-music doesn’t have relations to Finno-Ugrian.

Written by:Bartha István Fodor Mátyás