Culture, Music

The introduction of Christianity into Hungary in the 10th century brought with it the use of sacred music from Western Europe. The music consisted of Gregorian chants and, after the Reformation, of Protestant chorales. Secular music was largely influenced by styles from the East. A new instrumental and vocal style was brought into Hungary during the 15th century by the Roma. Hungarian folk music also absorbed harmony styles from the Ottomans, who occupied the country in the 16th and 17th centuries.

During the 17th and 18th centuries princely courts in Hungary often had orchestras and opera companies of their own, in which foreign musicians were employed. The best-known example is the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn, who worked for 30 years for the Esterhazy family.

In the 19th century Hungary produced its first important native-born composer, Ferenc Erkel, who composed the Hungarian national anthem and the first Hungarian opera. The Hungarian-born composer and pianist Franz Liszt spent most of his life in other countries. Like Erkel, Ernst von Dohnanyi was greatly influenced by German composers.

German music continued to be the dominant influence on Hungarian music until the 20th century, when the music of Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly began to gain national acceptance. Beginning in 1905, Bartok and Kodaly collected and published thousands of Hungarian folk tunes and used them or their characteristic features in their own music. In the late 1950s, however, younger Hungarian composers began to reject this folk-based style and to explore more contemporary approaches to composition.