GIPSY FESTIVAL IN HUNGARY

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 104, 4 May 1937, Page 10

GIPSY FESTIVAL IN HUNGARY

My father used to sav. “Never suspect people. It’s better to be deceived or mistaken, which is only human after all. than to be suspicious, which is common.—Stark Young.

500 Years of Music

r £HE TZIGANE ASSOCIATION will fete the five hundred and seventeenth anniversary of the Tziganes’ settling in Hungary this spring, says the Budapest correspondent of the London Observer. In 1919, when the fete was due to be held, internal conditions in the country made it impossible, and later the economic crisis was responsible for its postponement. In April a gala concert of the best Tzigane orchestras and singers will be held in Budapest, and the musical history of the past five hundred years will be passed in review. During the “June Weeks” a Tzigane contest will be held, and all the best musicians from the city and the provinces will be heard. It 5« reported that the London 8.8. C. will relay this contest, and that Liszt’s Second Rhapsody will be played by special request. On St. Stephen’s Day (August 20) a Csardas contest will take place at Tattersail’s, and a Tzigane wedding will be held with the assistance of thirty Tzigane beauties as bridesmaids. The permit to settle in Hungary was granted Io the Tzigane in 1419 by King Zsigmund. • As the Tziganes penetrated into Europe at the same time as the Turks, they were regarded with disfavour in some countries, and it is said that their welcome here was due to King Zsigmond’s delight at the playing of a gipsy musician. The Tziganes brought three new instruments into Hungary, the Turkish pipe, the violin, and the cymbal, and assumed the role of national troubadours (“regos”) transforming the national music with their own rhythm. In 1707 they followed Prince Rakoczi’e “kuruc,” or insurgents, with the Hungarian “tarogato,” a wind instruent. Panna Czinka, a Tzigane girl of rare beauty, has beome one of Hungary’s legendary figures, in Raknczi’s

train she bewitched al! her hearen being the composer of some of the >onga which she interpreted on the violin. Panna Czinka is believed to have been the grandchild of the famous Tzigane, Czinka, who lived at Rakoczi’t court with two sone, and composed several songs praising his patron. In 1848 the Tzigane incited men te fight the Austrians by playing the “toborzo,” and even followed the troops to the batlefields. The generals, Damjanich and Bern, kept private Tzigane orchestras, and one first violin, named Salomon, attained the rank of lieu* tenant.

The second half of the nineteenth century was the Hungarian Tziganes’ golden age. No name-day or birth oi marriage could be celebrated without them, and they became the fashion at foreign courts. The Tzigane leaders made large fortunes, but spent tht money, and usually died in poverty. King Edward VII. was a patron of the Tziganes, and never failed to onjoy] their music when he came to Hungary* A good story of the time is due to La jog Pongracz, the Tzigane violinist of Koloszvar, who, after a shoot given for the then Prince of Wales and Milan, King of Serbia, for which he was vngaged to play, remarked genially. “Wo got on very well together, a king, and a gipsy, a king and a gipsy.”

The Tziganes’ life has become critical since the War. Of th’e thousand five hundred Tziganes living in Budapest, only five hundred are employed* In the provinces the situation is even worse, only about twelve hundred out of four thousand five hundred Tziganes having regular work. Two hundred Tziganes have serenade cd the mayor of a small town called Gyongyos, and beseeched him to protect them from the Jazz invasion. .V Tzigane exchange has been created in Budapest, owing to a kind-hearted res-taurant-keeper offering the use of a hall.

Here the Tziganes may practise and talk from the afternoon till early morning, instead of waiting in a small exposed street for employers to seek them out.