The Hungarians also had a particularly popular instrument. Káldy researched this as well. He also included this in his work.
I think: the horn, the flute or the tilinko and perhaps the old instrument of the cymbalom for our people. We can hardly talk about dorombr and zither as very rudimentary instruments today. Guzlat and guzlitz are popular with the South Slavs. The violin is also called by this name, as I have heard more than once. But I am convinced that our lute students used lute and harp just like Western peoples.
Ore wind instruments, trumpets, I don’t think our ancestors liked. If they wanted the sound of the trumpet: then this would have been the main instrument of our gypsies, and then the signals of war, marchers and tributes would have resounded with the word trumpet, not with a trap.-258-
Today, the gypsy uses only violins, basses, cymbals and whistles. Not because he loves it, but because the Hungarian people love it. He who plays for someone else and plays for a reward: he plays according to his will in all things.
The violin and the sip, as well as the bass, are now a popular instrument everywhere, in all peoples. Today we can only consider the cymbal, the ancestor of the piano and the tarogató as a special Hungarian instrument. It is considered as well known as it is in the West as well.
The tarogató, wherever we took it from somewhere, has a beautiful Hungarian history.
The Sikon of Majthény last spoke in Satu Mare County one hundred and ninety years ago as a national and military instrument. When the last kurucz army laid down their guns. Since then, it has not been allowed to be used in the camp, in the house of God, or in the bosom of families. It was banned by the Hungarian government hunched over to Austria since 1715. Or at least he tolerated being banned by the rampant Austrian generals. Terrifying memories were evoked by the sad voice of the raven. Memories of great suffering, great heroic deeds, national revenge, and past freedom. And the memory of the hero who lost his grave in Rhodes and prayed for his nation. Because he couldn’t do anything else then.
Babylonian peers allowed captive Jews to sing their songs on their national instrument. The Jews, as the scripture says, themselves hung their violins on willow trees. We have Habsburg -259-domination or perhaps only the Hungarian government, which had ceased to do so, even banned the use of this national instrument. Surely I don’t think of another similar case from world history right now. Attila, Dsengiszka, Tamerla all allowed the conquered peoples to use their means. The Turks did not hurt anyone because of this. The religious rage that came to power destroyed religious tools, signs, images, idols, and even musical instruments more than once and in many places: it was true. But since the Hungarian government of 1715 was not a religious conquest and the Habsburgs never conquered Hungary.
Although the owner of the steward was not brought before an impartial tribunal, he was suspected of having a steward or in whose house and table and wedding the voice of the steward was loud: it was already rumored that he was sympathetic to the hiding prince, the exiled patriots. Its property was no longer certain, and if its property could not be attacked in any way: then German soldiers broke into its house and destroyed everything like robbers and thieves. Either he had to convert to the Catholic faith or he had to openly deny his Hungarianness.
Whenever the Hungarian came to life, he always remembered his tarogato. He was always looking for his past, forgotten, buried old instrument, the old voice of his instrument, his old soul.
When, after the dictatorship of Joseph in 1790, the nation’s old freedom awoke at least in the counties and brought the holy crown back to the country, in many places -260-the wish was expressed that the constitution and the returning crown should be welcomed with the voice of the rogue. But where is the storeroom?
They searched all over the country but found it nowhere. Not in lordship, not in gypsy, not in collections.
One was found, though.
Zemplén County had a ninety-year-old county hussar. He still saw with his living eyes as a child the great hero of freedom, the glorious prince, Ferencz Rákóczi. He had one and could run.
When he heard what they were looking for, what the gentlemen wanted, he wandered into his cellar somewhere on the side of Tent Hill, found his old tool and showed it to the gentlemen.
No one recognized in the once worn-out gray skill the instrument in which the Dalmatian soul of times gone by had died and which had been destroyed by fire and iron for two generations, destroyed by national power.
But the aggastyan could still handle him.
He practiced in his youth as well as in his youth. He hid with him in the dark forest behind Sátorhegy, where the horsemen of the Sárospatak labancz guard never went and drove away one or another of the old glories, the old pain.
He is running such a song even now, when the lords and nobles of the county went to the house of the god from the gates of the county hall to worship Te deum laudamus, why the king in the hat died and freedom was resurrected. The flag of the county was taken from the front and the old hussar blew its barge in its shadow.-261-
No one knew that sound, that song, but everyone was in tears. It was as if he had always known that sound.
In 1848, the tarogato was also sought. His friends grew up with Gyula Sárossy, why did he call the poem of the Golden Trumpet, why didn’t he call it the Golden Tarragon?
– So show me a crook!
They searched, searched, chased, not found.
The tares of the old hussar in Sátoralja-Újhely also disappeared forever. After the execution of Martinovics and his associates, it had to be hidden well again. And he was no longer the old hussar who would find him again.
41 years ago, in 1860, we searched again. We already had many newspapers, great literature, a hundred people wrote about it, a hundred and a thousand people searched for it.
We haven’t even found your drawing.
Hire went to museums in Munich, but also elsewhere on German soil. They found it. But there was no pen. And then no one could blow. But it was also such a simple, so small tool that no one believed that it would have sounded Rákóczi’s alarm on the plains and ridges of Hungary.
The Schmerling era came again and we forgot the tarog again.
It is the merit and glory of Káldy, but also his special fortune that we ever invented it.
Káldy was driven by a good Hungarian instinct to look for the tarogato.
But he also had an obsession.-262-
He knew that Richard Wagner, when he arranged the arm for his wonderful works and classified the instruments into roles, sighed more than once: I wanted another instrument, the wooden trumpet. If anyone could invent this!
Káldy sacredly believed that the wooden trumpet had once been discovered and that it was none other than the Hungarian tarogato. He knew it was made of wood; although he did not know his shape or structure, he was sure of the trumpet-like figure after his name. And then the real repository would be good for kurucz music.
Schunda was Káldy’s instrumentalist.
This excellent instrument manufacturer was constantly harassed by Káldy to search and research. In the capital, but also elsewhere, with old masters of instrument making and their heirs.
The many harassments reminded József V. Schunda that his father had bought the legacy of an old-fashioned old instrument maker in Buda 40 years ago. He looked at who the craftsman was and where the many broken, crushed, truncated instruments, shards, debris, ducks that we gather at a hundred-year-old instrument maker were.
That instrumentalist from Buda was called Albert Scripsky. He died in 1858 or 1859 somewhere in Lánczhid Street. He was very old and moved to Buda in the previous century, around 1790. And by a wonderful coincidence, they indeed found a memoir-memo note in the records of his estate, in which the instruments added to him for repair were recorded. And they found an entry in German on this note: »Ein alter-263-Darogado «. In Hungarian »an old tarogató«. Year: 1790 or 1791.
There were large piles of wreckage of old instruments in the attic. They tossed the mound apart and found an unknown wooden instrument by a wonderful coincidence. Káldy immediately realized that this was the storehouse.
That was it.
I still have it today. I didn’t see it, but I do see it myself occasionally. But I am already expressing my opinion that the kurucz public repository was a different and simpler instrument. But it is also a Hungarian repository and a real repository, except – so to speak – it is for lordship and is somewhat perfected. Our only benefit.
I saw a drawing of the old storeroom.
Some half-hearted but flaming Czech drawing master once visited the whole world and Hungary more than two hundred years ago. Even before the last Rákóczi era. It was the foolishness to draw all the tools and utensils that we only had in the world. And beautifully, accurately, deftly. There was no branch of industry, agriculture, mining, military and peaceful life, kitchen, clothing, school, religious practice that would not have been drawn. He drew a whole big book full of many thousands of figures.
This book came into the possession of my friend Béla Komjąhy years ago. In this I saw the image of the tarogato among Hungarian instruments from around 1680. I looked carefully and drew myself exactly.-264-
Its shape is different from that of Schunda’s great storeroom. And Schunda, though perfected, made his own after a copy found in Scripsky’s instrumental legacy in Buda.
But the principle and the structure and internal structure are essentially the same in all three. Because Schunda’s repository is two octaves, and the old Hungarian is one octave: this is not a fundamental difference in principle and structure.
The principle is first to be suitable wood. The old storage room was made of plum wood, but it could also be made of pear wood. Scripsky’s, I hear, plum tree. Schunda’s boxwood.
The essential principle, secondly, is that the pipe should not always be of the same diameter as flute, tilinko, pansip and jewish, and all kinds of reed and willow chips. And it shouldn’t be as dilating as it is for the clarinet and oboe or the English horn. But it should be significantly expandable, though not as much as with a copper trumpet.
The end of the old rattling trombone is much more dilated and bulging relatively than that of Schunda’s rattlesnake. But I think that’s probably a big advantage for the Schunda party. In any case, an experiment should or could be done with it.
The old raven had a quill or reed. Schunda used the clarinet’s lip chute instead. I see that for many reasons it is more purposeful that way.
Wood has a special role in making musical instruments. Not all wood is suitable for an instrument in the same way.-265-
The belly side of the violin must be made of pine wood. Even from spruce. And that pine must not be very young or grown in fat soil. The annual rings should stand tightly next to each other. From the side where the pine branch was, do not cut a plank board for the violin. The root of the branch, the cam or stump would interfere with the sound.
Its sides and back, as well as its neck and saddle, are made of maple. His key or twist and bridle, as well as his chisel or looper, are also made of ebony. It could be from someone else. And that’s how the violin is made: the little bass and the big bassoon should or should be made the same way.
We have several types of maple. But beyond the Danube, our people only really know two. Acer negundo and sylvestrist. The green Acer, which is especially fashionable in gardens, is more like maple, the forest brown Acer is more called iharfa. Fairly soft and fibrous white husu wood. It is very suitable for carving, carving and drilling. Today, the flute is also made of hornbeam; once upon a time, you like it, it was just made of maple. Folklore at least holds it that way.
»I was also a moose; maple flute. ”
Today, clarinet, the sip of gypsies, is also made of boxwood, coconut, ebony and grenadil. I don’t think they were made of them centuries ago. They were made of the kind of wood they found at home.
I hear the plowshares in the National Museum are made of plum wood. I didn’t see them. But-266-so I consider it probable. Our ancestors certainly did not work from boxwood, ebony or coconut wood.
The price of Schunda’s taro today is 120 crowns. I think it costs the manufacturer himself fifty to sixty crowns. But once it couldn’t cost more than a few forints. The common soldiers, the court shakers of noble people and lords, and the day and day guards of villages and towns could not have been supplied with more expensive drugs. And then, out of his own amusement, the rich man did not whisper, but the poor man.
But was the tarogato a strange Hungarian instrument?
I will allow him to be known by other peoples, but I am certain that our people especially liked him.
Nor do I think that the instrument that appears in our literary memoirs as a Turkish sip would have been quite similar to the tarogato. The two tools are mentioned side by side in several places. And if they had both been completely equal: I would have called them by only one name. Either just a Turkish sip or just a crook.
What role did he play in the Hungarian band?
Somewhere I read that there were ten violinists, ten harpists and four recorders in the once great ur court orchestra. From this I conclude that it had a much sharper and louder voice than today’s Schunda’s stutter. Tradition really speaks of it as a musical sound heard from afar.
But where was it made and who made the storage?
I really think that at least in the 16th and 17th centuries it was made only in Hungary.-267-
My reasons are simple.
If it had been made in the western neighboring states as well: it would have remained in public use in certain strata of the people, in closed countryside, between mountains, to this day. How much more rudimentary are the bagpipes, the zither, the simple harp, the flute, etc., than the repertoire, and these have not even been completely displaced by the trumpet, the violin, or any other instrument. This is one of the reasons from which I conclude that it was not known to other peoples, especially in the west, but also in the southern neighborhood.
But I have other reasons.
As with us, it was extensively exterminated by Austrian generals and Hungarian government authorities during the 18th century; as if he had just disappeared from the face of the earth, he was lost. There are hardly any of them in foreign museums. Even since 1860, our museum has barely been able to collect two or three. Even in the possession of private hands, there are hardly two or three in the public consciousness.
And if it had been known and made abroad: it would have survived in large numbers even if it went out of fashion. After all, no one abroad exterminated, no one destroyed it. How many fragmentary jugs and plates, how many vile wooden cans some have held for hundreds of years; why should the once more precious repository have disappeared without a trace – in other words -?
However, the question arises as to what kind of manufacturer or artist or craftsman made it in Hungary?-268-
Our old writings do not remember a guild-maker, an archer and other such guilds, but not even such a word. At least to the best of my knowledge.
An ore man who works of iron, copper, silver, tin certainly did not. He had a trumpet with us: that’s for sure. But it’s quite different.
We had two kinds of finer wood products. One is the lathe and the other is the lathe. The main work of the lathe was the decoration of the house spinner and some kitchen utensils and in-room furniture. In addition to these, he mainly made the pipe stem and its ingredients. There were also wood lathes and bone lathes. These two arts were later merged. The lathe operator also made horns made of ox horns, which are still used by Danube canans in the Bakony and in the forests of Somogy and Baranya. But only the Hungarian canines.
The tarogar, I think, was made more by the mouthpieces. Their main works were the mouthpiece, the water bottle, the cup, all kinds of wooden cups, the wooden wooden utensils in the kitchen, the wooden cans, the small cupboards with spices, cases and the like. Straight and hook drill chisels are especially their tool. Fiber and soft wood they worked the most. Tarragora also needed woodless wood to prevent it from splitting easily.
Many of those who wrote about the tarogato, Emil Ponori Thewrewk, Béla Tóth, prominent men, think that the word “tarogató” is just a sound imitation word like “miserable”, “barking”, “béget”, “wailing”, » huhogat «etc. In fact-269-they also believe it is of foreign origin. For example, a foreign ear understands the sound of a trumpet: trara-trara. The Hungarian, hearing this from a stranger, says: tara-tara. And from this the Hungarian method, which indicates repetition and frequency, would have been made the “taragató” and from this the “tarogató.”
All this is a mistake and a hair-splitting. The Hungarian word “store” is quite simple and clear. »He opens his soul«. »Open door, window«. »My open trembling arm«. »Reveal your heart« etc. Beyond the Danube, the word is used for song, singing and even sound. »Let go, expose your voice«. This is how Berzsenyi uses it in one of his poems: “Let others have Maeon horns.”
The word tarogató is a pure Hungarian formation. The root is also clear and pure Hungarian. Why look for the origin of this only in sound imitation and only in a stranger? After all, sound is not imitated in any way by all peoples. The word “violin” is not a sound imitation and is probably not a “drum” and a “horn”.
But I will not continue.
I also found it necessary to note this so briefly in order to highlight how interesting it is in the history of our national identity that the history of the nature of musical instruments and the way they were made.
Káldy also offered Wlassics in his little one’s presentation that he would research the whole history of Hungarian instruments of the last centuries and their use and production and process them for publication. It would, of course, have extended to all traction, wind and percussion instruments, including-270- also for hose clamps. Our ancestors called the bagpipe a hose. And the organ was initially sacred to the holy horn.
However, Káldy went even further in his zeal. He wanted to write the history of Hungarian drama and opera in the 18th century. from the end of the 19th century until 1885, when the royal opera house opened. He also wrote some precious chapters. I don’t know when he has a sequel. And with as much zeal as his, will there ever be.
And now I turn to a very important thing. I consider it very important and I inspired Káldy to do so.
Our national music has been free prey for two hundred years. It is possible to steal from it, whoever likes it and can be as much as the thief has the sense and ability. It is not guarded, it is not protected by anyone. Least of all is government, legislation and international copyright.
Only the Hungarian Royal Academy of Music does not know and only the running Wagner fools do not know what infinite richness and inexhaustible depth there is in Hungarian music. How much power can this give to a music-making talent, how much treasure there is in it waiting to be processed. And he has been waiting in vain for a long time.
The XVIII. and XIX. many great composers of the twentieth century knew this.
The greatest of the great ones, Sebestyén Bach, got acquainted with Hungarian music from where and where he came from, and took soul, enthusiasm, strength and material from his eternal works. He didn’t even hide it, he even admitted it, although he didn’t particularly advertise it. After all, he was German, he wasn’t-271-obligation to advertise. The large German music-savvy audience still likes his Hungarian things today, but he believes that all this is only a product of his individual flame spirit and not the work of the Hungarian spirit.
In more than thirty compositions by József Haydn, Hungarian music is the dominant, the yeast. I have already written that Gotterhalte also learned the Austrian anthem from a Hungarian folk song. Many doubt this. Letters come to me full of doubt. But I will also publish the musical works. All doubts must be removed.
The flaming Beethoven, Ferencz Schubert, the author of the Magic Hunter Károly M. Weber all exploited Hungarian music. In naming their works, they often referred to the Hungarian origin of their works. But we must find it natural that profit and glory belonged to them and not to the Hungarian nation.
All of this is largely due to the XVIII. century masterpieces.
In the XIX. In the 19th century, the fertilizing effect of Hungarian music spread beyond Austria, the Czech Republic and Germany. Berlioz Hektor, Massenet, Delibes, Motique, Sarasate, Mascagni are already French and Italian and they could not and did not want to escape the conquering power of our music. But next to them, an entire army of German composers stretched their strength to make our music. Raff Joachim, Rubinstein, Brahms, Henry Bülow are pretty big names among them.
Their works are not perfect. In majesty and depth they do not approach kurucz music and Lavotta and Bihari-272-and Erkel. But their efforts are still a clear testament to the greatness and interest of Hungarian music.
Many wild strangers were destined to be born in the land of our country. János Fuss, János Hummel Nepomuk, Ferencz Liszt, Károly Goldmark. But they live abroad, their flame spirit is secular to foreign nations, and we have taken the jewel from Hungarian music: all their individual jewels and nothing flows from us. It is no more a burden than with Liszt when they are old.
Many musicians were not born in Hungary, but they were sown to us, they mastered, cultivated and distributed our music here, but their life and operation do not even belong to the history of Hungarian creed and are not even a component of our national self-esteem. Such is Beethoven’s teacher Albrechtsberger, such is Mihály Haydn, who were conductors in Győr. Such is the former famous conductor of Oradea Dittersdorf and such is the Csermák resting in Veszprém. All the Hungarian works he composed, but we can only claim that Csermák is ours.
It was some kind of Czech musician in Vienna at the beginning of the last century, near Beethoven. It’s amazing how he became Hungarian.
Tradition holds that when Bihari went to Vienna during the Congress of Vienna to give a concert of Hungarian music in front of all the ensemble princes of the world: Csermák listened to Bihari and its wonderful Kurucz and non-Kurucz Hungarian music. -273-Csermas then went crazy under the influence of this music. Her whole body trembled and she ran frantically to the bastions with her head alone and raged and ran there until morning.
In the morning he calmed down, went home, sat in his room and sat there one day, one night. Then he approached his comrades, called them to him, set him in the stove, and had all his sheet music: there he threw it into the fire before their eyes, burned it. And he said these words:
– And now, while I’m alive, I don’t play or listen to music other than Hungarian music. I will become Hungarian and go to Hungary – forever.
He came, he became Hungarian forever.
One hundred sweet-and-sad adventures are known beyond the Danube tradition. If I live, maybe I’ll tell you. His creation, as far as I know, is the song »Beetle, Yellow Beetle«. This is not the most beautiful and perfect Hungarian melody. However, Ferencz Liszt, for example, could not create an original of this value in spite of all worlds.
Hungarian music needs a Hungarian soul.
