Dances of Galánta

The Dances of Galánta, an exhilarating celebration of Hungarian verbunkos music, was written as a showpiece for the Budapest Philharmonic on its 80th anniversary in 1933. Although there is an element of nostalgia in it – Galánta had long been part of Czechoslovakia by then – the tunes were not recalled from the composer’s boyhood there but selected from a collection of Galánta gypsy material published in Vienna. The score is no exercise in history, however. It is alive with the excitement Kodály must have felt when he first heard this kind of thing. The tunes are worked into a form familiar to the gypsy bands which had traditionally provided the music for the verbunkos or recruiting presentations performed by hussars touring the country to attract young men into joining the Austro-Hungarian army.

The Dances of Galánta begins with a stirring call for attention on cellos. Repeated by a solo horn, it is then passed round woodwind and strings alongside a virtuoso display on clarinet. The first dance, introduced by the clarinet, carries the emotional weight of the work. Headed Andante maestoso, it reappears three times in alternation with quicker material – an elegant Allegro moderato with prominent flute and piccolo, a graceful Allegro con moto featuring the oboe, and a vigorously syncopated Allegro. Instead of recalling the Andante maestoso for the third time immediately after the Allegro, Kodály interpolates a slow episode mingling lugubrious horn harmonies with an attractive woodwind melody and plunges from that into an Allegro vivace which is the quickest, most dynamic and most brilliantly scored of all the dances. After a last, brief echo of the Andante maestoso, the Allegro vivace material returns at a still quicker tempo to generate an explosive ending.

Lento - andante maestoso - alegretto moderato - andante maestoso - allegro con moto, grazioso - andante maestoso - allegro - poco meno mosso - allegro vivace - andante maestoso - allegro molto vivace

Known as Galánta when it was in Hungary and Galanta now that it is part of Slovakia, the small town on the Danube Plain means little more to most people than a stop on the line between Vienna and Budapest. But to Kodály, son of the station master, it was the place not only where he grew up but also where he first encountered Hungarian folk song and where he first experienced the sound of an orchestra - or, rather, a gypsy band playing traditional verbunkos music. Both kinds of music, pure Magyar folk song and gypsy-influenced verbunkos, left a profound impression on him and were to have a fundamental influence on his career as composer, musicologist and teacher.

The Dances of Galánta, an exhilarating celebration of verbunkos music and one of the most popular of all Kodály’s works, was written as a showpiece for the Budapest Philharmonic on its 80th anniversary in 1933. Although there is an element of nostalgia in it - Galánta had long been part of Czechoslovakia by then - the tunes were not recalled from the composer’s boyhood but selected from a collection of Galánta gypsy material published in Vienna nearly 130 years earlier. The score is no exercise in history, however. It is alive with the excitement Kodály must have felt when he first heard this kind of thing, while the melodic material, which sounds unfailingly fresh as he treats it, is worked into a form familiar to the gypsy bands. They had traditonally provided the music for the verbunkos or recruiting presentations performed by hussars touring the country to attract young men into joining the Austro-Hungarian army. The show would begin with a slow and dignified dance by a sergeant and would become increasingly animated and acrobatic as the more agile lower ranks joined in. After conscription was introduced in the middle of the 19th century there was no need for such displays but the musical form survived and developed, producing the csárdás in the process.

Kodály’s Dances of Galánta begins with a stirring call for attention on cellos. Repeated by a solo horn, it is then passed round woodwind and strings alongside a virtuoso display on clarinet. The first dance, introduced by the clarinet at the end of its cadenza, is the dignified item and the one that carries the emotional weight of the work. Headed Andante maestoso, it reappears three times in alternation, like the slow section of a csárdás, with quicker material - an elegant Allegro moderato with prominent flute and piccolo, a graceful Allegro con moto featuring oboe with flute and piccolo again, and a vigorously syncopated Allegro. Instead of recalling the Andante maestoso for the third time immediately after the Allegro, Kodály interpolates a slow episode mingling lugubrious horn harmonies with an attractive woodwind melody and plunges from that into an Allegro vivace which is the quickest, most dynamic and most brilliantly scored of all the dances. After a last, brief echo of the Andante maestoso and another clarinet cadenza, the Allegro vivace material returns at a still quicker tempo to generate an explosive ending.