Verbunkos

Verbunkos (Hungarian: [ˈvɛrbuŋkoʃ]), other spellings being Verbounko, Verbunko, Verbunkas, Werbunkos, Werbunkosch, Verbunkoche; sometimes known simply as the hongroise or ungarischer Tanz (Bellman 2001) is an 18th-century Hungarian dance and music genre.

The verbunkos is typically in a pair of sections, slow (lassú), with a characteristic dotted rhythm, and fast (friss), with virtuosic running-note passages. In some cases, this slow-fast pair alternates at greater length (Bellman 2001).

The name is derived from the German word Werbung, a noun derived from the verb werben that means, in particular, "to recruit"; verbunkos—recruiter. This music and dance was played during military recruiting before the Habsburg Emperors, who were also Kings of Hungary, introduced conscription in 1849. A group of a dozen hussars performed the dance in different parts, with the leading sergeant opening with slow movements, then the lower officers joining for more energetic parts, and the youngest soldiers concluding the dance with jumps and spur-clicking (Bellman 2001).

Despite its name, the melodies originate from Hungarian folk and popular music and have been sometimes attributed to Romani people (Gypsies), because the accompaniment was usually played by Romani musicians in characteristic Romani style (Bellman 2001; Head 2005, 89; Loya 2011, 17).

The Romani composer János Bihari (1764–1827) remains the most well-known composer and interpreter of verbunkos. Eighty-four compositions of his remain (Sisa 1990, 301). Bihari was an accomplished violinist during his lifetime, and he played in the court in Vienna during the entire Congress of Vienna in 1814. Another composer of verbunkos was József Kossovits (d. c. 1819).

Already with the establishment in 1837 of the Hungarian National Theatre in Pest, the verbunkos style had begun to change under the influence of the first director of the theatre and Hungary's most important operatic composer, Ferenc Erkel, whose most successful operas were Hunyadi László (1844) and Bánk bán (1861) (Sisa 1990, 301).

Haydn incorporated verbunkos into the well-known "Gypsy Rondo" piano trio, composed in 1795. Béla Bartók's Contrasts (1938), a trio for clarinet, piano and violin, is in three movements, the first of which is named Verbunkos. His Violin Concerto No. 2 is also an example of verbunkos style.