"To speak of Hungarian folk-songs is hardly permissible since a song includes the words as well as the music. Hungary is a polyglot country, and a song belonging through its words, as well as its notes, to the vast majority of the inhabitants is therefore an impossibility. The Magyars, of course, claim to be the only genuine Hungarians, and since they settled there almost a thousand years ago and are still indisputably the dominating race of the country, their claim may remain uncontested. Even the fact that the Magyars are but half of the total of a strange mixture, made up of heterogeneous elements, would not necessarily render invalid any pretension that their songs are the genuine Hungarian songs. But the proud Magyar will admit that Hungarian music is first and foremost gipsy music, Hungarian gipsy music. How much the Magyars have originally contributed to this music does not appear to be clear. Perhaps more research may lead to other results, but the now generally accepted conjecture gives the rhythmic features to the Magyars and the characteristic ornaments to the gipsies. It will probably not be denied that this presumption looks more like a compromise than the fruit of thorough scientific investigation. Furthermore, rhythm and ornaments are in Hungarian music so closely knit that it seems incomprehensible that they should have originated as characteristic features of two races so widely divergent. If this is so, however, we may hope that out of our own negro melodies and the songs of other elements of our population real American folk-music will yet after centuries develop, though it is to be feared that neither the negroes nor other inhabitants of the United States will be in a position to preserve sufficient naïveté, indispensable for the production of real folk-music. Otherwise the analogon is promising, the despised gipsy taking socially about the same position in Hungary as our own negro here.
"The Hungarian music as known to-day will impress everybody as a unit; so much so that its restrictions are obvious, and likely to produce a monotonous effect if too much of it is offered. Above all, this music is purely instrumental and therefore different from all other folk-music. It is based, though not exclusively, on a peculiar scale, the harmonic minor scale with an augmented fourth. Some commentators read this scale differently by starting at the dominant. Thus it appears as a major scale with a diminished second and a minor sixth, a sort of major-minor mode. The latter scale can be found on the last page of Liszt's Fifteenth Rhapsody, where it runs from _a_ to _a_, thus: _a_, _b_-flat, _c_-sharp, _d_, _e_, _f_, _g_-sharp and _a_. But for every scale of this construction a dozen of the former may be gathered in the Rhapsodies. While the notes are identical in both, the effect upon the ear is different, according to the starting note, just as the descending melodic minor scale is _de facto_ the same as the relative major scale, but not in its effect. The austerity and acidity of the altered harmonic minor scale is the chief characteristic of the melodious and harmonic elements of Hungarian music. Imbued with a plaintive and melancholy flavour this mode will always be recognised as the gipsy kind. To revel in sombre melodies seems to be one half of the purpose of Hungarian music, and in logical opposition a frolicsome gaiety the other half. In the regular czardas, a rustic dance at the wayside inn on the Puszta, the melancholy _lassan_ alternates in well-proportioned intervals with the extravagant and boisterous _friska_. The rhythm may be said to be a sort of spite-rhythm, very decisive in most cases, but most of the time in syncopation. This rhythm proves conclusively that the origin of Hungarian music is instrumental, for even in cantabile periods, where the melody follows a more dreamy vein, the syncopations are seldom missing in the accompaniment. At every point one is reminded that the dance was father to this music, a dance of unconventional movements where the dancer seems to avoid the step which one expected him to take, and instead substitutes a queer but graceful jerk. Where actual jerks in the melody would be inopportune, the ornaments are at hand and help to prevent every semblance of conventionality.