Lawrence democrat. (Lawrenceburg, Tenn.) 1884-1925, 1891-05-15
GYPSIES AS MUSICIANS.
They Are Clever Performers But Are Not
Creators of Music,

SredtOrS Ol MUSIC,
- Gypsies are clever performers, but no
creators of music. Provided with an
abnormal amount of initiative power,
and very pliable and cunning nature,
they became the peoples musical per-
formers in countries whose national
music excels in originality, fantastic
rubatos, and certain rhapsodical
spirit, too free to wear the yoke of a
Systematically organized score. There
are no French, English, German or
Italian gypsy musicians known to the
world. In these countries, the respec-
tive national melodies of which stand
any amount of disciplined time and per-
formance, the gypsies cultivate rather
fortune-telling, tinkering, etc With
their stupendous gift for imitation and
playing by ear, they know how to seize
and render those subtleties which resist
pen and ink, and constitute the very es-
sence of the Moorish-Spanish, the Rou-
manian and Hungarian national music,
and accordingly it is in these coun-
tries where they flourish as the
peoples musicians. In Spain-whose
singers and dancers from Cordova
and Cadiz (Gades) excelled above
all others at great festivals of an
cient Rome, where music and dance
have an even share in the peoples heart
even to-day as well as in Roumania, the
practical enthusiasm of the gypsies
pilots them in music and dance alike,
catering to the popular taste in both
directions with equal energy. In Hun
gary, where the song, with its epic or
lyrical traditions, takes the lead, the
dance being only incidental, the gyp-
sizes never dance, unless when COM
manded to perform their buffoon-like
gestures and contortions, or the So
called czigany kevek Gypsy wheeD, an
athletic feat in which hands and feet
combine to initiate the revolving of a
wheel, following the carriages along
the roadside, to the merriment of the
gay lookers-on, and all that for hum
BILE penny In Spain they play the ma
tlonal guitar or mandolin; in Hungary,
the string quintet, the clarinet lin imi-
tation of the ancient tarogato and the
still surviving tilinko and czimbalom.
The long-drawn walls and re-revolv-
ing turns and runs of Moorish origin in
Spanish music suit them just as much
as their restless and nervous temper
ament like to overload with unappro.
pirate but dazzling lace-works and
fringes the pathetic or allegro move
ments of Hungarian music.
1t is in this sort of virtuoso aspira
tions, mingled with incorrect BASES and
harmonies, that their creative genius
finds free vent, not only in Hungarian.
but in any kind of music they happen
to play. Some of them are undoubtedly
virtuosi SUI generis. AS for their gen
eral musical aptitude, there is probably
no other race existing that could rival
them. Every village in Hungary has at
least one or more gypsy bands; some
cities count them by the score. Only a
small number of their best leaders
know the notes, and still most of their
bands have a large repertoire, comprising
Italian, French and German operate
and all nations dance music, beginning
with offenbach and Strauss, and wind
ing up with Wagner!
The best gypsy bands, as well as bad
ones arc usually trained by some
stray genius of non-gypsy musicians
in some exceptional cases also by the
learned leader himself, from whom each
member of the band learns by ear his
own part. The detached grinding once
over, it is the ensemble that takes its
turn TO blossom gradually into that in
toxicating, sometimes frantic fire and
swing which turned the head of many
Hungarian and inspired even some
foreign musician to such an extend that
they deigned to appropriate for them
selves, endorsing with their own names
some of the most beautiful Hungarian
melodies. Francis Korbay, in Harper's
Magazine.