Abstracts of Submitted Papers 2013

From Kálmán Imre to Emmerich Kálmán: Framing Hungary in "Der Zigeunerprimas"

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Viennese operetta often reduced Hungary to gypsies, uncontrolled passion, “paprika,” and an elemental link with a mythic past. But for the most successful Hungarian composer of operettas, Kálmán Imre—or Emmerich Kálmán, as he became known after moving to Vienna in 1908—these tropes could not be taken seriously. This paper examines how Kálmán both embodied and exploited Hungarian clichés and simultaneously put these clichés in quotation marks, enjoying their pleasure but clearly marking them as fantasy.

Kálmán began writing operettas in Budapest, where his early works (such as “Tatárjárás” [1908] and “Az Obsitos” [1910]) contained relatively little that the Viennese would recognize as Hungarian—as was conventional for operetta in Budapest at the time. “Der Zigeunerprimas” (1912), however, his first operetta written for Vienna, presents a different picture. Loosely based on the life of the real violinist Rácz Pali, it concerns a multigenerational family of Roma musicians struggling with tradition and modernization. Despite “gypsy” music and characters, and a marketing campaign touting his Hungarian authenticity, Kálmán and his Viennese librettists treated the material with a light hand, portraying characters with humanity and depth who assume Roma garb and clichés to make a living rather than possessing the wild souls of legend. Yet he still offered a tribute to the artistry of Rácz Pali. This suggests that the Hungarian in Viennese operetta could be more self-conscious and more multifaceted than simple exoticism, and its cosmopolitanism transcended self versus other binaries.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Micaela Baranello is a doctoral candidate in musicology at Princeton University, where she is writing her dissertation on “Silver Age” Viennese operetta, focusing on the works of Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Leo Fall, and Oscar Straus. She has presented work at the American Musicological Society’s annual meeting as well as conferences at Harvard and Oxford. Her work has been published in Opera Quarterly, The New York Times, and MLA Notes. In the 2009-10 academic year she held a Fulbright study grant in Austria.

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The Smithsonian Folklife Festival

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
The Hungarian Heritage: Roots to Revival program at the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival will highlight the vitality of Hungary’s cultural heritage in these areas. It will bring to the National Mall in Washington highly skilled masters and apprentices from rural Central Europe who maintain the traditional knowledge acquired in their native environments. The Festival program will also bring musicians, dancers, and artisans from more urban settings who have revived many of these older traditions to make them part of their daily lives.
The Hungarian Heritage program will provide a one-of-a-kind opportunity to experience the rich and authentic traditions of Magyars, to better understand the significance of the Hungarian folk revival movement, and to serve as a meeting place for folk aficionados from around the world.
The Hungarian Heritage program is produced by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in partnership with the Balassi Institute, Budapest.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Ágnes Fülemile (PhD) is currently the director of the Balassi Institute Hungarian Cultural Center in New York. She has degrees in Ethnography, History and History of Arts from the University of ELTE, Budapest. She has been a senior research associate at the Institute of Ethnology of Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She has been teaching American university students at Education Abroad Programs in Budapest for 20 years. She has been a Fulbright scholar twice (UC Berkeley, Metropolitan Museum of Arts, Rutgers University) and was the visiting Hungarian Chair Professor at Indiana University, Bloomington in 2006-2009.

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From Detroit to Padova. The Romance of a Gypsy Violinist and the Daughter of a Millionaire

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Jancsi Rigó, the world famous Hungarian Gypsy violinist met Clara Ward at the end of the 19th century in Paris. Clara was born in 1873 in Detroit, she was the daughter of captain Eber Brock Ward, who had iron and steel manufacturing in the United States and he was one of the richest men of the State of Michigan. Clara married a Belgian prince Marie Joseph Anatole Erie de Chimay-Caraman, although she fell in love with Jancsi Rigó. Finally, she divorced in 1897 and married Jancsi. This was one of the biggest scandals in high society in the 19th century in Europe, moreover, all around the world. Later Clara became a dancer in the Folies Bergère and in the Moulin Rouge. The famous French painter, count Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec made a lithograph of her and Rigó, called „Idylle Princière”. This painting now can be seen in Cleveland. Clara was photographed on numerous postcards. The publication of her photos was forbidden in the German Empire by Kaiser Wilhelm II. After their famous marriage Clara and Jancsi divorced fairly soon. Clara moved to Italy and met her third husband. After a few years she married her fourth husband, also an Italian.In the last years of her life she lived in Padova. She died there in 1916. Rigó remained in the United States working as a violinist in a Hungarian restaurant in New York, called Little Hungary. He was not as successful as earlier in Europe. He died probably in 1927. His tomb can be found in the Kenisco Cemetery.
The story of Clara Ward and Rigó Jancsi’s scandalous marriage reflects the cultural and social history of that time, and especially women’s and minorities’ status in a changing civil society, carrying the remains of the feudal society. At the same time it is a special item in the American–Hungarian relations.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Csaba Katona, historian, graduated from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, specializing in modern Hungarian history. He started working at the National Archives of Hungary in 1998 as Archivist (1998–2010), later as communication officer (1999–2011) as the Secretary of the Director General (2003, 2005–2001), as Head of Department (2003–2004), as councillor (2010–2011) and as editor, responsible for several historical and archival journals (Levéltári Közlemények [2002–2004; 2006–2010], Levéltári Szemle [2000–2005; 2009–2010], ArchivNet [2003–2004; 2007–2010] and Turul [2010]). He was also a member of the Committee of the Association of Hungarian Archivists (2008–2011). Now he works at the Institute of History, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences as an associate research fellow and as communication officer of the Research Centre. His research field is the cultural and social history of Hungary in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since 2007 he has held the positions: secretary of the Hungarian Historical Society, member of the editorial staff of the historical journal Múlt-kor, was one of the editors of Világtörténet and Turul and editor of the homepage of the Research Centre for the Humanities and of the Institute of History.

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YouTube as Hungarian Dance Archive: Mining for Gold in a Popular Culture Source

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
New technology in web presentation has resulted in an explosion of availability of material that formerly could only be found in libraries. This has included projects such as the Hungarian Academy’s Film Library Database Archive of Folkdance (Néptánc Adatbázis Filmtár).

These projects have been met and matched by the efforts of amateur folk dancers and musicians developing their own libraries on the popular website, YouTube. Many take as their goal to reproduce and experience the dances and events of Hungarian villagers in Transylvania and other rural Hungarian areas during the mid-Twentieth Century and before, under the rubric of táncház.

Whereas in the late 20th century, táncház enthusiasts passed tape cassettes and files among themselves to share records of great folkdancers and musicians and learn from them, now these films are posted on the web, joined by demonstrations and lessons by teachers and interpreters. Also available are performances by contemporary dancers, musicians, and dance groups. A new category of material has emerged as well—videos created by participants to convey their personal meanings and experience of folk music and dance through content and presentation.

This paper will explore the range of material relating to Hungarian folkdance posted on YouTube, discussing the sorts of questions that can be explored though this rich source. YouTube collections offer us a way to assess contemporary creativity within a revival movement and changes in attitudes toward aspects of dance while building a picture of the significance and specific meanings within social dance in current practice.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Judith E. Olson is a historical musicologist working in the area of traditional Hungarian music and dance in Romania, Hungary, and among Hungarians in the United States and Canada. She enjoys combining research of activity in Hungarian dance camps and within revival groups with analysis and discussion of dance structure, process, creativity and improvisation. Another favorite topic is the overlap of traditional and revival and constructs of authenticity among participants. She presents frequently at venues such as the International Council for Traditional Music, the International Musicological Society, the Society for Ethnomusicology and AHEA, She performs this research, and also organizes táncház, dance parties, in New York, under the auspices of the American Hungarian Folklore Centrum.

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