Abstracts of Submitted Papers 2015

Music for Everyone

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Two concepts: music and disability
The first one implies happiness, the other one designates fear and anxiety. Although people generally connote contrary feelings to these two concepts, music and disability share many features. One feature, universality, is best manifested in Zoltán Kodály’s worldwide-known philosophy: ”Music is for everyone.” Music is really for everyone; each of us perceives, understands, interprets it in our own way. The universal nature of music and the relevance of special perception, understanding and ways of performing music provides endless possibilities for persons with disability to express themselves. The reflection of the Kodály heritage is introduced via interviews in one stage of this study.

Before the interviews the study focuses on stereotypical images which have been accompanying blind people, who are believed to be gifted musicians. The study reveals what is behind the above stereotypical statement in the first stage. And in the second one, with the help of the interviews, it aims to answer the questions whether there are any technical specialties and if yes, what are those which make it possible for blind and sighted musicians to offer joint performances in Hungary. With this study the author wishes to pay tribute to Kodály Zoltán’s philosophy which inspires thousands of people worldwide, to go beyond borders of whatever nature.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Mária Flamich teaches English as a Foreign Language at the Primary and Vocational School of the Blind, Budapest, Hungary. At the same time, she is also a doctoral candidate at the Faculty of Education and Psychology at Eötvös Loránd University. Her current interests are perspectives of cultural disability studies in higher education with special regard to music, disability memoir and its reflections in music. In the spring semester of the academic year 2011/2012, Maria Flamich was a Fulbright researcher at the English Department of the University of California at Berkeley.

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CULTURE COLLECTOR Ferenc Tobak [90-min. documentary film]

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
CULTURE COLLECTOR is about the Csángó (Hungarians) of Moldavia and Transylvania in Romania. FERENC TOBAK, a Hungarian-American, goes on an exotic road trip in search of old bagpipe tunes and finds folk musicians, Gypsies, songs, dances, tales, superstitions, customs, & costumes. He encounters such craftspeople as a potter, a wood-turner, & bagpipe, flute, and spoon-makers. While it’s the story of a man and his love for the music and people he collected from, we also see the struggles and thrills of collecting folklore. (90 min. documentary film)


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Sally Gáti received her Master of Arts degree from the Ethnographic film program at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1969. She was a language instructor at City College of San Francisco until her retirement in 2012. Sally Gáti's documentary video productions include Traditions for Sale (1996), STARTING OVER IN AMERICA: The Story of the Hungarian 56ers (2003), BAY CITY LUV: Singin’ ‘n Livin’ on the Edge (2005), DAN CYTRON: One Artist’s POV (2011), ABOUT MY FATHER Sam Cytron: A Life in Music (2013). http://gatiproductions.blogspot.com/

Ferenc Tobak, a musician and instrument maker in Hungary moved to the United States in 1991. Since 1998 he has made a personal effort to document the bagpipe traditions of the Hungarian Csángó people of Moldavia in Eastern Romania.

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Multilingual Soliloquies: The unaccompanied voice in the works of György Kurtág

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
György Kurtág is one of the most highly regarded composers of our time. Born in 1926 into a Hungarian-speaking Jewish family in Lugoj, Romania (known until 1918 as Lugos, Hungary), Kurtág grew up speaking Hungarian, Romanian, and German. He lived in Hungary from 1945 until the early 1990s, when he moved to Western Europe, eventually settling in southwestern France. He is known, among other things, for his very sophisticated relationship to languages and literatures, having worked with texts by such giants as Attila József, Hölderlin, Kafka, Beckett, and Akhmatova. Polyglot from an early age, Kurtág has set poetry in Hungarian, German, Russian, English, French, ancient Greek and, recently, Romanian (there is also a short, unpublished Italian fragment of Ungaretti's "M'illumino d'immenso"). Several of these works use a single human voice without any kind of instrumental accompaniment. My presentation will address this rather unusual medium and examine how the entirety of the musical material is generated from the poetic word alone. These works, whose performance can be described as a heightened dramatic recitation, amount to a personal interpretation and a perceptive analysis of the literary sources.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Peter Laki was born in Budapest where he studied musicology at the Franz Liszt Conservatory (now University) of Music. After further studies in Paris, he moved to the USA in 1982 and earned a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. For many years he worked for the Cleveland Orchestra; he is currently on the faculty of Bard College. He is the editor of "Bartók and his World" (Princeton University Press) and numerous articles on Bartók and more recent Hungarian composers (Veress, Ligeti, Kurtág).

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Domján József and Qi Baishi, Friends Forever

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
József Domján [1907 – 1992] is one of Hungary’s most famous and prolific artists in the 20th Century. His works are in the collections of many major museums in North America, but also around the world. Domján was born into a poor working class family in Budapest and due to his exceptional talent and pure luck, he became a recognized artists before WWII and following, during the Communist regime. He has received the Munkáçsy and Kossuth Prizes and In 1956, after the fall of the Revolution, he immigrated with his family to the West, eventually settling in Tuxedo Park, New York.
Interesting and noteworthy, that in 1955 he was invited to visit, exhibit and study in China by the Mao Ce-Tung government. This visit resulted in 15 exhibitions in important Chinese cities and a study tour, which was a determining influence on his works throughout his life. During this visit, he was fortunate to meet and work with one of the most important Chinese artists, Qi Baishi [1864 – 1957]. The impact of Domján’s visit to China and his meetings with Qi Baishi are important part of his artistic imagery and symbolisms, even in his latest works.
In 2014 October, the Peking Hungarian Cultural Center, Balassi Institute, opened a successful exhibition of Domján Art and entitled the exhibition Domján and Qi Baishi, Friends Forever. In fact, it is true, since Domján is the only Hungarian artists who met Qi and has carried the reminiscence of these meetings throughout his life, thereby creating a connections between Chinese and Hungarian contemporary art. In 1955 Qi Baishi was already 92 years old and he passed away 2 years later.
To fully understand Domján Art, we must consider the importance of his visit to China. The presentation will focus on the 2014 exhibition in Peking and how important the 1955 five months study and exhibition tour was to one and only Hungarian artist who had a chance to visit China during the Mao Ce-Tung regime.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Kalman Magyar is the director of the American Hungarian Folklore Centrum and its related organization, the American Hungarian Museum, Passaic, New Jersey. The Museum’s long and meaningful association with Domján Art and Family makes one of its mission to keep Domján Art alive in Hungary and in the USA, and assist in bringing recognition to the works of this artist and his wife, Evelyn, a lifelong partner in his art.

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The Opera Erkel Should Have Written: Revisionist History in Bánk bán

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Throughout centuries of subjugation, Hungary retained a fierce pride in its national identity, a pride that was often bolstered by the arts. In 19th-century opera, composers transcended borders to amalgamate the normative forms and models of the West with indelible Hungarian features. They extracted subjects from Hungary’s autonomous past, employed musical monikers of the style hongrois, and—perhaps most importantly—set Hungarian-language librettos to music.
Ferenc Erkel’s 1861 opera Bánk Bán, based on the Katona play, manifests this fusion. The opera has become arguably the most influential work in the Hungarian operatic canon. It was pivotal in developing Hungarian music and was a powerful expression of Herder's notion of the Volkgeist. As ideas of national identity strengthened during the early 20th century, Kálmán Nádasdy and Nándor Rékai subjected it to large-scale revisions in 1940. These revisions followed Bartók’s polemics toward 19th-century Hungarian music, and responded to the ideals of Hegelian nationalist historiography that influenced the development and preservation of other marginalized musical repertories. The goal was to make Bánk Bán the ultimate expression of Magyarság (Hungarianess).
As was the case in the original composition, the revisionists sought models from beyond Hungary’s borders, even while they purged many of the Western formal elements they felt were antithetical to Magyarság. This endeavor thus brought the opera’s libretto closer to the original play and exemplifies the troublesome search for an autochthonous artistic voice during the turbulent interwar period. It stands as an example of opera’s social efficaciousness, as well as its capacity for cultural preservation in the face of domineering influences.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Zachary Milliman received his M.M. from the University of Utah after completing his B.M. at Brigham Young University. His research has been featured in two conferences for the American Musicological Society, the Confutati Symposium, and the symposium he created, Opera Periphereia, and has been published in the Journal for the International Allegiance of Women in Music. His current research projects are centered on Hungarian opera, particularly of the mid-20th century. He resides in Anchorage, Alaska and is a lecturer and music instructor at the University of Alaska Anchorage, as well as private instructor, coach and clinician. Zachary is the Artistic Director for Bel Canto Alaska, and Music Director for First United Methodist Church. As a tenor, has has sung leading roles in several operas and concert works. He was recently heard in Anchorage Opera’s production of Amahl and the Night Visitors, as the tenor soloist in Bach’s St. John Passion, as well as on a recital tour of Alaska with guitarist Dr. Armin Abdihodzic, sponsored by the University of Alaska.

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Seeing, and not Seeing, Borders: Hungarian Identity in Dance

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
A principal strength of the Táncház movement, revival of Hungarian village dance and music going on for the past 45 years, is that the same dances are done in the same way throughout the world. Dancers from very different backgrounds in Japan, Canada, Hungary, and Romania can dance well together, even if they have just met.
Although dances move smoothly across borders, beneath the surface lie very different ideas about how Hungarian dance relates to identity. Differing paths to modernity of the wide range of places Hungarians live mean that in some areas, the dances as common village practice were lost sooner. Furthermore, Hungarians traveling far from ancestoral homes tended to establish themselves as Hungarians, less as regional descendents. For Hungarians in Hungary or the United States, a sense of Hungarianness may be more all-encompassing than for those living in villages in Transylvania practicing the dances that used to be done socially in their own backyards. A young man in Kalotaszentkirály, Romania, told me, “Why should I do the dances from Mezöszég, I know only 6-7 figures of Mezöszégi dances and I know 200 or 300 figures of Kalotaszeg.”
How do these different attitudes express themselves in dance learning, approach to dance, and improvisation? How do differing attitudes affect seeing the dances as ours and our view of continuity with the past? What are the implications of these attitudes in terms of a sense of self as Hungarian? Our conference location, in the heartland of Transylvanian dance, facilitates useful comparisons.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Judith E. Olson (M.Phil, NYU, M.M. University of Colorado) is an 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 combines research in traditional settings, in Hungarian dance camps, and within revival groups with analysis and discussion of dance structure, process, and improvisation. 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 organizes táncház (dance parties) in New York City under the auspices of the American Hungarian Folklore Centrum. A secondary research area is 19th century German music and musical culture.

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Confronting Legacies of Ethnic-National Discourse in Scholarship and Practice: Traditional Music and Dance in Central Transylvania

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Ethnic-national discourse in traditional music and dance practice and theory in Central Transylvania is pervasive and persistent. Scholarship in the field has been deeply implicated in the elaboration and imposition of national ideologies by cultural elites and, while ethnicity is a naturalized category, the local practice of music and dance in social life need not be primarily so marked. The identification of traditional music and dance in this region as Romanian, Hungarian or Gypsy as established by 20th century scholarship and as institutionalized in practice is examined and critiqued. The beginnings of a re-theorization moving away from the re-iteration of these divisions is noted and the possibility of escaping from them in practice is considered.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Colin Quigley PhD. Senior Lecturer and Course Director in Ethnomusicology; Emeritus Professor, University of California Los Angeles. He was Curator for the 1999 Smithsonian Folklife Festival Romania Program, has published in journals such as Ethnomusicology and the Yearbook for Traditional Music, and has contributed the Music, Dance and Custom collection to the Indiana University EVIADA project. He is the author most recently of "The Hungarian Dance House Movement and the Revival of Transylvanian String Band Music" in the Oxford Handbook of Music Revivals and holds a Balassi Intezet advanced study grant at the University of Szeged in 2015.

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