Accepted Abstracts

How ‘Hungarian’ was Joseph Joachim?

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Joseph Joachim, arguably the 19th century’s greatest violinist, lies buried in the cemetery of Berlin’s Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche. In his maturity, Joachim was the founding director of Berlin’s Hochschule für Musik, a senator of the Königliche Akademie der Künste, and a leading gatekeeper of the Prussian musical establishment. His elaborate Evangelical Christian funeral was treated as an affair of state. Joachim’s profound musicianship was widely regarded as a German trait, and he was eulogized at his death as a ‘German artist’ for his immersion in the ‘inner world.’

Nevertheless, Joachim began his life as a Hungarian Jew: he was born into a family of Jewish wool merchants in Köpcsény in Western Hungary, the present-day Austrian town Kittsee. He lived in Pest from the age of two to the age of seven, when the great flood of 1838 destroyed his family home and his father’s business. The following year he was sent to his relatives in Vienna, and eventually to Leipzig to be trained as a virtuoso. He never returned to Hungary to live.

Born in 1831, Joachim grew up in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when Latin was still the official language of Hungary. He spoke German, and, like Liszt, he never knew more than a few phrases of Magyar. Nevertheless, Joachim turned to his Hungarian background for expressions of deep feeling and authenticity, and he composed several pieces in the Hungarian manner. He acknowledged his complex cultural heritage, once notably saying “as a violinist, I am German; as a composer, I am Hungarian.” In his lifetime, and for years thereafter, Joachim’s Hungarian violin concerto was deemed his greatest work, and considered an enduring masterpiece of the violinist's repertoire.

In this talk, I will examine Joachim’s Hungarian youth, his connection to the land of his birth, and offer thoughts on the question “How ‘Hungarian’ was Joseph Joachim?”



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Robert Whitehouse Eshbach is an honors graduate of Yale University (BA), where he majored in music history and minored in German literature. He studied violin at the Vienna Conservatory (now the Konservatorium Wien Privatuniversität), and earned a Master of Music degree in violin at New England Conservatory. His recent publications and invited papers have focused on nineteenth-century musicians: Joachim, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Reinecke, Ede Reményi, and Wilhelmine Norman-Neruda. He has presented papers in London, Oxford, Cardiff, Southampton, Meiningen, Leipzig, Weimar, New York, Boston, New Haven, Nashville and elsewhere.
Eshbach is an associate professor of music at the University of New Hampshire.

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The Reception of Hungarian Music and Guest Artists in Performances with Fritz Reiner and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

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Abstract (max. 250 words):
Hungarian-American conductor Fritz Reiner (1888-1963) began his American career with the Cincinnati Symphony in 1922. Reiner’s next post as music director of a symphony orchestra was with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (1938-1948). During his tenure there, Reiner endeavored to improve the orchestra and to elevate its status as a cultural landmark of the city. Despite various obstacles, including financial concerns and acoustical issues in the Syria Mosque, Reiner engaged world-class soloists and guest conductors to perform with the PSO and released a number of important recordings. Although Reiner did not market himself as a specialist in Hungarian music, his work with prominent Hungarian musicians, such as Joseph Szigeti, Zoltán Kodály, and Béla Bartók, was significant, and his connections to his compatriots were emphasized in the press coverage of their guest performances in Pittsburgh. In addition to featuring these artists on concerts in Pittsburgh, Reiner conducted Bartók’s works on over twenty concerts between 1941 and 1948, including a performance of Bartók’s Piano Concerto no. 2 with the composer as soloist in 1941. With the PSO Reiner also premiered Bartók’s revised Second Suite for Orchestra and released the first commercial recording of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, a recording that garnered national attention at its release. This paper explores Reiner’s tenure with the PSO and the reception of Hungarian guest artists in the Pittsburgh press, using concert programs, correspondence, local and national news coverage, conducting notes, and archival documents from the PSO Archives, Fritz Reiner’s estate, and the Budapest Bartók Archive.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Sarah Lucas teaches music history at Drake University and leads the Des Moines Symphony’s Classical Conversations series. She completed her PhD in musicology at the University of Iowa in 2018. Her dissertation, “Fritz Reiner and the Legacy of Béla Bartók’s Orchestral Music in the United States,” is based on archival research carried out in the U.S. and Hungary, where she conducted research with the support of a Fulbright Award. Her master’s work at the University of Missouri culminated in her thesis “Béla Bartók and the Pro-Musica Society: A Chronicle of Piano Recitals in Eleven American Cities during his 1927-1928 Tour.”

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Legényes Made Me a (Hungarian) Man—National and Gender Identification through a Popular Transylvanian Dance

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Done by Hungarians and non-Hungarians throughout the world, the men’s dance Kalotaszegi Legényes is probably the most iconic of all Hungarian village dances. As with other folk dances, the legényes is part of the fiber of the village by virtue of its rules. The rules help dancers to find their place among other men and other villagers.
The táncház revival has sought to recreate and follow village rules in relation to cycles of dances from various areas. The surprising part is that preserving and following the rules convey to city revival dancers some of the benefits of self-representation, control, and community that they had in the original context.
This paper explores the rules behind legényes to reveal its structure and the social implications that are embedded in it. I then present interviews with real-life legényes dancers and táncház participants to see how revivalists’ experiences of the dance have shaped their attitudes. My observation is that through following the rules revivalists benefit from dance in a similar way to villagers. Further, I believe that the process of doing the dances strengthens a certain way of being that participants identify as masculine and Hungarian. If your values are identified by what you do, can you also develop values by the activities you choose?



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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Bridging Identities: A Case Study of Frigyes Hidas

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, rampant nationalism shaped the arts and the methodology of its historians. With the nationality of a composer, musicologists could situate a piece of music within a place, time, and people. Liszt, Bartók, and Kodály became synonymous with Hungary. Despite the advancements of travel, communication, and technology of the twentieth century, lingering traditions have extended the practice of labeling composers by nationality. Yet, can one term fully define a composer, his works, and their significance?

My paper will challenge and encourage scholars to explore multiple identities within historical figures. As a case study, I will focus on Frigyes Hidas, prominent composer, performer, and conductor in Budapest, Hungary, during the late twentieth century. Using research collected as part of the Fulbright student research program in 2014-2015, I will demonstrate the difficulty of constructing a musical identity and voice for a composer. Hidas was a multi-faceted musician, who created and performed in all genres. Beyond the concert stage, he was involved with music for theater, dance, radio, television, and film. Through these media, Hidas’ works shaped culture for countless Hungarians. Hidas exemplifies an evolving musician during a dynamic period of Hungarian history. As his music reaches new audiences through publication and recording, we must seek vibrant and specific words to articulate the significance of Frigyes Hidas for Hungarian, European, and Global communities.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Megan Small is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the University of Iowa. She holds degrees in Musicology (University of Kansas), Horn Performance (Illinois State University), and Music (Missouri State University). During the 2014-2015 academic year, Megan was a recipient of the Fulbright Student Research Grant to Budapest, Hungary. She was sponsored by the Országos Széchényi Könyvtár and the Budapest Music Center.

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