Accepted Abstracts

Children Philharmonic at the Foot of Hargita (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
To understand a nonpareil as the Children Philharmonic, I decided to travel to Szentegyháza, and meet Haáz Sándor. The "Fili" has always represented for me a natural miracle. Still, as for every miracle, a cluster of specific conditions, an immense amount of work and commitment had to merge; first to create it, then to keep it vibrantly alive, for more than 40 years now.
- The place: a small town, Szentegyhaza, at the Hargita mountains' foot, with a culturally homogenous community, with the ideal number of 7000 members, which – however with no music school - is suitable to create and supply with always-new members both the choir and the orchestra.
- Haáz Sándor, a very good music teacher – maybe even more than that - who created the Philharmonic in 1982 and leads it ever since. He was the spark and the one who takes care of the fire.
The main effort is directed to building a community - a true society of „philies”- with singing, playing, performing folk music, preserving the best of the whole of folk traditions. The approach is syncretic: the Philharmonic weaves through everyday life, it is part of the festivities, it breathes together, and collaborates with local societies. The members not only rehearse and give concerts, play festivals at home and abroad, or even overseas, but also know how to build typical székely houses and estenas together, plant pine trees, collect folk songs, organize camps for furniture painting, participate in the village tourism.

Once a „filis”, always a „filis”. Once a member, the parents’ aspiration is that their child also follows on their path.
In May 2022, on the festivities celebrating their 40th anniversary, five generations played concerts together, in front of plenty of enthusiastic audiences.
The maestro and his Szekely-dressed pupils became undoubtedly a treasure of the regional and national Hungarian culture. They became our heritage.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Hungarian concert pianist, piano professor at the Music Institute of Eszterházy Károly Catholic University of Eger. In 2003 received DMA in piano performance from the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and in 2012 obtained a habilitation also in piano performance from the Liszt Academy.

In 2000-2006 – as artist of the Hungarian Radio – played numerous live solo and chamber music recitals; has been performing regularly at the Liszt Museum in Budapest, played at the Spring Festival of Budapest, Pecs and Eger.

In Europe gave solo and chamber music concerts in Belgium, Finland, Serbia, and Spain. In Romania has been frequently a soloist of the State Philharmonics of Targu-Mures. In the United States played Bartók (Concerto no.3 for piano and orchestra, the Sonata for two pianos and percussions) and also all-Bartók recitals in New York (2013, 2015), Canada (Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver). In 2011, as a Fulbright grantee, she played concerts and recitals honoring the Liszt bicentenary.

Outside Europe and the North American continent, also toured Indonesia, Brazil, India, and New Zealand.

---

‘First in the History of the World’ − Júlia Hajdu (1925–1987), Career of the first ever woman operetta composer (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The object of this presentation is the career of Júlia Hajdu, the only Hungarian woman operetta composer. Musical history worldwide and in Hungary is not abundant in women composers, most of them are treated badly by the canon, although their pieces are valuable and worth researching. Júlia Hajdu (1925–1987) composed in several genres during her rich creative career, such genres included dance songs, operetta, revue, dance suit, and background music. Alongside composing, Júlia was an excellent piano player. Her masters at the Music Academy were Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967) and György Ránki (1907–1992), the latter composed operettas himself. Júlia Hajdu studied folk music with Kodály and jazz arrangements with Ránki. Her peers and critics said she was one of this genre's most well-known and popular composers. She worked in popular music programs of the Hungarian Television, moreover, she accompanied Hanna Honthy on the piano. Júlia marks hundreds of dance songs, revues, and dance suites, as well as fourteen operettas, including radio and television operettas. Her creative career is interpreted in the context of socialist cultural policy and giving context to Júlia’s work is not simply another reconstruction of an operetta composer but a mirror of a certain era. However, she had to compromise on several occasions, for which she accounted her trying to succeed in different cultural areas dominated by men. I have concluded the reconstruction of her career based on different narrative patterns, therefore, I am discussing Hajdu’s way of life along the following three narratives: 1. ‘woman composer as a sensation’ narrative, 2. ‘Who’s whose student?’ narrative, as well as 3.‘background specialist’ narrative.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Emese Lengyel is currently a student of the Doctoral School of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Debrecen. There, he earned a communicator degree and then an honours degree in ethnography and folkloristics. She mainly deals with the history of Viennese and Hungarian operettas, and the representation of minorities on the operetta stage. During her studies, she has won the researcher’s fellowship of the New National Excellence Program six times so far.

---

“Planting the Seed is Smart” – The Story of the Csoóri Sándor Grant to the Diaspora Folklore Support of 2019 (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The American Hungarian Folklore Centrum [AHFC] was invited by the Hungarian National Cultural Foundation [NKA], Csoóri Sándor Program, to submit a proposal how a relatively moderate sum of financial grant could help to bring together and support of Hungarian folklore groups in North America. The presentation will describe the methods which were used to fairly distribute funds allowing for the maximum impact of the modest aid, the seed money. All the grant money was spent and admirable programs were made possible through these groups in the diaspora. The goal was achieved: disseminate Hungarian culture in North America and strengthen the Hungarian identity within the Magyar enclaves.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Kalman Magyar was born in Hungary and at the age of 18 has emigrated to North America. Although his professional life was spent in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, in his private life he performed, taught and organized numerous Hungarian cultural and folklore related programs. Now he lives mostly in Budapest and runs his packaging technology company. He established the AHFC as an affiliate organization of AHEA in 1975, which is still active

---

Bartók, Communist Propaganda, and the Ban on Musical Works under Rákosi (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The regime of Hungarian Communist leader Mátyás Rákosi (1948-1956) has drawn scrutiny and ultimately denunciation from nearly all sectors of academic research. In music, the ban on works viewed by the Communist Party as socially, politically, or morally transgressive has been taken as incontrovertible historical fact and an indictment of the party’s politico-aesthetic program. The most egregious example cited of this practice was the case of The Miraculous Mandarin by Hungary’s preeminent musical ambassador Béla Bartók. Historians point to Géza Losonczy’s 1950 article “The Opera House Belongs to the People!” published in the party’s paper Szabad Nép as launching a campaign against Bartók and signaling the freeze of Hungary’s music culture, one that would take a revolution to thaw.
But closer examination complicates this account as well as the accepted notions of unbridled political terror and authoritarian artistic suppression. In this paper, I examine the shortcomings of the totalitarian narrative built up around the era’s musical politics through analysis of Losonczy’s article and the artistic policies it advances. I also draw from and contribute to the substantial literature on Bartók’s pantomime to argue that there was some validity to the Communists’ objections to the work. This study thus advocates for a nuanced historical inquiry that problematizes some of the calcified Cold War conceptions that have erected (often artificial) binaries—such as art/propaganda, freeze/thaw, freedom/oppression, sanctioned/banned—that serve to delimit and police the discursive field of this charged period in Hungary’s history.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Zachary Milliman is a PhD candidate in musicology at McGill University with a dissertation focusing on Hungarian opera and socialism. Zachary received his BM from Brigham Young University, his MM from the University of Utah and was Fulbright researcher at the Hungarian Musicological Institute. His research has been featured at annual meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and many others, and has published with the journal of the International Allegiance for Women in Music. He currently resides with his husband, artist Matt Klinn in Anchorage, Alaska and lectures at the University of Alaska.

---

Economic, Social, and Aesthetic Desires Meet on the Dance Floor in Transylvanian Villages (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
The social and musical/dance negotiation that is rural dance depends on a system of group and individual interactions and dependencies. For the band, bonds are based on skills, trust, and a joint need to produce an economically viable unit. For dancers, the situation is based more on developing social capital. For both, a large element of personal pride and enjoyment is a part of it, despite and at the same time as the endeavor meets these other more practical goals.

Though (mostly) Roma bands and villagers both need and depend on each other, their relationship is complicated and fraught through ethnic differences and often a lack of trust in day-to-day relationships. Quigley and Varga (2020) have identified many elements of these discords, but also how they can be transcended, as band and dancers strive together to create the dance, in a process they call “choreomusical intimacy.”

This paper considers musical and dance components of this moment, looking at the role of each member of the improvising community—all three musical parts and their contributions to the choices and actions of the dancer, the dancer him/herself, and assembled viewers, both potential participants and observers.

Then, using analysis, archival video, and video from dance events in Transylvania and elsewhere, as well as interviews with participants, we look at moments in the dance where this unity seems to evolve, exploring musical and dance gestures that occasion it, for example, as Quigley and Varga suggest, being in time, hitting the beat perfectly together.



Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Judith E. Olson (NYU, U Colorado) historical musicologist working with traditional Hungarian music/dance in Romania, Hungary, and among Hungarians in the United States/Canada. She combines research in traditional settings, Hungarian dance camps, and revival groups with analysis of dance/music structure, process, and improvisation. She presents frequently at International Council for Traditional Music, International Musicological Society, Analytical Approaches to World Music, Society for Ethnomusicology, and AHEA. She performs research and organizes táncház in New York City with Hungarian House and American Hungarian Folklore Centrum. Secondary research areas include International Folk Dancing in the US, Balkan brass bands, and 19th-century German music/culture.

---

Performance Art, a possibility to enhance concert pedagogy – Its identity in Hungary (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
This research explores the history of performance art in Hungary from a pedagogical view. The topic of my research was suggested by my artistic work, during which I noticed a special situation in Hungary.

The presence of performance art on European stages dates back to Hugo Ball in 1916. Since then, "performance art" has acquired a philosophical, artistic, and concert pedagogic meaning. "Performance is (...) just a series of questions. It asks the participants how art relates to everyday life and wider social situations?"
The flux movements' ("Fluxus") American and European influences filtered into Hungary in the 1960s. Such events were, for example, Altorjay-Szentjóby-Jankovics' "The lunch" and Szentjóby-Najmányi's "Who is artist?"(sic). However, performance art has been unable to achieve its socio-pedagogical purpose. It has disappeared and has been relegated to the background to this day. It continues to live by importing foreign ideas and seems to be giving up on pedagogical goals. Meanwhile, we perceive the strengthening of cross-over performances from the 70s, in which today's performances are integrated, inheriting features of their concert culture. In this way, a unique intergenerational process develops in Hungary, the beginning of which is connected to cultural and pedagogical policy aspirations.

From these observations, we can extract several questions: What is the fate and history of performance art in Hungary? How can we use its renaissance in concert pedagogy, and what contemporary examples do we see? Can we awaken its social-sensitizing effect in pedagogical and socio-pedagogical situations?


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Márton Szives is a percussion artist and teacher who manages crossover concert projects fused with instrumental performance. He earned his MA degree as a percussionist and currently studying educational science at Pannon University. His research focuses on the pedagogical and technical attitudes of instrumental performances and concert pedagogy.
For his work he has been awarded the Pro Arte Golden Medal, New National Excellence Program three times, National Talent Program three times, and has numerous first prizes from music competitions.He is volunteering at hobby orchestras to help children and young adults with their music studies in Budapest and South Hungary.

---