Germans, Hungarians and the Zigeunerkapelle:performing national enmity in late nineteenth-century Transylvania

MARIAN ZĂLOAGĂ

ABSTRACT For at least two and a half centuries, the ‘Gypsy as musical performer’ hasbeen one of the principal stereotypes of the Roma, and a symbol of a ‘backward’Eastern Europe in western narratives. The association between Hungarian culture andRomani musical performance, when embraced, might be understood as a consequenceof the triumph of Romanticism in European cultures or, on the other hand, whenrejected, as a casualty of the dominant role that positivism came to play in ideologicaland intellectual discourses. The national paradigm, which by definition acted in anexclusive fashion, enforced boundaries between in-group audiences and foreignlisteners. In this study, Zăloagă attempts to go beyond the musicological literature andtrace the effects of the representation of the Hungarian-Roma ‘cultural hybrid’ onreaders of the German-language press. He highlights the way narratives about Gypsyperformances came to be regarded as a call to rebellion among Hungarians who weresuspected of covertly using the Roma as a vehicle for the articulation of their ownnationalism. More specifically, he looks at how ethnic Germans in Transylvaniareferred to this narrative association in highly essentialist terms in order to attack theirpolitical opponents and, consequently, affirm their belonging both to an elitist nationalGermanic canon and to the non-chauvinistic official policy of the Habsburgs.

KEYWORDS cultural nationalism, Gypsy music, Habsburg Empire, Hungarians, hybrid-ity, musical battles, nation-building, nationalism, Roma, Transylvanian Germans

Music-making has been acknowledged as having a profound impact onthe human sense of social belonging. Elaborate as well as artless

productions illustrate music’s power to create boundaries. In the case ofparticular musical works, this separatist tendency is envisioned at the verymoment of conception. In other cases, musical compositions are assigned thisrole after being subjected to a specific ideological reframing of their initial intent.Music can most certainly bring people together regardless of their social andcultural identities. On the other hand, it can also create a bond between oneparticular group of people and, consequently, give rise to a sense of incompat-ibility with the groups and/or individuals left outside. As a result, the matter of

This paper was supported by the National Research Council–CNCS, Project PN-IIID- PCE-2011-3-0841.

Patterns of Prejudice, 2013Vol. 47, Nos. 4–5, 379–394, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2013.851061

© 2013 Taylor & Francis

music or ‘musicking’—a term coined to postulate music as an activity involvingboth the performer and the listener1—cannot be understood independently ofthe factors that influence its coming into being as well as its staging.The nineteenth century, an era of nation-building, is a particularly rich

moment in which to analysemusic and its place in society. In his now canonicalwork, Nineteenth-Century Music, the renowned musicologist Carl Dahlhausasserts that the studyofmusic and nationalism, or of nationalmusic, essentiallyexamines not somuch the ‘particular musical traits’ but ‘the political and socio-psychological function’ that music is thought to be fulfilling,2 thus conveying adeeper and qualitatively superior insight into the political history of anydiscourse producer. Historians agree that, during the nineteenth century,musicwas the most public and socially active of the arts,3 which explains why itsperformance could be regarded as a mighty weapon in fighting for a nationalagenda. Be it folk—or art—music, its power to manipulate was widelyrecognized, and its performance and dissemination proved effective in thewaging of cultural wars, often at the expense of other national styles.4

The undeniable quality of some composers and their compositions werefrequently used in a self-indulgent celebration of the superiority of a certainnational musical repertoire. In this respect, the German case serves as a well-documented example.5 At its inception, this was purely an elite artisticdiscourse that aroused the enthusiasm of aestheticians and musical critics.Later journalists and cultural reviewers joined in and turned it into a widelyheld, common assumption that became the basis for both cultural hierarchiesand stereotypical diatribes.The superiority of the German canon was justified by appealing to

attributes such as ‘seriousness’, ‘monumentality’ and ‘universality’.6 Thediscourse around what German music wished to convey spread across the

1 Christopher Small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover, NHand London: University Press of New England 1998).

2 Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. from the German by J. BradfordRobinson (Berkeley: University of California Press 1989), 217.

3 See T. C. W. Blanning, ‘The commercialization and sacralization of European culture inthe nineteenth century’, in T. C. W. Blanning (ed.), The Oxford History of Modern Europe,3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000), 126–52 (142).

4 Matthew Gelbart, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’: Emerging Categories fromOssian to Wagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007), 237.

5 Gelbart, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’, 229; Vanessa Agnew, Enlighten-ment Orpheus: The Power of Musician in Other Worlds (Oxford and New York: OxfordUniversity Press 2008), 53; Mary Sue Morrow, German Music Criticism in the LateEighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in Instrumental Music (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press 1997), 48–50.

6 Gelbart, The Invention of ‘Folk Music’ and ‘Art Music’, 238; Bernd Sponheuer,‘Reconstructing ideal types of the “German” in music’, in Celia Applegate and PamelaMaxine Potter (eds), Music and German National Identity (Chicago and London:University of Chicago Press 2002), 36–58 (42); Celia Applegate, ‘How German is it?Nationalism and the idea of serious music in the early nineteenth century’, 19thCentury Music, vol. 21, no. 3, 1998, 274–96 (277).

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European continent. The outstanding talent of the Germans in music(king)was their strategy for promoting a prestigious national image. This propa-ganda campaign proved so influential that, at the end of the nineteenth andbeginning of the twentieth centuries, music was regarded as the ‘mostGerman of the arts’.7 This belief became dogma, and exercised hegemonythroughout other nations in the region. More precisely, it was shared by manyamong the peoples living in Eastern Europe. But this presumed superioritywas not universally embraced. In an atmosphere dominated by the processesof nation-building or national emancipation, the hegemony of German artmusic did generate a more or less explicit abhorrence in some quarters.Consequently, in the long term, some national cultures—such as theHungarian one—contested the German canon.

The Hungarian national project and Gypsy performance

A significant prejudice concerning the Hungarians in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries was that their music was ‘Gypsy music’. This notiongained theoretical expression and ideological strength after the publication ofFranz Liszt’s Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie.8 Instead of idealizingthe marginalized Roma,9 as Liszt intended when he fashioned the ‘Gypsyvirtuoso’, the relationship between Hungarian and Romani cultures wasunderstood by many Hungarians to be the unpleasant, if not stigmatizing,result of western narratives about the East. Later on, many voices within theHungarian cultural establishment attempted to explain the superficiality andthe inaccuracy of Liszt’s argument. Such an anxious reply to the ‘westernnarrative’ demonstrates discomfort with the positioning of the two cultures,and the perception of their association as a stigma. Nonetheless, some musictheoreticians had to admit that certain Romani professional orchestras wereindeed deeply involved with ‘“the urban” popular airs and dances ofcontemporary Magyar’.10 More recently, Ernő Kállai even suggested thatperformances by Roma played a major role in the service of Hungariannationalism during and after the revolution of 1848–9.11 In order to maintaintheir traditional position on the popular musical stage, Roma involved in

7 See Pamela M. Potter, Most German of the Arts: Musicology and Society from the WeimarRepublic to the End of Hitler’s Reich (New Haven, CT and London: Yale UniversityPress 1998).

8 Franz Liszt, Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (Paris: Libraire Nouvelle 1859).9 The term ‘Roma’ refers here to Roma, Sinti, Kale and related groups in Europe,

including persons who have been identified by non-Roma and even by Roma as‘Gypsies’.

10 Endre Spur, ‘Supplementary notes on Liszt’s and Brahms’ so-called “Gypsy” music’,Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Series 3, vol. 31, no. 3/4, 1952, 129–38 (133).

11 Ernő Kállai, ‘Gypsy musicians’, in András Kováts (ed.), Roma Migration, trans. from theHungarian by Dezsõ Bánki and Ákos Farkas (Budapest: Centre for Migration andRefugee Studies 2002), 75–97 (80).

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performing music found it useful to conform to the attitudes of audiences thatwere animated by the spirit of independence from Austria.12 This strategywas accentuated in the tense political atmosphere of the second half of thenineteenth century, particularly after 1849 (the imperial crushing of theHungarian revolution) and 1867 (the Ausgleich, or the Compromise, reachedbetween the Hungarians and Habsburgs, that re-established the sovereigntyof Hungary and founded the Dual Monarchy).13

Music historians and sociologists have shown that, at that time,preferences for and, therefore, distaste for particular genres or repertoireswere considered appropriate in order to delineate specific cultural identit-ies.14 Music constructed boundaries that became more freighted withmeanings that revealed its political significance.15 Robert Nemes hasconvincingly demonstrated how musical life came to be nationalized innineteenth-century Hungarian culture. After a brief period of cosmopolit-anism, nationalized elites denounced waltzes and other salon music asforeign cultural imports, and returned to songs and performances in thenational language and of presumed national origins.16 Consequently, waltzeswere suspected of replicating the politics of the Habsburg metropole,17 andtherefore had to be replaced with local csárdás and verbunkos that encouragedthe cultivation of the so-called magyar nóta or popular song. 18 The politicaldimensions of this shift, namely, the criticism of the Viennese authorities, areobvious.Traditionally, Hungarian elites cultivated a type of patronage in relation to

Romani musical bands.19 Presumably, this is what caused western culturalstudies discourses to insist on the association between Hungarian culturalnationalism and Gypsy music-making. The tension between the nationalaspirations of the Hungarians and those of the other nations of the empire,

12 Endre Spur, ‘Language and status of the Gypsy orchestras of Hungary’, Journal of theGypsy Lore Society, Series 3, vol. 17, no. 3, 1938, 46–58 (50).

13 For a general overview of political events during this time in the eastern part of theHabsburg empire, see Ivan T. Berend, History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in theLong Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press 2003); R. J. W. Evans,Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs: Essays on Central Europe, c. 1683–1867 (Oxford:Oxford University Press 2006); and Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries, A History of EasternEurope Crisis and Change, 2nd edn (London and New York: Routledge 2007).

14 See William Weber, The Great Transformation of Musical Taste: Concert Programming fromHaydn to Brahms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2008).

15 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (New York: Vintage Books 1996), 276.16 Robert Nemes, ‘The politics of the dance floor: culture and civil society in nineteenth-

century Hungary’, Slavic Review, vol. 60, no. 4, 2001, 802–23.17 Philip V. Bohlman, Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe, 2nd edn

(London and New York: Routledge 2011), 74.18 Jean Sinor, ‘Hungarian contributions to music’, Hungarian Studies, vol. 12, nos 1–2,

1997, 125–33 (130).19 Endre Spur, ‘Reminiscences of Gypsy musicians in Hungary’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore

Society, Series 3, vol. 41, no. 1/2, 1962, 10–30 (17).

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particularly the Germans, encouraged the latter to resort to an essentializingdiscourse. Accordingly, the Hungarian nationalism manifested throughmusic played by the Roma was inscribed with a set of ‘savage’ features.Gradually, such performances came to be seen as dangerous demonstra-tions, and identified as a major risk to imperial order. From the second halfof the nineteenth century, Romani musical bands performing at social eventswere monitored. The loyalist local authorities shared the fear that, whenserving at banquets or gatherings of Hungarians, Roma would ‘musick’ thesound of revolt. It was not only their distinct interpretative style,20 but alsotheir repertoires that came to be seen as problematic in aesthetic andpolitical terms. The authorities and other non-Hungarians, particularly theGermans, claimed that these performances threatened the fragile socialpeace of the multi-ethnic monarchy. The fact that some Romani bandsbecame eager to broaden their repertoire with Hungarian patriotic and evenchauvinistic music was recognized by Endre Spur, who claimed that, inorder to satisfy their audiences, performers would even learn Hungarianlyrics capable of inducing a ‘volcano of Magyar pride’.21 However, itmatters less whether the music was vocal or simply instrumental. The factthat non-Hungarians recognized the political implications of the songs wasenough to denounce a performance immediately as nationalistic andcontentious.

A sensitivity to repertoires imbued with political-nationalist messages wasalso current in the Transylvanian context. For now, I will only note that,among the concerts in Transylvania given by Franz Liszt, the one inHermannstadt (today Sibiu)—a town then dominated by Saxons but alsopopulated by Hungarians, Romanians and other nationalities—the repertoireincluded the ‘Rákóczi March’ (the unofficial Hungarian anthem) andSchubert’s ‘Erlkönig’. When the time came for an encore, Liszt chose the‘Rákóczi March’, which was met with protests and whistles from a section ofthe ethnically mixed audience.22 This politicized consciousness was notrestricted to an elite public that had developed the taste for concerts. As theempirical part of my study will demonstrate, such sensitivities were sharedby other social groups.

Furthermore, it was not only high musical culture, or what has been called‘classical music’, performed and consumed primarily by supporters of thenational project, that was suspected of conveying a national(ist), anti-establishment or chauvinist message. Cultural attitudes were largely spread

20 Catherine Mayes, ‘Reconsidering an early exoticism: Viennese adaptations of Hungar-ian-Gypsy music around 1800’, Eighteenth-Century Music, vol. 6, no. 2, 2009, 161–81(164 ff.).

21 Spur, ‘Reminiscences of Gypsy musicians in Hungary’, 22.22 Franz Metz, ‘Musik und Politik entlang der Donau: Die Musikgeschichten einer bunten

europäischen Region’, in Bruno B. Reuer (ed.), Musik im Umbruch: Kulturelle Identitätund gesellschaftlicher Wandel in Südosteuropa (Munich: Südostdeutsches Kulturwerk1999), 325–40 (329).

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and reinforced by means of popular music,23 which will remain the focus ofmy analysis. Official high-art music productions bearing the national imprintcould be too encrypted, and require too much specialist training and too largea cultural vocabulary, to be understood as such. The nationalist agenda ofmusic could be better served when arias were popularized and played inpublic spaces. Their meaning could then be accessible after having gonethrough a stage of official consecration and eventual de-codification.Unofficial anthems and popular music could also be more blunt and targetedin their statements than official ones. The stereotypical construction ofHungarians as puppet-masters, who used the politically apathetic Romaminstrel to perform Hungarian national music and concomitantly express aspirit of revolt, was widespread in press narratives. Such reportingdemonstrates the impact of music in delineating group boundaries anddefining performers as deviant or even as enemies.

The politics of the Transylvanian German cultural narrative

The debate on the social function of music in the Transylvanian context isrelevant because it shows the reception of the cultural and national discoursesat the imperial metropole and at its peripheries, and the way they werearticulated by the Saxons and other Germans living in the province. In orderto show loyalty to the establishment without abandoning their specificgrievances, they denounced competing cultures and assumed a position ofsuperiority in relation to other nations, most notably Hungary.It would be useful to refer briefly to the political context that served as a

backdrop, and without which the narratives of Otherness would not makemuch sense: namely, Transylvania’s progressive loss of a privileged positionwithin the reformist policies of the House of Habsburg. When, eventually, thenationalities of Transylvania were confronted with the Hungarian intention ofmaking the province a part of Hungary, they found themselves facing a totalloss of autonomy. This Hungarian agenda was an extension of the politics ofMagyarization that became more or less state policy after 1848, achieving itsfull expression after 1867. How was this seen by Saxons and other ethnicGermans in Transylvania? It was met, unsurprisingly, with strong oppositionthat only grew stronger after the dissolution of municipal autonomy in1876.24

The disappointment of the Transylvanian Saxons with the Habsburgs,towards whom they were initially sympathetic because of a common Germanorigin, resulted from the centralist policy of the empire that made the Saxon

23 Lydia Goehr, ‘Political music and the politics of music’, Journal of Aesthetics and ArtCriticism, vol. 52, no. 1 (special issue on The Philosophy of Music), 1994, 99–112 (109).

24 Rudolf Gräf and Thomas Nägler, ‘Naţionalităţile şi dualismul: Cazul saşilor’, in Ioan-Aurel Pop, Thomas Nägler and Magyari András (eds), Istoria Transilvaniei, vol. 3 (Cluj-Napoca: Centrul de Studii Transilvane 2008), 449–52 (451).

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position weaker in relation to other nationalities. The Saxon aversion to thenatio Austriaca project, as proposed by Joseph II at the end of the eighteenthcentury, is in fact considered to be a source of the nationalism that dominatedthe nineteenth century.25 By the 1830s, cultural nationalism was rife. The elitesof all the ethnic groups in Transylvania were preoccupied with the nationalvalues of their own communities, and rarely displayed a serious interest insupranational Transylvanian common goals.26 The year 1849 was crucial forthe Saxons because they then openly declared their affinity with the agenda ofthe national assembly in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, which included theideal of a Grossdeutschland.27 The lack of support from the House of Habsburgstrengthened their leaning towards Berlin. This shift in affinities wasgrounded in longstanding relations with the academic world (as most ofthe elites attended German universities) and with German associations.28

Connections with the German world as well as significant media attentionincreased the spread of national ideas at all levels of society.29 As theirposition grew more insecure, the Saxons of Transylvania sought to assert theirdominance in the cultural and economic spheres.30 When the Magyarizationcampaign accelerated after 1867, they found themselves in the vulnerableposition of a national minority that was to be assimilated by the ‘unitary andindivisible Hungarian nation’.31 Accordingly, they cultivated more intenselytheir identification with the Mutterland, which, after the 1871 unification ofGerman lands as the German Reich, was even more attractive because of theprestige it could bring to its ‘sons’ everywhere.32 This identification did notresult in revolt or fierce contestation but rather encouraged the expression of adual loyalty: on the one hand, to the idea of Germanness (Deutschtum)understood in ethnic terms, referring to a common origin, language andculture, and, on the other, to the imperial authorities, which had to berespected, while reserving the right to respond critically to some politicalmeasures.33

Despite the acceptance by historians that Saxon culture was influenced byboth Oriental and Occidental elements in different degrees, recognizable inboth literary and musical texts,34 the Saxons’ historical discourse posits thattheir principal function was in mediating the values of the West in the easternpart of the continent. For instance, the music historian Karl Teutsch has

25 Konrad Gündisch, Siebenbürgen und die Siebenbürger Sachsen (Munich: Langen-Müller1998), 124.

26 Harald Roth, Kleine Geschichte Siebenbürgens (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag 1996), 96.27 Ibid., 94; Gündisch, Siebenbürgen und die Siebenbürger Sachsen, 135.28 Gräf and Nägler, ‘Naţionalităţile şi dualismul’, 452.29 Roth, Kleine Geschichte Siebenbürgens, 97.30 Ibid., 100.31 Ibid., 107. Unless otherwise stated, translations are by the author.32 Ibid., 109.33 Gündisch, Siebenbürgen und die Siebenbürger Sachsen, 134.34 Ibid., 267.

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outlined the key role of the Transylvanian German musical associations as animporter of western cultural values.35 Furthermore, Konrad Gündisch hasstated that these associations functioned to encourage nationalcohesiveness.36

Those who read the evolution of German Transylvanian music as anelement of the history of that community argue that music functioned as ameans of expressing its affiliation to the pan-German cultural project.Therefore, it is no surprise to see its adherence to the principles of theMusikwissenschaft that posited the universality of German music.37 Thisposition simultaneously involved an affirmation of superiority over musicproduced by Others. When it came to Gypsy musical performance, someSaxon sources acknowledged that the Roma had a very particular talentwhile, at the same time, being disdainful of any German who played nachalter Musikzigeunerart, that is, without serious study of the field.38 The rhetoricembraced by German critics portrayed music as serious and laborious work,39

not a Leichtsinnigkeit (a bit of frivolity).40 Such characterizations of Gypsymusic are not intelligible unless read against the German ideal of music-making as an ‘intellectual labor of the listener and composer in a joint projectof edification’.41 The consumers of ‘silly’ productions associated with the‘primitive senses’ were not seen as praiseworthy. On the contrary, like othercontemporaries, the Saxons thought Romani performances revealed ‘thetemperament of the people in whose country they live, and this appears aswell in their music as in their dance’.42 Such an essentialist and subtlystigmatizing notion, which hinted at something beyond the heterogeneity ofRomani culture, was exploited by the Germans and Saxons in a nationalistand exclusivist manner. They conflated the topic of music with the politicalrivalries of everyday life, which made possible the representation of Romaniperformances in the service of the Hungarians as primitive and rebellious.Gypsy musical performances were at least occasionally suspected of being apotential declaration of war by Hungarian culture against the ethnicGermans.

35 Karl Teutsch, ‘Siebenbürgen in der europäischen Musikgeschichte’, in Horst Kühnel(ed.), Siebenbürgen, eine europäische Kulturlandschaft: Acht Vorträge (Munich: Haus desDeutschen Ostens 1986), 103–48 (134).

36 Gündisch, Siebenbürgen und die Siebenbürger Sachsen, 154.37 Applegate, ‘How German is it?’, 277.38 Egon Hajek, Die Musik, ihre Gestalter und Verkünder in Siebenbürgen einst und jetzt

(Kronstadt: Klingsor-Verlag 1927), 43.39 Karen Painter, ‘Mozart at work: biography and a musical aesthetic for the emerging

German bourgeoisie’, Musical Quarterly, vol. 86, no. 1, 2002, 186–235 (194).40 Ibid., 207.41 Ibid., 194.42 J. Sármai, ‘Remarks on the “csardas” dance’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, vol. 3,

no. 2, October 1891, 106–7 (107).

386 Patterns of Prejudice

In a context in which patriotic responsibility was the cornerstone of theMusikverein (musical association) in Hermannstadt and every other Saxontown,43 any argument could be deployed to fight proponents of the Other’snational agenda. Musicking was shaped by the rhetoric of Othering, and itsprincipal weapons, within the discourses of the German Transylvanians, werethe cultural values derived from the credo of ‘supreme’ canonic German artmusic. Harald Roth’s observation that the discursive overstating of thesuperiority of German culture was a defence against the excesses ofMagyarization helps us better to understand the robust German denigrationof Roma musical performances in the service of the Hungarians.44

In order to go beyond the evidence of musicological histories written in thetwentieth century, I will look at the German press published in Transylvaniaduring the second half of the nineteenth century. These records, includingnews reports, travelogues or ethnographic accounts, show how the Germandiscourse was a tool designed both to demonstrate and to make public theenmity of ethnic foes, as well as to damage the image of Hungarians. Thenarratives usually overstate the osmosis between the Romani and Hungariancultures in an attempt to export a negative image of Roma—generallydescribed as problematic, undisciplined or primitive—into a culture that wasdirectly contesting the hegemony of German values.

Narratives at work

Even prior to the publication of Liszt’s book about Gypsy music, manyTransylvanians agreed that Romani minstrels had an innate musical virtuos-ity. Furthermore, in the provincial political and cultural context, the sub-category of Transylvanian Roma music-makers came to be regarded as aninstrument of Hungarian culture. This dual artistic and ethnoculturalassociation was reiterated by the ethnologist Johann Heinrich Schwicker,who wrote the following in an influential treatise about the Roma inTransylvania and Hungary:

In [Western] Europe Gypsies appear to be the musicians in Turkey, Romaniaand above all in Hungary, so that at present Hungary cannot be imaginedwithout Gypsy music. So much so that any shallow French tourist might betempted to perpetuate the general lack of taste by calling Hungary the land ofthe Gypsies. Indeed, it is usual to associate Hungary with the music of theGypsies, hence any musician there is called a ‘Gypsy’ and, in everyday usage,to call or bring in the ‘Gypsy’ always means to bring in a musical band.45

43 Carl Göllner (ed.), Geschichte der Deutschen auf dem Gebiete Rumäniens, vol. 1 (Bucharest:Kriterion Verlag 1979), 352.

44 Roth, Kleine Geschichte Siebenbürgens, 110.45 Johann Heinrich Schwicker, Die Zigeuner in Ungarn und Siebenbürgen (Vienna and

Teschen: K. Prochaska 1883), 159.

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Such a statement is illustrative of the way western narratives elaboratedthe situation in Eastern Europe, particularly in Hungary. Without rejectingit as superficial or prejudiced, Schwicker added some nuance. In contrastto Liszt, who stated that the Roma provided the Hungarians with theirmusic, Schwicker suggested that ‘the Gypsy may possibly be the mostprecise performer of Hungarian dance music and of their popular songs’,46

while, in reality, ‘the Hungarian loves Gypsy music but despises andridicules the Gypsy’.47 Remarks of this kind may not directly disparage thequality of the musical performance, but they nevertheless reveal thehypocritical attitude of the Hungarians, who were obviously aware ofthe stigmatizing effects of an association with a generally vilified ethnicgroup.Traditionally, Zigeunerkapellen (Romani musical bands) put themselves at

the service of every ethnic community in Transylvania, especially whenTafelmusik (music played at banquets) or dance music was required.48 Still,exclusivist and ethnically determined references became preferred topoi inthe German-language press, with the aim of discrediting Hungarian culture.Reflecting on an article published in Klaussenburg (now Cluj-Napoca) in aHungarian-language journal, the editor of the Siebenbürgisch-deutsches Tage-blatt acidly replied to his Hungarian colleague by characterizing the music ofthe Roma as being ‘katzenjammerlichen Stimmung’ (in a whining tone).49

This response was occasioned by the Hungarian author’s implication that theintellectual and material level of the listeners, referring to the Germanaudience in Hermannstadt, corresponded to the music they enjoyed. TheGerman journalist responded by ridiculing the attempt of the Hungarianjournalist to treat the welcome reception of a Zigeunerkapelle as the victory ofan avant garde of Hungarian culture. What almost certainly motivated thetriumphant reaction of the Hungarian journalist was his defensiveness aboutsharing the stigma of the hybridization of Romani and Hungarian cultures, aspropagated by the hegemonic western narrative and often reiterated by theSaxons themselves. The German reply was meant to reconfirm the narrativeaimed at denigrating Hungarian culture, which had lately been expressing agrowing and oppressive nationalism. This debate reveals to what extentmusical tastes could become a battleground in the cultural wars betweennations.Generally speaking, the nationalist connotations of musical performance

were acknowledged by both cultures. Field anthropologist Heinrich von

46 Ibid., 160.47 Ibid., 156.48 Mayes, ‘Reconsidering an early exoticism’, 164.49 ‘Der “Kolozsvári Közlöny” und die Zigeunermusik’, Siebenbürgisch-deutsches Tageblatt,

no. 3808, 24 June 1886, 629.

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Wlislocki, who extensively wrote about Romani culture, acknowledged thatthe Roma mediated the nationalist message in the service of Hungarianculture, and claimed that this osmosis had a long history.50 A more nuancedidea was suggested by his collaborator and supporter Anton Herrmann who,in a 1892 article, railed against Liszt’s narrative, insisting that ‘Gypsies do notplay for themselves, but as a means of earning a livelihood’,51 that theirmusical lives were profoundly different from those found in normativecultures.

Writing in a Saxon periodical from Kronstadt (today Braşov), AlexanderCzeke recognized the connections between Hungarian and Gypsy music,noting the elegiac and patriotic tone of the musical performances. In hisopinion,

the fundamental feature of Hungarian music is an elegiac one. From thebeloved homeland, my rose (Rozsam), my bud (bimbóm), my dove (galambom),my love, to the most glorious patriotic song ‘Hazádnak rendületnlenül légyhíve, o magyar!’ [‘Be steadfast in support of your country, O Hungarian!’],everywhere dolour, everywhere the pounding violent yearning.52

The attribution of this Romani mindset to the Hungarians as primaryconsumers of Gypsy musical performance also betrays the Saxon elites’Orientalist gaze.53 The political power of such remarks, articulated inessentialist terms, provides evidence of a Herderian conceptualization ofthe nation. From such a point to the concealment of potentially violentpassions was only one step taken without remorse in press narratives.

A good example of such a press narrative can be found again in thecolumns of the principal German-language paper, Siebenbürgisch-deutschesTageblatt, which reported in June 1877 that, in Bistritz (today Bistriţa), twoHungarian clerks were enjoying their time on the terrace of a local restaurant,where they chatted, ‘drank mash and listened to national Gypsy music’. AGerman named Müller showed up: ‘The innocent German thought that if, in aconstitutional state, it was possible to pay for a performance by internationalGypsies, it should be possible to pay to hear a German piece of music.’54

Müller’s choice of ‘An der schönen blauen Donau’ (‘The Blue Danube’)

50 Heinrich von Wlislocki, Vom wandernden Zigeunervolke: Bilder aus dem Leben derSiebenbürger Zigeuner: Geschichtliches, Ethnologisches, Sprache und Poesie (Hamburg:Verlagsanstalt und druckerei Actien-Gesellschaft 1890), 217.

51 Anton Herrmann, ‘Gypsy music’, Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, vol. 3, no. 3, January1892, 151–2 (151).

52 Alexander Czeke, ‘Über ungarische Musik und Zigeuner’, Blätter für Geist, Gemüth undVaterlandeskunde, vol. 16, no. 47, 27 November 1858, 178–9 (179).

53 David Malvinni, The Gypsy Caravan: From the Real Roma to Imaginary Gypsies in WesternMusic and Film (London and New York: Routledge 2004), 46; Nicholas Saul, Gypsies andOrientalism in German Literature and Anthropology of the Long Nineteenth Century(London: Legenda 2007), 7, 14 ff.

54 ‘Großthaten’, Siebenbürgisch-deutsches Tageblatt, no. 1056, 16 June 1877, 557.

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insulted the members of what the reporter called ‘the uniquely legitimatenation’, as they had lost their ‘privileged relationship to the Gypsies’. Aviolent fight ensued and the German was stabbed. Despite an ‘anxiousattempt to sweep things under the carpet’, these ‘inhuman brutalities’ came tolight.55 The idea of the German repertoire as universalist can be easilydiscerned in the reporter’s preference for the German character in the story.56

The report not only indicates the ‘silliness’ with which Hungarian nationalmusic was associated, but also conveyed to readers the veiled chauvinisticattitude of a rival ethnic group towards the German minority. The journalist’sidentification with the cultural values of the ‘innocent’ victim shows howmusical performances by Roma were seen as the perfect medium for enactingenmity between national cultures.Confirmation of the stereotyped osmosis between Hungarian culture and

Roma musical performances in the service of a Hungarian nationalist agendacan also be found in the travelogues of foreigners published in the Saxonpress. A western traveller’s observations were regarded as supplementaryproof that performances by Roma could potentially arouse a spirit of revolt.One traveller reported that, at an inn, he had the chance to enjoy a Romaniband that played unofficial Hungarian anthems with passion in order tofamiliarize the foreigner with the ‘national soul’.57 He was informed by hisescort that the ‘melancholic, cadenced and spirited tunes’ were the ‘KlapkaMarch, the vocal Éljen and a storming Rákóczi March’. The performanceswere met with applause, and coins were thrown at the musicians as reward.Despite the manipulative power of these elegiac renditions, they were soonrecognized as carrying hidden revanchist ideas. In spite of the traveller’sdesire to enrich his journey with ‘authentic’ cultural productions, he could notignore the fact that the music he innocently requested the Romani band toplay was met with animosity by the Romanians present at the same inn, whoasked for a different repertoire. The reporter described the ‘melancholyHungarian lament’, and noted that the Romani minstrel’s performance‘indeed displayed wild passions that were [for the traveller] entirelyinsignificant’,58 from a political point of view. A repertoire that could be socasually exoticized by the traveller was read differently by the ethnic groupsin Transylvania. Nationalist music played by the Roma could stir the massesas they recognized in some melodies a signal for rebellion. Such reportedoccurrences offer insights into how unofficial anthems could prove to be moreeffective in supporting a nationalist agenda.59 On the other hand, thenarrative also suggests the delicate situation of the Romani performer, caught

55 Ibid.56 Benjamin Curtis, Music Makes the Nation: Nationalist Composers and Nation Building in

Nineteenth-century Europe (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press 2008), 9.57 ‘Zigeunersympathie: Eine Reiseerinnerung aus Ungarn’, Siebenbürger Quartalschrift,

no. 4, 16 February 1860, 123–4.58 Ibid., 124.59 Bohlman, Focus, 111 ff.

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between conflicting national agendas and their preferred musical repertoires.Furthermore, the episode exposes entangled cultural paradigms, the Orienta-lization of the Romani minstrel being simultaneously accompanied bysuspicions of his playing the tune of Magyar national pride.

Many other musical works were seen as incorporating or reiteratingmessages that were subversive to the central authorities and hostile to otherethnic groups, particularly the Germans. In the nineteenth century, musicbecame a discipline in the nationally oriented school curricula, andunsurprisingly certain patriotic songs were learned by heart from earlychildhood.60 Gradually, the crowds that gathered at different festivities orcelebrations came to share a repertoire of ‘their own’. Individuals withdifferent cultural and educational backgrounds became familiar with thesame tunes and the meanings they conveyed, and then used them to identifyOthers as competitors or declared enemies.

In 1891 the public performances of Zigeunerkapellen from Bistritz weredecoded in the same manner in the German press. It was reported that FranzDaday, the royal Vice-Procurator, ordered the Roma to stop singing theofficial Austro-Hungarian anthem Gott erhalte. Instead, he told them: ‘Playanother melody [Hogy más nótát húzzanak], actually meaning, go diddle theGerman, or in his own words “mégis hunéczfut a nemet”.’61 Other officerspresent at the general headquarters understood the message behind hisrequest, and thought Daday’s attitude highly disrespectful. A fight followedand Daday was injured. After his recovery, disciplinary measures were takenagainst him. The officer who initiated the fight, which could have cost Dadayhis life, was prosecuted but exonerated of any guilt.62 In this particularcontext, the Roma were regarded simply as performers of various repertoires,and their readiness to play unofficial and insensitive anthems was left out ofthe discussion. The narrative concentrated instead on the Hungarian’s offenceand only indirectly on the adaptability of the Roma to a market regulated bythe preferences of their ethnically heterogeneous clientele.63

After a series of similar events involving Zigeunerkapellen in other cities inthe eastern part of Austria-Hungary, recounted in the Siebenbürgisch-deutschesTageblatt,64 musical performances by Roma were banned as a precaution

60 ‘Csínom Palkó’, ‘Do not trust the German’ and ‘Rákóczi-nóta’ (Rákóczi Song) werelearned by heart by all Hungarian schoolchildren. See Johann Weidlein, Imagineagermanului în literatura maghiară (Cluj-Napoca: Fundaţia culturală română 2002), 137.

61 ‘Unteranwalt und Offiziere’, Siebenbürgisch-deutsches Tageblatt, no. 5331, 23 June1891, 609.

62 Ibid.63 Note the ambiguity of the concept of ‘market’ in the case of the discourses about Gypsy

music: on the one hand, it is the result of social forces and, on the other, it is the sitewhere the construction of ‘the Gypsy’ becomes a valuable ‘cultural phenomenon inEuropean cultures’. See Malvinni, The Gypsy Caravan, 18, 40, 168, 180.

64 See ‘Ungarische Musik im Agram verboten!’, Siebenbürgisch-deutsches Tageblatt, no.1679, 1 July 1879, 631; ‘Keine ungarische Musik’, Siebenbürgisch-deutsches Tageblatt, no.2113, 29 November 1880, 1051.

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against riots. Germans were increasingly convinced that ‘Gypsy music’nourished Hungarian nationalism. Such a conviction was also shared by theSaxons who dominated some of the most important towns in Transylvania.Press reports informed readers that interdictions were also thought legitimatein circumstances in which acts of ‘abominable brutality’ occurred.65 Somevoices in the German press analysed specific events through an ideologicalprism, reaching the conclusion that the performances of Roma were patheticand encouraged emotional outbursts. In one narrative, the gendarme Nagyembodied a ‘typical Hungarian’: arrogant and easily inflamed by the tunes ofthe Romani musicians. At his bidding, parties frequently continued all nightlong, disturbing other citizens. A ‘peaceful Saxon’ asked the Roma to leave theguest house where these parties took place, and the gendarme replied bybullying the Saxon and using harsh language. The reporter commented that, inorder to preserve social peace between the nationalities, Romani bands ‘had tobe banned by the police authorities from playing and earning money in ale-and guest houses and made to be responsible for the effects of theirperformances as a deterrent against similar occurrences!’66 The anonymouswriter advocated that corrective police measures be enforced against themusicians as well as the agent who organized events at which a specificrepertoire in favour of one ethnic party was played.In 1898 the same newspaper reported an event in Tekendorf (today Teaca),

an ethnically mixed village near the Saxon town of Bistritz.67 A celebration ofthe Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I brought together the town’s localintelligentsia and civil servants as well as a Streitkommando (military strikeunit) that by chance happened to be there. The music was provided by a localband that was presumably dominated by Germans since a majority of thepopulation in the locality were Saxons. Borokai Gyula, an ethnic Magyar whowas appointed lieutenant with the imperial gendarmerie, attended thebanquet. He expected to hear Gypsy music but the participants turneddown his request, as it was not to the taste of the organizers. In the spirit ofcivic loyalty assumed by the Saxons, they selected a repertoire of hymns thatpaid tribute to the unity of the peoples of Transylvania. Thus the inclusive‘Siebenbürgen Land des Segens’ (Transylvania, Land of Blessings) was playedso as to overshadow the performances of the Romani musicians who hadbeen brought by the Hungarian lieutenant. As the gathering was multi-ethnic,Hungarian official anthems were also performed in order to reinforce themessage of unity. Therefore, among the repertoire was the aforementionedsong, regarded as the anthem of the Saxons,68 along with ‘Isten, áldd meg a

65 ‘Eine Tat abscheuliches Brutalität’, Siebenbürgisch-deutsches Tageblatt, no. 4593, 16January 1889, 55.

66 Ibid.67 ‘Zur Verhaftung in Tekendorf’, Siebenbürgische-deutsches Tageblatt, no. 7509, 30 August

1898, 905.68 Bohlman, Focus, 182; Hajek, Die Musik, ihre Gestalter und Verkünder in Siebenbürgen einst

und jetzt, 42.

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magyart’ (God, Bless the Hungarians) and ‘Kék nefelejcs’ (Blue Forget-Me-Nots). The musical conflict between the factions continued, and Borokai evenordered the local band to leave the stage to make room for the Romaniperformers. When his order was met with the same refusal, he abused theparticipants, accused them of singing ‘hostile national songs’ and arrestedthem. Again, in recounting the episode, the Siebenbürgisch-deutsches Tageblatttried to convey to its readers that musicking was far from innocent, and thatpolitical disagreements could be provoked by musical performances. In theGerman journalist’s view, the episode documented once again the more orless voluntarily subordination of the Roma to the Hungarian political agenda.

Articles in the press show how the clash between nations could bereiterated by conflicting musical canons, repertoires and performances, andultimately by essentialized national tastes. That ‘musicking’ was a weapon ofwar was no secret to the Transylvanian people. Since, as we have seen,tensions could be deliberately generated during official celebrations of theimperial authorities, such events might be understood as open declarations ofwar. At the end of the nineteenth century, in the era of widespread pressreporting, even the most remote corner of Austria-Hungary could bemonitored. Word spread fast and such narratives could quickly alarm variousauthorities, be they local, provincial or imperial.

Entanglements of cultural discourses and ‘musicking’ in latenineteenth-century Transylvania

In his most recent book, Marcello Sorce Keller posited the notion that ‘musictakes sides’.69 This notion was intuitively understood by the ethnicities ofTransylvania in the nineteenth century. Even when music was performedoutside official institutions—which programmatically stimulated nationalsentiments—it was far from innocent.

Without question, the narratives in the Transylvanian German-languagepress were deeply concerned with ‘musicking’ as a political act. Some of thebetween-the-lines judgements betray an adherence to the western canon as faras musical taste was concerned. While music may have only played asubsidiary role, it was, as I have suggested, not at all insignificant in thedisparagement of Romani musical performers as domestic and familiarOrientals.70 Central to the narratives was the idea that the Saxons found in theassociation between Hungarians and Romani musical performances asymbolic weapon to counter a nationalist/chauvinistic Hungarian agenda.Altogether, the Germans denounced such performances as the hybrid

69 Marcello Sorce Keller, What Makes Music European: Looking beyond Sound (Lanham, MD:Scarecrow Press 2012), 134.

70 Marian Zăloagă, ‘Professing domestic Orientalism: representing the Gypsy as Musikantin the Transylvanian Saxons’ writings of the long 19th century’, Studia UniversitatisBabeş-Bolyai, Historia, vol. 57, no. 2, 2012, 1–28.

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outcome of primitive Easterners. Apart from this Orientalist gaze, therecognition of a politically chauvinist agenda triggered a heightened aversionto the music of the Other. In the German view, hybridization between theHungarian and Romani culture was a confirmation of actual enmity, and anoccasion to restate symbolically their belonging to a hegemonic westernculture. As demonstrated, Germans opposed their adversaries by exploitingthe attribute of civility, which they linked to a conformist repertoire thatexpressed loyalty to the state.The two discourses on music, namely, that of civility/canonicity and that of

Orientalism, could become entangled. Both underscore the idea of Othernessand even rivalry. Indeed, the Orientalist gaze was a subsidiary discursive toolthat Germans used to disparage their political adversaries by placing theminto a reconfigured symbolical geography of the East,71 although, as a matterof fact, most of the narratives referred to in this paper set the animosities inrather mundane contexts. The hybrid cultural relations between the Hungar-ians and Romani musical bands—primarily a construct of the West,occasionally employed by the Saxons—might have been shared only byelites. Conversely, narratives hinting at a precise repertoire settled the matterin ways that were relevant for members of various social or ethnoculturalgroups sensitive to, or even involved in, the social order or nation-building inthe easternmost province of Austria-Hungary. According to both of thesesocial structuring principles, it was legitimate to vilify the musicking of theOther.

Marian Zăloagă has published studies on the cultural representations ofOtherness in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Transylvania. In 2011 hecompleted a doctoral dissertation on the image of ‘the Gypsy’ in Transylva-nian Saxon culture. Recently, he has been working on the role of music insociety, and the relation between music and nationalism in Transylvania inthe long nineteenth century. Email: zaloagam@yahoo.com

71 See Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London and New York: Penguin 2003); and LarryWolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 1994).

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