Dances from Galanta
Dances from Galanta is the title of a composition by Zoltán Kodály from 1933. It is a collection of folk-inspired dances by the Sinti and Roma from the area around Galanta , a town in what is now Slovakia, where Kodály spent his youth and the then belonged to Austria-Hungary . The work is one of the composer's best known and is often performed by well-known international symphony orchestras .
History of the plant
For the dances Kodály used various motifs from Hungarian folk music played by gypsy bands. In Galanta there was a nationally known chapel, which was led by a fiddler named Mihók and whose wise men were included in Kodály's compositions. In 1927 Kodály had already composed the Marosszéker Tanzen , a piano suite (orchestral version from 1930), a piece with a similar folkloric character.
Kodály himself writes about his dances from Galanta in the foreword of the score: Galánta is a small Hungarian market town on the old railway line between Vienna and Budapest, where the author spent seven years of his childhood. At that time a famous gypsy band lived there, which impressed the child with the first "orchestral sound". Around 1800 a few books of Hungarian dances appeared in Vienna, including one "by various gypsies from Galántha". The main motifs of this work come from these booklets. The occasion for the composition was the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1853, in 1933. The dedication is: A Budapesti Filharmóniai Társaság alakulásának 80. évfordulójára . The first performance took place on October 23, 1933 under the direction of Ernst von Dohnányi .
The piece is part of the repertoire of the Berlin Philharmonic , the Cologne Gürzenich Orchestra , and the Munich and Vienna Philharmonic . The Wiener Symphoniker and the Italian Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana also have the work in their program.
Musical character and instrumentation
The composition has five merging sets and has a folkloric color of the instrumentation on. The music, which is based on Verbunkos , a Hungarian dance and music style that was used to recruit soldiers in the country, is shaped by syncopated hard rhythms and uneven melodies .
The piece begins with a slow introductory melody , the lassú (slow), in which the virtuously played clarinet can stand out with a long solo. Motifs of this melody run through the first half of the piece like a rondo . Later the flutes and other woodwind instruments also play short solos. In the second half new melodies appear, in the tempo maestoso , called friss (fresh) in Hungarian music , which now become a real fast dance. The tempo increases as it progresses, becomes slower again (Andante) and then increased again, in order to complete the piece in a spirited, brilliant finale, in which the clarinet sounding at the beginning, together with the flute, once again introduces a short delay with a virtuoso cadenza Exit volume . The work takes about 15 minutes.
Kodály plans to use these instruments of a large symphony orchestra as instrumentation :
- first and second flute , piccolo ,
- first and second oboe ,
- first and second A clarinet ,
- first and second bassoon ,
- four horns in F,
- first and second trumpet in C,
- Timpani ,
- Drums,
- a string group consisting of first and second violin , violas , cellos and double basses
literature
- Zoltán Kodály: Galántai táncok = Dances from Galanta = Dances of Galanta (= Philharmonia. 275.) Philharmon. Verlag, Vienna 1935, OCLC 165726321 . (Pocket score)
- Ferenc Bónis: Hungarian dances from Galanta 1803. Selected Hungarian national dances by various gypsies from Galanta, for piano = Hungarian dances of Galanta 1803. Selected Hungarian folk dances from several Gypsies of Galanta, for piano. Universal Edition, Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-7024-6905-4 . (Musical score)
Web link
- Performance of the No Borders Orchestra on October 11, 2012 in Belgrade
- Kodály: Dances of Galánta / Fischer · Berliner Philharmoniker on YouTube played by the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of Iván Fischer
Individual evidence
- ↑ Universal Edition website ; Retrieved December 7, 2015
- ↑ Digital program of the Berliner Philharmoniker ; Retrieved December 7, 2015
- ↑ website. Kennedy Center , with composition information; Retrieved December 7, 2015
- ↑ Herbert Glass: Hollywood Bowl website ( memento of the original from March 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. with a description of the structure of the work; Retrieved December 7, 2015
