(Hung., from Ger. Werbung: ‘recruiting’).
A traditional Hungarian dance music originally used for recruiting, of 18th-century origin and sometimes simply called a hongroise, or ungarischer Tanz. Before the Austro-Hungarian imperial army instituted conscription in 1849, recruiting presentations involving music were used in order to fill the ranks with Hungarian village recruits. About a dozen hussars (members of the Hungarian light cavalry), led by their sergeant, would be involved: first, the sergeant would dance slow and dignified figures, then the subordinate officers would join in and the music and dancing became increasingly energetic, until finally the youngest soldiers engaged in virtuosic leaps and spur-clicking. The accompanying music was usually played by Gypsy musicians. Although the verbunkos is sometimes considered Gypsy music, it was actually Hungarian, often derived ultimately from the song repertory, but played in a fashion characteristic of the Gypsy musicians. Its use as recruiting music ceased in 1849, by which time it was already evolving into the Hungarian national dance, the Csárdás. The two forms share many characteristics.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a verbunkos art music for middle-class consumption began to evolve, largely through the performances of such virtuosos as János Bihari (1764–1827), one of the earliest and most celebrated Gypsy bandleaders, and the demands of the amateur market. Scores of verbunkos music were published from 1784 onwards in Vienna and elsewhere, and the number of such publications listed in Papp's bibliographies suggests that they were quite popular. Composers such as Mozart and Schubert would therefore have needed no particular contact with Hungary or Hungarians, as is often implied, to encounter this music: it was all around them in Vienna.
Verbunkos had both slow (lassú or lassan) sections and fast (friss or friska) ones (ex.1); these could either form a pair or alternate at greater length. Lassú sections often featured a characteristic dotted rhythm, such as that in the opening violin figure in the first movement, ‘Verbunkos’, of Bartók's Contrasts (1938). The virtuoso running notes of the faster sections became central to the so-called Style hongrois, the evocation of Hungarian Gypsy repertories and performance styles by (primarily) Austro-German composers. Verbunkos-derived passagework is found in Mozart (e.g. the finale of the Violin Concerto k219, and Haydn (e.g. the ‘Rondo all'ongarese’ of the Piano Trio h XV:25), but is more common in 19th-century chamber music, including the finales of Schubert's String Quintet d956 and Brahms's Piano Quartet no.1 op.25.
See also Hungary, §II.
F. Liszt: Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (Paris, 2/1881/R; Eng. trans., 1926/R, as The Gypsy in Music)
B. Sárosi: Cigányzene (Budapest, 1971; Eng. trans., 1978, as Gypsy Music)
G. Papp: ‘Die Quellen der “Verbunkos-Musik”: ein bibliographischer Versuch’, SM, xxi (1979), 151–217; xxiv (1982), 35–97; xxvi (1984), 59–132
T. Istvánffy: All'ongarese: Studien zur Rezeption ungarischer Musik bei Haydn, Mozart und Beethoven (diss., U. of Heidelberg, 1982)
J. Bellman: The ‘Style hongrois’ in the Music of Western Europe (Boston, 1993)
JONATHAN BELLMAN