Verbunkos (derived from German Werbung, “recruitment of soldiers”) as a specific musical form is documented from the early 18th century on (Apponyi MS, 1730), characterized by dotted rhythms in a 16-measure binary section form, and usually instrumented for violins, bass, dulcimer, and clarinet. It has been associated with Hungarian music since the 18th century: Mozart, Haydn, and Schubert use the verbunkos rhythm and structure in their pieces, and they often refer to it as Ungaresca style. In the 19th century, Liszt’s Hungarian rhapsodies popularized verbunkos and, as the title indicates, identified this type of music with Hungarian style.

Like national styles in general, the Hungarian national style is also a transcultural phenomenon. In an article entitled “Our folk music and the fol -music of neighbouring peoples” (Népzenénk és a szomszéd népek népzenéje, 1934), Béla Bartók argued that verbunkos developed under a strong North-Slavic influence and is a mixture of the musical styles of neighbouring countries.

Starting in the 1710s Romani (“Gypsy”) musicians were hired by the Habsburg army to play music for festive recruiting events in villages and towns throughout Hungary. These recruitment practices ended with the Hungarian War of Independence in 1849, when, ironically, a musical genre originally associated with the Habsburg Empire had come to symbolize Hungary’s anti-Habsburg struggle.

The terminology denoting Hungarian musical style has been inconsistent and malleable: the type of music that came to be known as verbunkos was often simply called magyar, and it was based on dance music for men played in Hungarian villages, like the kanásztánc (“swineherds’ dance”) or legényes (“lads’ dance”). These dances usually began in a slow or moderate tempo and had a fast or fiery ending. In the second half of the 19th century such dance music came to be known as csárdás (“inn dance”), which was faster in tempo than the original version and was to be danced by couples. The strongly masculine character of verbunkos was mitigated in csárdás, and therefore the latter was rejected by some critics as an effeminate and corrupt version of the original Hungarian style.

While Romantic Nationalism idealized these dances as the expression of a Hungarian national style, verbunkos had been shaped and disseminated in much wider circles, including the western European concert halls and opera stages. The verbunkos embraced by the 19th-century Hungarian public was not the original village music but a transculturally adapted version of it, played mainly by travelling Romani bands. Hence, Hungarian music was also often referred to as “Gypsy music”. In Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (1859), Liszt claimed that Hungarian music was in fact a symbiosis between Magyar social traditions and the inventiveness and virtuosity with which he credited the Romani ethnicity. Liszt’s opinion combined the ethnotypes of Romantic exoticism with the social reality as to the role, careers, and audience-appeal of Romani musicians and “Gypsy bands” in Hungary.

Many music critics, in criticizing the Westernized nature of verbunkos, instead emphasized Magyar nóta (“Hungarian popular song”) as the truly authentic representative of the Hungarian musical tradition. The first Hungarian musical journal, Zenészeti lapok (1860-76), published a series of articles on the characteristics of the Hungarian national style. A so-called “area theory” emerged, which sketched a topography of the Hungarian style and divided Hungarian music according to various geographic locations. The composers preferring verbunkos (János Bihari, 1764–1827; János Lavotta, 1764–1820; Antal Csermák, 1774–1822; Mihály Mosonyi, 1815–1870; as well as Erkel and Liszt) were born in the western part of Hungary and had a German musical education, while the composers preferring popular folk songs (József Szerdahelyi, 1804–1851; Béni Egressy, 1814–1851; Gusztáv Szénfy, 1819–1875) were born in Eastern Hungary and were closer to the rural folk traditions of Hungary. In Magyar zenekönyv (“Hungarian music book”, 1858-59) Szénfy argued that the difference in style was linked to the regional character of the composers. Szénfy identified two distinct musical trends in Europe, a western and an eastern one; the latter, located in Hungary, Transylvania, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, and Russia, had a “fabulous tranquillity” and was more masculine. He concluded that the most valuable Hungarian music was Eastern in character and more purely authentic, while the music of western Hungary was a blend of different national traditions and styles, incapable of faithfully reflecting the Hungarian soul. Szénfy proposed that the Eastern style should be institutionalized as the official musical “mother tongue” of the Hungarians, following the example of the linguists, who also standardized the Eastern dialect.

The palotás (“palace music”), a slow dance originating in Hungarian Renaissance aristocratic courts and royal palaces, and played mainly by German and, later, Romani musicians, was often used in the operas of Ferenc Erkel and other composers. In the discourse about Hungarian music, palotás was often contrasted with verbunkos and csárdás as the elevated, nobler dance against the vulgar dance music of inns and taverns. Some critics considered palotás more “Magyar” than verbunkos; it was used at balls organized for the aristocracy and the middle-class public, popular forms of sociability since the late 18th century and coded manifestations of national resistance against Habsburg rule. These balls provided occasions for parading Hungarian festive garments, traditionally seen as symbols of the Hungarian nation in its formative upper echelons.