The Cold War was so cold that only now, more than ten years after its end, are some composers’ works being thawed out for a general hearing. Hungarian composer László Lajtha (1892-1963) is finally emerging from the deep freeze in which the Hungarian Communist regime placed him.
In 1947, when Lajtha (pronounced “Loy-tah”) returned to Hungary after a year’s work in London on the film score of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, the Communists confiscated his passport and stripped him of all his official positions. He had been the director of music for Hungarian Radio and director of the Museum of Ethnography and the National Conservatory. Not only had Lajtha been contaminated by foreign contacts, his sons had emigrated to England and America (a capital crime), making him additionally suspect. His sons were branded “dissidents” who could not safely return to Hungary. Lajtha himself was harassed and shadowed by the security services, and his friends dared visit him only in secret.
Despite this, Lajtha was awarded the prestigious Kossuth Prize in 1951, not for his suppressed compositions but for his research into Hungarian folk music. His friends had to persuade him to accept the prize, lest he be found in open defiance of the authorities. Though nearly destitute himself, he gave away all the prize money to the poor. After 14 years of internal exile, the year before his death in 1963, Lajtha was allowed out of Hungary for one trip, although he was never able to see his two American granddaughters, with whom he communicated in little piano pieces dedicated to them.
What is perhaps most extraordinary about Lajtha’s music from this period is that it is not a reflection of the circumstances in which it was written. Anyone who saw eastern Europe under Communism knows how drab and gray it was. The music it produced was either a harsh, hermetic reflection of this oppression or a banal celebration of the proletariat written for the commissars. Lajtha’s music is neither of these: It is free. Even in internal exile, he maintained his creative independence and integrity. How did he do this? In 1950, he wrote to one of his sons: “Just as in the town I have a room that is mine and only mine, so I have in my soul a secret room of my own. It has nothing to do with reality, yet it is more real.” In his extraordinary religious music, Lajtha revealed the ultimate source of that reality, especially in his Mass in a Time of Tribulation and his Magnificat.
Lajtha’s biographical facts would be of little more than historical interest if he were not a major composer. In the popular mind, only two great Hungarian composers inhabited the 20th century: Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967) and Bela Bartok (1881-1945). Now we can say there was a third. The proof of this is at hand. The Marco Polo label has issued six CDs of Lajtha’s orchestral music, including all but the last two of his nine symphonies, and one CD of his piano music. A seventh CD of orchestral music, which will contain the last two symphonies, is due out in March. The Hungaroton label has released four CDs containing a good deal of Lajtha’s chamber and choral music.
Only ten years younger than his two famous fellow-composers, Lajtha shared with Kodaly and Bartok their love for and research into Hungarian folk music. He accompanied them on collecting expeditions and made many of his own. His music springs from the same folk ethos as theirs and is as much a reaction against the prevailing avant-garde atonality of the time. Yet Lajtha departed significantly from his senior colleagues in several ways. Unlike them, he rejected the German influence prevalent at the Budapest Academy of Music where he studied. Lajtha did not care for Wagner, or for German music after Schubert in general. This included Arnold Schoenberg’s innovations, which Lajtha found restrictive and pedantic. Rather, he turned toward France for his inspiration, particularly to his hero, Debussy.
Between 1911 and 1913, he spent half his time in Paris, where he studied with Vincent d’Indy. His French sensibilities were so pronounced that Bartok teased Lajtha by calling him “the Latin.” The French returned the favor by publishing Lajtha’s music (Alphonse Leduc in Paris) and awarding him membership in the Academie des Beaux-Arts, the only other Hungarian composer to be so honored besides Franz Liszt.
Lajtha’s other departure was his choice of the symphonic form, which was virtually untouched by Kodaly and Bartok except for youthful experiments. Lajtha’s nine symphonies stand unchallenged as an absolutely unique contribution to Hungarian music of the 20th century.
The key to appreciating Lajtha’s symphonies is not to expect them to develop in the typical German way. False expectations no doubt led to Gramophone magazine’s puzzlement at Lajtha’s Symphony No. 7. Its reviewer complained, “There are plenty of ideas, but none of them develops with much conviction: time and again I found myself raising a hand to welcome a promising thematic or dramatic fragment, only to hear it whittle away in the wake of something new.” That is exactly what Lajtha intended: a chainlike succession of ideas that, when developed at all, usually proceed in variation form.
Lajtha’s symphonies are kaleidoscopic and fanciful, often charged with dance rhythms, and full of folklike melodies and a profound sense of underlying mystery. Instead of the German symphonic model, think more of the 20th-century symphonies of Malipiero, Milhaud, or Martinti, and add a dash of Janacek for a gypsy-like wildness. As with Malipiero’s music, it is often hard to distinguish the differences between Lajtha’s symphonies and his suites. Lajtha’s works also share some similarities with Malcolm Arnold’s nine symphonies, particularly in the amount of burlesque and parody in them.
The entry in the New Grove music dictionary says that “the influence of Magyar folk music is less obvious in his works than in those of Bart& and Kodaly.” Yet on first acquaintance, the uniquely Hungarian flavor of Lajtha’s melodies is the most immediately striking feature of his music. The other immediate impression is made by the highly colorful orchestration, luminously set forth with Impressionist clarity. The content may be Hungarian, but the sensibility is French. Harp, saxophone, wood blocks, xylophone, and percussion frequently add spice to the swirling strings. Bartok’s influence is especially felt in Lajtha’s shimmering evocations of a mysterious crepuscular world similar to that found in Bartok’s famous “night music.” It is no wonder that Bartok admired his younger friend for doing the same thing so well—indeed, as well as Bartok himself, if with a more Gallic flavor.
Nonetheless, Lajtha’s sound world is identifiably distinct. After immersing myself in his music, I could easily identify a piece of his I had never heard before within a few measures. While his music could almost survive on its orchestral atmospherics alone, Lajtha also possessed a major melodic gift and a high level of craftsmanship. He said, “In all works of art the quality of craftsmanship is a decisive factor of evaluation.” In this respect, Lajtha clearly measured up to the standards of Kodaly and Bartok.
Marco Polo’s traversal of the symphonies is accompanied by some of Lajtha’s other orchestral works: three suites from ballets; a huge set of Variations for orchestra taken from the music for Murder in the Cathedral; and several other pieces, including the ballet Capriccio. The mood varies considerably from a kind of light and brilliant divertissement in the suites and some of the symphonies to the more harrowing and troubling disturbances of the other, usually odd-numbered symphonies, such as No. 7, “Revolution Symphony,” which evokes the tragedy of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Yet none of the works is monochromatic. The variety within any of them can be absolutely wild, at one moment hauntng, the next whimsical, then nostalgic, then brash. Lajtha can do this and make it seem completely natural. He was able to step in and out of a dream-like state with ease.
The symphonies to which I have returned most often are the middle ones, Nos. 3 through 6, which may provide the best introduction to Lajtha. However, all the symphonies are highly accomplished products of Lajtha’s maturity. He was already 44 years old when he produced his highly charged First. Symphony No. 4, subtitled “Spring,” is a breezy and attractive score with a mini-violin concerto in the first movement and highly evocative gypsylike melodies. The second movement is redolent of Janata; the third, of Malcolm Arnold. A soul mate to Symphony No. 4, No. 6 is also breezy in its opening movement, followed by another utterly enchanting piece of “night music,” which is almost Mendelssohnian in its magical charm. This music is wonderfully mysterious in its crepuscular murmurings. The upper string registers are gently brushed to sound like cicadas, the high flutes twitter like night birds, and other burbling night sounds enchant the ear. Lajtha’s Third Symphony, drawing again from his music for Murder in the Cathedral, is more somber but gravely beautiful. No. 5 is a beguiling lament, suffused with yearning for a lost, mysterious world.
There is no room here to do justice to Lajtha’s chamber music, the most clearly French-influenced part of his oeuvre. His chamber music first put Lajtha on the musical map. In 1929, he won the Coolidge prize for his Third String Quartet. (Might we someday hope to hear the ten quartets?) Two of the Hungaroton CDs contain masterpieces by Lajtha that will entrance anyone who thrills to the chamber works of Ravel and Roussel for similar ensembles, especially his Harp Quintet No. 2; his Trio for harp, flute, and cello; and his Trio for flute, cello, and harp. Equally beguiling are the ravishing songs set in Lajtha’s Trois Nocturnes for soprano, flute, harp, and string quartet. The workmanship is dazzling, the inspiration high. Except for the intrusion of Hungarian melodies in these pieces, anyone would swear they were French born and bred.
Lajtha also excelled in choral music. The religious works presented on two other Hungaroton CDs demonstrate a sublime command of the voice and the use of it to express a deep faith. Lajtha’s Missa in diebus tribulationis was composed in 1950, a very difficult year for him and also the year in which the Communist regime suppressed the monasteries in Hungary. The Mass conveys a sense of mourning and loss but also of solace and even joy. Obviously, Lajtha had no hope of having the work performed; it came from the workbench in his “secret room.” For Lajtha, it was “an escape into a more beautiful, spotless world,” according to his widow.
This is a Mass of both exquisite refinement and moving simplicity. Its origins are steeped in Gregorian chant and French harmonies. The orchestration is luminously transparent, and the melodies are gorgeous. After starting each movement with Gregorian chant, Lajtha begins to elongate and transform the vocal lines, setting them forth monophonically and then intertwining them polyphonically. The full orchestra is used sparingly and to powerful effect, as in the peroration at the end of the Gloria. However dolorous, this is finally a work of soothing beauty.
Gregorian chant was also the touchstone for Lajtha’s Magnificat and his Three Hymns for the Holy Virgin, both works from the mid-50s for choir and organ. Lajtha saw his Magnificat as the antithesis to “the stridency, the trumpeting, the Baroque majesty of the fortes in the Magnificat of Bach and other masters.” This was, Lajtha said, “the hymn of a half-girlish voice sung on the shores of Lake Gennesaret.” What he wished to express in this seraphic music was “gentleness, grace, beauty, tenderness, humility.” It was, he wrote, “as if the soul, the happy, young, maternal soul, were bursting out and rippling in soft waves over the whole world.” Except for the aggressive organ interludes, this is what Lajtha achieved in this sweet music, written with his featherlight French touch. How warm must have been this secret room of his to produce such clear but gentle illumination.
How cold was the Cold War? Cold enough to freeze Lajtha out of the audience and recognition he deserved. But the door to his secret room stands open. You can enter by listening to this music, and the Cold War will melt away before you, as if civilization had triumphed. All praise to the Marco Polo and Hungaroton labels for finally making Lajtha’s music available.