ABSTRACT
Investigating the historical appropriation of the aesthetic of Gypsiness in Western art music, we must take into account the seismic shift in the valuation of Gypsy music. Again, as initially sketched in Chapter One: for Liszt and other nineteenth-century composers, Gypsy music as Hungarian national music was an exotic language, treasured for its rhythmic flexibility, melodic fluency, and evocative performance gestures. Beginning with Bartók and then spreading to other twentieth-century Hungarian composers/(ethno)musicologists, Gypsy music became a problematic phenomenon. In Bartóks estimation, Gypsy music represents a contaminated, mass-audience tourist-traffic music. Furthermore and with larger implications, Bartók refused to equate Hungarian music proper with especially urban Gypsy music.
