Grove Koger
If you’re fascinated by unusual musical instruments, then the cymbalom (or cimbalom) is worth your attention. And if you enjoy sampling unusual repertoire, then you’ll find the small body of cymbalom music readily available outside of Hungary fascinating. If you’re Hungarian, of course, you know what I’m talking about, but for the rest of us, the instrument and its music belong to another world.
The concert cymbalom is based on the traditional hammered dulcimer, or Hungarian hammered dulcimer, and dates from 1874, the year it was created by Vencel József Schunda. Schunda’s improvements involved extending the older instrument’s tonal range and adding pedals. Traditional examples might have been set up on top of a table or bench, but Schunda’s version had legs and somewhat resembled a piano. However, the player struck its metal strings directly with long, leather-wrapped mallets. (The example you see above, in a photograph by Xylosmygame, is from the Emil Richards Collection). By 1906, Schunda had sold more than 10,000 of his instruments!
The concert cymbalom attracted the attention of a number of figures, including the great Hungarian composers Franz Liszt and Zoltán Kodály. Liszt, in fact, had already reproduced the sound of the traditional hammered dulcimer in his Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Alongside such exalted names, Géza Allaga (above) cuts a somewhat modest figure. A member of the Hungarian Royal Opera, he followed Schunda’s advice in writing a four-volume textbook on the dulcimer, the first volume of which he dedicated to Liszt himself. The Hungarian National Conservatory made him a professor of the instrument in 1890, and he began editing the journal Cimbalom családi körben that same year.
But Allaga was also a composer in his own right. His major work for the cymbalom seems to be his Hungarian Concerto for Hungarian Hammered Dulcimer, the opening work on Hungaroton CD 31825, where it’s played by virtuoso Viktória Herencsár (above). Not a concerto in the usual sense of the word, it’s more of an extended rhapsody based on the same mixture of authentic Hungarian folk tunes and Roma melodies that Liszt drew upon for his more famous rhapsodies. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t vivid and enjoyable.
For an encore, you can watch Cimbalom Dualité perform Allaga’s short, impressionistic Vihar (Storm) here.
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