The Hungarian nation has two languages, one is it's ancient spoken language while the other, which is nearly as ancient, is it's folk music. Neither is related to the surrounding peoples of eastern Europe and both were brought from Asia in the distant past. We are of course not talking of the many commonly known Hungarian music styles but the music of the peasants of Hungary which have not been heard much outside of Hungary until lately as a results of the researches of such great musicians and composers as Kodaly and Bartok, who have scientifically researched the music of Hungary as well as Eastern European, Turkic and Middle Eastern music.
As to the original range of this ancient musical culture, we have the director of the Conservatory of Chinese Music in Peking University, Du Yaxiong to thank as the discoverer at the other end of the Eurasian continent. The following are his comments on the common musical heritage.
(Du Yaxiong's findings have been reported in the 2nd Annual National Meeting of Ethnomusicology in Peking on Aug. 10-19 of 1982. In English it was also published in "China Music" periodical. Some articles were also published in Budapest, Hungary on his research -Elet es Irodalom, May 24 1985-)
In the words of Du Yaxion: "About 25 years ago when I studied in a high school, I used to play piano pieces by Kodaly. I was surprised that the music from that remote country (Hungary) seemed to have something in common with Chinese music. After I completed my study in a university and became an ethnomusicologist, I began to pay more and more attention to the relationship between Chinese folk songs and Hungarian folk songs". "I have been working in this sphere for years and my discovery is that many Hungarian folk songs sound similar to Chinese (especially Chinese Turkish minority) folk songs. For example if you compare the Sichuan folk song "Love song of Kangding" and the Chuvash (of Turkic-Hun origin living in Russia) then a Hungarian folk song from Kodaly you can soon recognize their similarity. Many Hungarian folk songs have similar songs in common with the Chinese minority folk songs. (He is talking predominantly of the northern and north eastern part of China which is still inhabited with the descendants of Huns and Turkic people.)
"According to the research of Bartok and Kodaly, the characteristics of ancient Hungarian folk songs are the pentatonic scale and the so called "fifth structure" which means the rear sentence repeats the previous on a fifth lower (A 5, A or A 5 A 5 A A). These characteristics are most common with the minorities of western China who are of the Altaic branch of people (Turkic languages which are distantly related to Hungarian). The long fore and short rear rhythm style is very common in Hungarian folk songs, the same as in Chinese, one in North China, especially among the Turkic minorities. As I know, the reason for the special rhythm style in both Hungarian and Chinese folk songs is the emphasis of the word accent in both languages."
"Several years ago, when I was deeply involved in my research work on the folk songs of the Yugur minority, which lives in the Hexi corridor, I found out that the folk songs of this minority which speaks a Turkic language, has a lot in common with Hungarian folk songs. Such features as; pentatonic scale,@foot(A scale having five tones to the octave, rather than eight) the fifth structure, the long fore and short rear rhythm style, the cadence that uses lower fourth and fifth disjunct motion entering the tonic or that uses the lower conjunct motion based on the pentatonic scale that enters from the above minor third or major second, a period composed of two sentences and the lower melodic progression, etc. The characteristics of the music of the two nationalities is nearly the same."
Kodály believed that the Hungarian folk songs were brought with them by the Magyars from their previous home land. In the second chapter of his book "The Preliminary Period of the Hungarian Folk Music" of his book "On the Hungarian Folk Music". He compares the Hungarian folk music with 13 Mari folk songs, 11 Chuvash folk songs and a Tartar folk song and gives the evidences of the similarity and the sameness to prove his conclusion. But he never explains that the Chuvash and the Tartar are a Turkic people and the Mari, which is Finno-Ugrian, lived under a strong Turkic influence 1,000-1,500 years ago. So as a results the Mari folk songs are similar to Turkic folk songs. (According to Bartok and Kodaly Hungarian folk music has nothing in common with the music of the Finno-Ugrian people.)
Bartok also did field work in Turkey and during his short visit in 1936 collected 87 folk songs, of which twenty were related to the Hungarian folk songs. This represents 40%, a very significant proportion. Bartok pointed out in his conclusion that this discovery of his has international significance, and it shows that the Turkish and the Hungarian music has a common origin, which is from Central Asia and the surrounding area. (A. Andan Saygun, Béla Bartok's Folk Music Research in Turkey, Budapest 1976)
The similarity of the Turkic and Hungarian folk songs show that Hun music is one of their sources, according to Du Yaxiong, and the language of the Huns is a branch of the Turkic languages. (This is what is called the Altaic branch of the Ural Altaic languages to which Hungarian belongs.) The Huns left north Chinas' grasslands toward the west in 91 AD, so that the common factors in both Chinese and Hungarian folk songs must have formed long before that. This not only proves that both Chinese and Hungarian folk songs still keep the characteristics of the ancient Hun folk music but it also shows that the Hun's folk songs are one of the important sources of the Hungarian folk songs.
In Bartok's own words: "It is evident that this is no mere coincidence. No such tunes can be found among the Yugoslavs, the Slovaks of the west and north or the Greeks and even in Bulgarian they are occasional. This identity is an irrefutable proof of the age of these melodies: it shows the way back to (at least) the VI and VII Th. centuries A.D. At that period the ancestors of the Anatolian Turks lived somewhere on the borders of Europe and Central Asia in the neighborhood of other Turkish tribes, those of the Hungarians between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea." [Note there are indeed historic references to them in this area and even east of this area!]
"Considering the historical fact that these peoples lived near each other 12-15 centuries ago, later moved to rather distant territories, and could not have any (cultural) intercourse with each other since their separation, it is evident that this musical style must be at least 1,500 years old. The fact that such statement is possible at all, makes this subject of international importance for there is no other instance in the world, as yet known, at least to me, which gives a possibility of such an irrefutable determination of the age of folk music, going back so many centuries. For example the northern and southern Slavs became divided also during the 6-th centuries. However no vestiges of an ancient common Slav folk music can be discovered in their actual folk melodies."
These songs survived not because they were recorded long ago but because they were sung and passed down from generation to generation through the millenniums and served also as models to the new folk songs created by the peasants of Hungary.