Nógrád County

Nógrád (Slovak: Novohradská) is a county (Hungarian: megye) of Hungary.

Description

Nógrád county lies in northern Hungary. It shares borders with Slovakia and the Hungarian counties Pest, Heves and Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén. The capital of Nógrád county is Salgótarján. Its area is 2,544 km².

Nógrád is famous for its historic architecture of ancient Gothic churches and stone castles dated to the 13th century. Other historic landmark includes the baroque buildings constructed in the 18th century and the Vay, Teleki. Much of the northern border of the county is formed by the river Ipoly. The mountain ranges Börzsöny, Cserhát and Mátra lie partly in the county.

Due to the mountains, the county is characterised by small villages nestled in the valleys. The two largest settlements are Balassagyarmat, the former county seat, and Salgótarján, which has become a center of industry in the early 20th century due to coal mines nearby.

History

Nógrád (-Hungarian, in Latin: comitatus Neogradiensis, in German: Neuburg or Neograd, in Slovak: Novohrad) was also the name of a historic administrative county (comitatus) of the Kingdom of Hungary. Its territory is now in southern Slovakia and in northern present-day Hungary. The name Novohrad is still used in Slovakia as an informal designation of the corresponding territory. The name stems from the former Nógrád (Novohrad) castle in present-day Hungary.

Nógrád

Nógrád (Russian: Новгород, Novgorod-Ugorsky;German: Neuburg; Slovak: Novohrad) is a village in Nógrád County, Hungary. It is a historic city of the White Croatia.

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Hungarian folk music

Hungarian folk music includes a broad array of styles, including the recruitment dance verbunkos, the csárdás and nóta.

During the 20th century, Hungarian composers were influenced by the traditional music of their nation which may be considered as a repeat of the early "nationalist" movement of the early 19th century (Beethoven) but is more accurately the artists' desire to escape the hegemony of the classical tradition manifold at that time. Béla Bartók took this departure into the abstract musical world in his appropriation of traditional Hungarian as the basis for symphonic creations.

Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók observed that Hungarian "peasant music" use isometric (with an even number of structures) strophe structure and certain pentatonic (five tone) formations, along with a liking for tempo giusto (rhythm consisting chiefly of equal values). These features jointly may be considered as altogether typical, and differentiate "Hungarian peasant music" from that of any other nation. Bartók studied over 300 melodies, and noted that more modern tunes used for dancing featured pentatonic turns with frequent leaps in fourths.

Pannonian Basin

The Pannonian Basin or Carpathian Basin is a large basin in East-Central Europe. The geomorphological term Pannonian Plain is more widely used for roughly the same region though with a somewhat different sense - meaning only the lowlands, the plain that remained when the Pliocene Epoch Pannonian Sea dried out. It is a geomorphological subsystem of the Alps-Himalaya system. Most of the plain consists of the Great Hungarian Plain (in the south and east, including the Eastern Slovak Lowland) and the Little Hungarian Plain (in the northwest), divided by the Transdanubian Mountains.

The Pannonian Basin lies in the southeastern part of Central Europe, or at the boundary between Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe (Balkans). It forms a topographically discrete unit set in the European landscape, surrounded by imposing geographic boundaries - the Carpathian Mountains, the Alps, the Dinarides and the Balkan mountains. The Rivers Danube and Tisza divide the basin roughly in half. It extends roughly between Vienna in the northwest, Zagreb in the southwest, Belgrade in the southeast and Satu Mare in the northeast.

Hungary

Coordinates: 47°N 20°E / 47°N 20°E / 47; 20

Hungary (ⁱ/ˈhʌŋɡəri/; Hungarian: Magyarország [ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ]) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Romania to the east, Serbia to the south, Croatia to the southwest, Slovenia to the west, Austria to the northwest, and Ukraine to the northeast. The country's capital and largest city is Budapest. Hungary is a member of the European Union, NATO, the OECD, the Visegrád Group, and the Schengen Area. The official language is Hungarian, which is the most widely spoken non-Indo-European language in Europe.

Following centuries of successive habitation by Celts, Romans, Huns, Slavs, Gepids, and Avars, the foundation of Hungary was laid in the late 9th century by the Hungarian grand prince Árpád in the Honfoglalás ("homeland-conquest"). His great-grandson Stephen I ascended to the throne in 1000 CE, converting the country to a Christian kingdom. By the 12th century, Hungary became a middle power within the Western world, reaching a golden age by the 15th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and about 150 years of partial Ottoman occupation (1541–1699), Hungary came under Habsburg rule, and later formed a significant part of the Austro–Hungarian Empire (1867–1918).