String Pioneers—Hungarian Violin Icon Panna Czinka Continues to Inspire

By Greg Cahill | From the May/June 2026 issue of Strings

During her lifetime, an adoring public hailed Panna Czinka as “The Gypsy Sappho,” a sobriquet meant to honor this unorthodox lyric poet and virtuoso violinist who blazed the trail for female musicians and inspired thousands of Hungarian ensembles over the past 300 years. 

While she’s hardly a household name in modern America, Czinka (1711–72) influenced such prominent classical composers as Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók, and Jenő Hubay. Her work impacted such enduring classical works as Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsodies and Berlioz’s “The Damnation of Faust.” To experience the passion Czinka’s playing elicited, listen to Budapest-born violinist Ferenc Szecsődi’s tender 2007 recording of Hubay’s Scènes de la Csárda, No. 9 (“Panna Czinka’s Tune”). Or Hungarian violin master Sándor Lakatos’ explosive rendering of “Czinka Panna Nótája,” from the 1964 album Magyar Nóták: Hungarian Popular Songs on the Hungaroton label. These are among the many interpretations of this famous tune based on Czinka’s work and found on modern digital streaming services.

In the 21st century, this pioneering string player remains a formidable historical figure: a virtuoso violinist and gifted composer, trailblazing bandleader, and feminist icon who continues to inspire those intent on changing the way the world views Romani culture.

So, who was Panna Czinka, and why does her music resonate from the distant past? Born to a family of Romani musicians in Sajógömör, Hungary, since annexed by Slovakia, she reportedly was the granddaughter of Mihály Barna, the earliest-known prominent Romani violinist and bandleader, who in 1737 led a quartet that also included a second violin, a harp, and a bass. 

Or maybe not. The late Hungarian ethnomusicologist Bálint Sárosi asserted that Barna was a fictitious character, a figment of someone’s imagination.

Yet it appears that Czinka’s family did have solid music credentials. Her father and brothers are said to be the authors of “The Rákóczi March,” a Hungarian nationalist anthem adapted a century later by Berlioz. In his memoir, Berlioz recounts that the premiere of the rousing piece elicited a wild reaction from the audience: “The hall was shaken by unprecedented shouting and stamping of feet.” 

Czinka is said to have started playing violin at age nine. Her talents were impressive enough to attract the patronage of János Lányi, a wealthy landowner who paid for her musical education and provided a house for her family to live in. As a teen, she married a Romani cellist and blacksmith, reportedly becoming adept at the smithy craft herself. She eventually gave birth to five children: four sons and a daughter. In the 1720s, together with her husband and brothers-in-law, she formed one of the most renowned Romani musical ensembles of that era. The family band included first and second violin (Czinka assumed the role of primas or first violin; an in-law played second violin or kontra), her husband played the bass, and a second in-law played the cimbalom (or hammered dulcimer). She was rumored to have played an Amati. Czinka even designed the band’s military-style uniforms. The ensemble became the model for so-called “Gypsy” orchestras while performing improvisational styles that were popular with nobility and aristocrats throughout Hungary.

And Czinka became the first female star of Hungarian-Romani music. “She is one of the earliest known Hungarian Gypsy musicians. Her figure became legendary not only because she was a female musician—a rarity even later—but also because she is the first Gypsy musician in whose case a complete four‑member Gypsy band is mentioned: an ensemble consisting of two violins, a double bass, and a cimbalom. Thus, she can be regarded as the first Gypsy violinist in the modern sense known from written sources,” says Dr. Kata Riskó of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a musicologist with expertise in the Romani tradition and in the history of Roma musicians of Hungary. 

When asked to flesh out details about the life and influence of Czinka, an enduring and yet enigmatic figure, Riskó cites Sárosi’s 1978 book Gypsy Music: “The date of her birth is unknown, and the year of her death—1772—falls in the period when, in the last third of the 18th century, reports suddenly began to multiply about Gypsy bands serving in noble households, their activities, their popularity, and the distinctive features of their playing style. A nationwide survey from 1782, for example, records 1,582 Gypsy musicians in Hungary at the time. The most outstanding among them attracted attention even in Pressburg and Vienna—the truly distinctive Gypsy music and performance style, which preserved traditional musical elements, soon became widely known. 

“At the same time, the influence of trained musicians and the art music of the period was also significant, since the primary task of these ensembles was to meet the musical needs of landowners. From the encounter between traditional music and these influences emerged, at the end of the 18th century, the verbunkos style (characterized by a slow, stately opening and fast finale, with dotted rhythms; virtuoso, rapid-note passages; and influences from older Hungarian folk music, Slavonic, and Viennese styles). It became iconic in Hungarian music and was closely linked to the performance style of Romani musicians. The golden age of this style, around the turn of the century and the first third of the 19th century, had its famous virtuoso Gypsy violinist in János Bihari, as well as two other notable violinists and composers: János Lavotta and Antal Csermák, who were not of Romani origin.”

Czinka is the legendary forerunner of this golden age, a representative of the older instrumental musical tradition that later unfolded in the verbunkos style. Riskó notes: “The region where she lived—the former Gömör County—remained an important center of Gypsy musicians well into the 20th century. In the 19th century, when the verbunkos style and Gypsy music became iconic and the style began to be historicized and more and more embellished, legendary descriptions appeared about her. These portray her as a famously beautiful woman, mention her Amati violin, recount her successes throughout Hungary and even abroad, and attribute compositions to her. Writings and books about famous Gypsy musicians typically present her figure first.”

hile Hungarian ensembles, like the one forged by Czinka, were dismissed by some critics, they also were championed by prominent figures, including the Hungarian composer and pianist Liszt, who was influenced by the verbunkos style. In 1859, several years after the publication of his enduring Hungarian Rhapsodies, a set of 19 piano works based on Hungarian folk themes, Liszt authored a book titled The Gypsies and Their Music in Hungary. The book created something of a stir since it denigrated the Hungarian folk music found in villages as “modest and imperfect,” while buoying the instrumental music of Hungarian “Gypsy” orchestras as “capable of competition with anything in the sublimity and daring of its emotion and in the perfection of its form.”

A century later, in 1960, that assessment prompted Kodály to argue that “Hungarian folk music . . . is not in any way the creation of Gypsies, as is still frequently asserted as a result of Franz Liszt’s monumental error.” 

As for Czinka, her career prospered throughout her 61 years. In concert, it is said that she cast “a magical force” felt by all who heard her. Shortly before her death in 1772, her ensemble performed for Maria Theresa, empress of the Holy Roman Empire and based in Vienna. Czinka penned several popular tunes, including the aforementioned “Panna Czinka’s Song,” still a standard among Romani musicians. She succeeded in codifying the Romani music ensemble format and has exerted a lasting influence that resonates today in the music of such dynamic performers as Hungarian violinist Roby Lakatos and Trio Czinka Panna, featuring Dutch violinist Ineke Koksma.

In 2008, Slovak filmmaker Dušan Rapoš directed the biopic Cinka Panna, starring the Los Angeles–based Georgian actress Anna Luca Biani in a fictionalized account of the groundbreaking musician—a striking, pipe-smoking, gender-fluid figure who dressed in men’s clothes, succeeded in a profession dominated by men, and made sparks fly with her violin, according to contemporaneous accounts.

In recent years, Czinka’s name has graced Budapest TV and radio programs that promote Roma culture. She was the subject of the 2022 feminist stage production The Dance of the Witch, starring Hungarian actress Ramóna Farkas and written by playwright Barnabás Boda-Novy. A music competition—part of the Czinka Panna Roma Culture Night—held in Széchenyi Square, the main public space in Pécs in southwest Hungary, has raised funds for an after-school music program for low-income Romani children, ensuring that future generations will benefit from the legacy of Panna Czinka.