In his book The Hungarian Instrumental Folk Tradition published in 2008 Bálint Sárosi differentiates between the old and new layers of folk music on the basis of periodic pairs of measures, pairs of motifs, pairs of lines, strophes and typical rhythmic patterns. He terms the old layer bagpipe tradition and the new layer verbunkos tradition due to the large number of verbunkos melodies played on the fiddle. There is no definite boundary between the two layers, they blend into each other. Sárosi states that the unnotated musical tradition filtered into the fashionable music of the upper classes through dance music which is rich in melodies written in pairs of measures. One of his examples for dance music with periodic pairs of measures used in virtuoso violin techniques is Haydn, because his music contains intermezzo like passages – which is typical of the Classical period – even in pieces not titled Hongarian/ongarese or Gypsy/zingarese. In the Hungarian tradition intermezzi originating from bagpipe music are called cifrázat or cifra. Like most intermezzi played on the bagpipe, these figurations usually move in semiquavers alternating between the dominant and the tonic. This has also been observed by Bartók. Pairs of measures and motifs are common in melodies notated between the 16^th and 18^th centuries and often occur in verbunkos. Another characteristic feature of instrumental dance music is a pair of lines which might be termed a period in which the first line has an open ending and the second a closed ending. This structure of identical lines with alternating open and closed endings was popular in Medieval dances in western Europe.

In the narrow sense of the word folk dance music or the dance music of the country, including both the old and new layers and the stylized Hungarian style dance music repertoire in the second half of the 18^th century called verbunkos make up the musical foundation or generative core of style hongrois. This was expanded from the first decade of the 19^th century by the Hungarian style dance music verbunkos, an abundant number of pairs of slow and fast (lassú-friss) dances, and an increasing amount of folk style vocal art music – the genre of the nóta songs – and closely associated with it, Gypsy music which gradually became the music of the cities. Old style dance music lived on and continued to be used among the peasantry in closed communities exposed to urban culture to a lesser extent. Folk music collected in the 20^th century usually date back to this kind of 18^th century tradition. Almost every aspect of historical development in Hungarian speaking regions can be observed in the fiddle techniques, melodies and accompaniment. The stylistic elements of various eras co-existed in consonance. Irrespectively of this, a widespread and rapid exchange of information in the 19^th century – through folk plays, the publications of scores, tours taken by Gypsy musicians or newspapers to name but a few – created czardas, a dance which was modern and became  widely used round the nation. Unlike verbunkos, czardas was not a solo dance for men exclusively, it being a dance for couples in which the ladies could also actively take part in and yet men still had an opportunity for solo performances. Slow and fast czardas soon gained popularity in every layer of society simultaneously to the spread of what Bartók called new style Hungarian folk music with characteristically architectonic structural and rhythmic patterns. New style melodies perfectly conformed to the ideology and aesthetic values of the Romantic Era.