OSA / Guide / RIP / 1956 / RFE/RL Background Reports : Subjects | Browse | Search

The text below might contain errors as it was reproduced by OCR software from the digitized originals,
also available as Scanned original in PDF.

BOX-FOLDER-REPORT: 36-7-231
TITLE:             Zoltan Kodaly Centenary
BY:                Pataki
DATE:              1982-12-13
COUNTRY:           Hungary
ORIGINAL SUBJECT:  RAD
THEMATIC SUBJECTS: Hungary--1976-1989, Arts--Personalities, Biographies

--- Begin ---

EAST -- ZQLTAN KODALY CENTENARY F-581
Munich, 13 December 1982 (RAD/Pataki)

The centenary of the birth of the Hungarian composer Zoltan
Kodaly is being celebrated this year in many parts of the world.
A romantic composer whose works, according to Bela Bartok, were
"the most perfect embodiment of the Hungarian spirit," Kodaly is
almost equally renowned as a folklorist and as an educator of
considerable influence internationally.

Kodaly was born in Kecskemet on 16 December 1882 into a
musical family.  In 1900 the Kodalys moved, to Budapest, where
Zoltan later attended both the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and
the Peter Pazmany University, at which he studied languages.  At
the academy one of his teachers was Hans Koessler, who also taught
Bela Bartok and Erno von Dohnanyi.  Kodaly graduated from the
academy in 1905 and left the university in 1906, having written a
doctoral thesis on The Strophic Structure of the Hungarian Folk
Song.  He then traveled in Germany, Austria, and France, and in
Paris, where he studied for a time, was much influenced by the music
of Debussy,  In 1907 he was appointed to teach musical theory at
the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, and in 1911 to a full
professorship at the academy. .

Kodaly's compositions include orchestral, chamber, and
instrumental works, and a large body of choral music, together with
three operas, including his widely acclaimed comic opera Hary Janos
-- transcribed as an instrumental suite, probably his best known work.
An early landmark in his musical career was* the first concert devoted
entirely to his compositions on 17 March 1910, with Bela Bartok as
the pianist.  It was not until 1923 that he was commissioned to
write a major work, however, the occasion being the 50th anniversary
of the union of Buda and Pest.  He composed the Psalmus Hungaricus,
a work for tenor solo, chorus, and orchestra based on a 16th century
Hungarian version of the 55th psalm,  As an American critic put it,
in this music

Kodaly completely assimilated the styles
and idioms of old Hungarian music in
constructing a score of surpassing power
and eloquence.  With a sure hand he
combined the old and the new, the 
characteristics of age-old Hungarian folk song with
the techniques and idioms of 20th century
music.  He managed to express the old
culture of his people without becoming
archaic, in fact, remaining a voice of his
own time. [1]

A creative period of Kodaly's life began.  In 1925 Hary Janos
was completed and was produced in Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
and the Soviet Union.  In 1929 the Dances of Marosszek and in 1934
(1)  Quoted in David Ewen, Composers Since 1900 (New York: H.W.
Wilson Company, 1969).

EAST (1) -- ZOLTAN KODALY CENTENARY F-582
the Dances of Galanta were finished.  In 1932 his opera Szekelyfono
(The Spinning Room), whose lyric scenes are based on Hungarian folk
songs and dances, was produced for the first time, and in 1936 a
religious work for orchestra, the Te Demn, was composed to celebrate
the 250th anniversary of the delivery of Budapest from the Turks.
In 1939 came another of his most popular works, the orchestral
Variations oh a Hungarian Folk Song, _"The Peacock."

It is the Hungarian folk idiom that is the most characteristic
feature of Kodaly's music.  He firmly believed that the national
element was of vital importance for an artist and that without
it he lost his roots and his music became decadent.  In an interview
with  The_New York Times he said:

All music comes fundamentally from popular
sources.  As the culture of the people
advances, the product always becomes more
interesting and significant, but when the
connection with ancestral sources is lost,
art enters the stage of decadence....
One of the most useless things a composer
can do is to quote a few folk melodies in his
score and think that in so doing he has
created something national and genuine.  This
is no more the case, under such circumstances,
than a bunch of flowers cut and put in vases
on a shelf is the garden.  The garden is made
of seeds that have taken growth from the
ground. [2]

Kodaly's close interest in folk music had begun in his student
days, and in 1905 he began his collaboration with Bela Bartok in
the collection, annotation, and publishing of several thousand
Hungarian folk songs and dances.  The sentimental Gypsy songs
exploited by Liszt and Brahms were thought to be authentic
Hungarian folk music until that time.  Kodaly and Bartok discovered
that, unlike the popular Gypsy music, most of the original Magyar
peasant tunes were composed using the pentatonic scale.  In 1933
the Hungarian Academy of Sciences commissioned Kodaly and Bartok
to prepare for publication the entire available body of Hungarian
folk music.  Under Bartok's editorial control and later -- after
1940 when Bartok emigrated to the US  -- that of Kodaly, work on
the Corpus Popularis _Hungaricae was begun.  It was not until 1951,
however, that the first volume was published, and by 1971, 4 -fears
after Kodaly's death (on 6 March 1967), 8 volumes containing
over 100,000 folk songs had appeared.

It is as an educator, however, that Kodaly's influence has
perhaps been most far-reaching.  He believed that musical education
should be started as early in life as possible.  Children sing and
dance naturally, he thought, and he wrote a musical primer that
encourages children to develop the natural musical talents they
(2)  As quoted in ibid.

EAST (2) -- ZOLTAN KODALY CENTENARY F- 583
might have.  He once said, "nobody is too great that he should
refuse to write for children; indeed, he should work hard to be
great enough for this job." [3]  Some of the basic ideas of his
musical concepts are that  the human voice is the most important
musical instrument (which is why he wrote so many choral works,
particularly for children ), that people should start their musical
education with traditional folk songs; that the pentatonic scale
is the easiest one to teach children; and that all children should
learn to read and write music so as to enjoy their musical heritage.

Kodaly believed in the importance of musical education in
Hungary for another, more political, reason as well.  Audiences
at concerts and the opera changed radically after the war when
the communist government required factories to organize cultural
programs for their workers.  In an interview Kodaly said:
You see, there is a problem.  Formerly we
had good bourgeous audiences, a public
that was rather well educated.  They're
gone.  Then we got a very bad public, and
what I am trying to do -- if one can say
it -- is to elevate the general public's
taste.  And so I started at the only
level you can start, in the schools. [4]

The object: of the method is to develop the latent musicality that
Kodaly believed all  children possess by instilling an understanding
and appreciation of the basic rhythms and forms of music and
encouraging facility in the reading and writing of music.  Its
material is taken essentially from folk music, and its basic method
is corporate singing using solmization (doh, ray, me, fan, son,
etc.) accompanied by hand movements to represent each note.  In
this way the children are always aware while singing which notes
they are producing; the hands represent a bridge between the notes
on the paper and the human voice.
By 1960 the Kodaly method had been introduced in more than
70 schools in Hungary with spectacular success.  As one account of
such a school reported:
During a stay of over a fortnight, reports
of this fabulous school, which was Kodaly's
idea ("remove the children's city frustrations
by letting them sing and dance like the
peasants"), continued to reach us: Hungarian
families told us of "crazy mixed-up kids" who
attended this school and became happy, normal
children.  Even jaundiced Western correspondents
spoke with wonder of this school: Scottish journalists,
they reported, had attended the school, and
unbelieving, had written a Scottish folk, song on
the blackboard.  The children had read this song at
sight, had then erased it and sung it from memory,

-----------------------------------

(3)   Quoted in Tolna Megyei Nepujsag, 23 October 1982.
(4)   The Times, 13 April 1959.

EAST (3) -- ZOLTAN KODALY CENTENARY F-584

they had then proceeded to transpose it to any
key that the shaken Scottish correspondent had
suggested. [5]

Kodaly institutes to train teachers in the method have now been
established in Tokyo, Wellesley (US ), Ottawa, Sydney, and
Kecskemet (Kodaly's brithplace).

Kodaly's contribution as a composer, scholar, and educator
were recognized both in Hungary and abroad.  He received the
Kossuth Prize three times, was elected President of the National
Arts Council, and appointed a member of the National Assembly.
On his 65th birthday he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order
of the Hungarian Republic.  He also received awards and honorary
appointments from the US , the USSR, Great Britain, the GDR,
Austria, and Finland.

Although Kodaly tried to avoid politics, he was elected the
Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Intellectuals during
the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.  He also sent a telegram to
Soviet composers asking them to intercede for the immediate
withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary.  It was shortly before
the revolution that Kodaly's work Zrinyi's Lament was performed in
Budapest.  One line of the text is the plea, "Do not hurt the
Hungarians."  In 1956 this was obviously interpreted as a plea
to the Soviets.  The work has not been performed in Hungary since.
In 1959 a British newspaper claimed that Kodaly was so popular
that he "might, had he so wished, have become Hungarian Prime
Minister." [6] While probably an exaggeration, this statement
reflects the tremendous popularity of the composer among his own
people.  One of the reasons Kodaly was so well liked by the public
is revealed by the following incident:
Mr. Kodaly was recently invited by the
Communist officialdom to address an assembly
of factory workers.  The spare, 79-year-old
composer accepted the invitation.  He
arrived at the factory carrying a battered
briefcase.  Officials asked Mr. Kodaly
what he was going to tell the workers.
He replied curtly that this concerned
only him.

The composer mounted the rostrum, opened his
briefcase and withdrew an old book.  It was
the Bible.  His opening remarks were to the
effect that he was not much of a hand at
writing speeches and that he proposed to read
what someone else had written.  Mr. Kodaly then
proceeded to read from the New Testament about
brotherly love. [7]

--------------------------

(5)   Ibid., 31 December 1958.
(6)   Ibid., 13 April 1959.
(7)   The New York Times, 4 November 1961.

EAST (4) --     ZOLTAN KODALY CENTENARY F-585

But it is as a composer, folklorist, and musical educator
that the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has chosen to commemorate
Kodaly this year, and it is these three aspects of his work that
are being widely celebrated throughout the world.

- end  -
1200/82/?

  OSA / Guide / RIP / 1956 / RFE/RL Background Reports : Subjects | Browse | Search