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Zoltán Kodály 1882–1967

by Frank Howes

Zoltán Kodály, dying at the age of 84 on March 6 after surviving the political upheavals that two wars brought upon Hungary, was regarded with affection and honour as a national figure not only in his native land but all over the world. As a composer he was a nationalist, though belonging to the present century rather than the last when nationalism first became a fructifying force in music, and he took the same path towards national style as his predecessors and his contemporaries, Bartók, Vaughan Williams and Janácek, namely the study of his native folksong. He himself described how he came to fear Vienna as a kind of octopus and he nourished his independence on Palestrina, Bach and Debussy, whose influence was crucial at the turn of the century. From England he took a hint of the value of choral singing. He was a fairly frequent visitor here, attending the Three Choirs Festival more than once, lecturing and receiving an honorary doctorate at Oxford in 1960. In return we were in a position from our own experience to appreciate what he did to vitalize music in Hungary, which was not unlike what Stanford did for English music: ie compose original music, teach at all levels, entering the schools through scholarly and authentic national song-books and educating the talented at the Budapest Conservatory – he joined the staff in 1907 and became its director in 1945 – undertake a serious study of folksong and even for a time practise as a critic.

He was born on 16 Dec 1882, the son of a railway official, a fact which unsettled the son’s schooling – one of the places where they lived for a time was Galanta, which gave its name to one of Kodály’s orchestral suites of dances. At the father’s next move to Nagyszombat the son sang in the cathedral choir, began to compose for the school orchestra and took up the cello. In 1900 he went up to the University of Sciences in Budapest but after two years changed to the Academy of Music. He combined both branched of study to take a DPhil in 1906 with a thesis on ‘Strophic Construction of Hungarian Folksong’. In that year he and Bartók came together in the study of folksong. For both it was a study to be pursued for its own sake; for both it was a formative influence upon their respective styles. By 1910 he had established himself as a composer for the piano and of chamber music. After the war he became known all over Europe, partly as a result of his regular appearances at the festivals of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Thus at the Zurich Festival of 1926 Psalmus Hungaricus (1923) was launched on Europe and America; it firmly established his reputation in Britain. Other of his choral music to find favour with choral societies here were the Budavari Te Deum (1936) and the Missa Brevis (1950), as well as small pieces like Jesus and the traders.

Meantime at home he had written the opera Háry János, from which the well-known suite was extracted – it was first staged here last year at St Pancras. He followed it with another, The Spinning Room, in 1932. His only symphony was a late work produced in 1960, but there was a Concerto for Orchestra, another suite of dances and the Peacock Variations. His serious concern for musical education in Hungary developed in the thirties and to it he devoted the fruits of his folksong researches. He published four volumes of Bicinia Hungarica, collections of both folksongs and original songs for children, which because of their fidelity to the stresses of the Hungarian language have, like the numerous choral pieces he wrote during the second war, travelled less widely than his instrumental works, such as the sonata for solo cello and the larger works already mentioned.

He succeeded Vaughan Williams as President of the International Folk Music Council, and in 1960 his authoritative book on Hungarian folksong was made available in English. His international standing was respected by the Nazis, though his house was destroyed, in the war, but strains though severe did not compel him to follow Bartók into exile, so that when peace came he was able to resume his work and indeed to become a symbol of his country before the world.

Musical Times, May 1967