Erzsébet Hegyi

The Board of the IKS, in its annual meeting 2008 granted Honorary Membership to
Mrs. Erzsébet Hegyi.

Mrs. Hegyi is Professor of solfege, harmony, form and stylistic analysis at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. She has been actively involved in music education in the name of Zoltán Kodály since 1951. Mrs. Hegyi has been a staff member of the Weiner Conservatory in Budapest as well, since 1991. She has made an enormous contribution to the development and promulgation of Kodály’s philosophy abroad.

Erzsébet Hegyi started her international career in 1971 at the Kodály Center of America (directed by Denise Bacon). Following that year she has served many Kodály courses in America every summer. In 2008 she spent her 17th Summer Institute at the Holy Names University (Oakland, California) as an exceptionally recognized master teacher.

Mrs. Hegyi was invited to many other countries as well (Denmark, Greece, Japan, Portugal, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK) to pass on her lifelong experience and unique expertise in solfege and harmonic training. After the 12th Symposium of the IKS in Assisi (1995) she has regularly returned to Italy as a special helper of the Italian music education on Kodály’s way. She was awarded Honorary Life Membership in the Greek Society of Music Education in 2004 and she was elected Honorary President of AIKEM (Associazione Italiana Kodály per l'Educazione Musicale) in 2006. 

She has authored several widely used musicianship textbooks including Solfege According to the Kodály Concept, Collections of Bach Examples, Quotations from Bach’s Cantatas, and a sight-reading collection for solfege and harmony studies. (In English and some of them in Japanese as well.) She was co-editor of the book Musicianship I, published in 2006 in Finnish language.

Mrs. Erzsébet Hegyi’s outstanding work has been previously honored with “For the Kodály Institute” Prize (1992), the Apáczai Csere János Prize (1998), the Weiner Prize (2001) and the Kodály Prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2007).

Judit Hartyányi