Short Biography
Zoltán Kodály – along with Béla Bartók – is one of the two major figures in Hungarian music in the twentieth century. Composer, pioneering ethnomusicologist, groundbreaking educationalist and critic, Kodály enjoyed a status in his native land that is perhaps unrivalled by any other figure anywhere else in the world.
Kodály was born in Kecskemét, in Hungary, on 16th December 1882. Though from a musical family, his initial inclination was towards literary studies. As his father was a railway official, the Kodály family had a rather peripatetic existence: from 1884 until 1891 they lived in Galánta (later to be immortalised in the orchestral dances Kodály based on folk music from the area), then moving to Nagyszombat (now Trnava, Slovakia), where Zoltán studied violin and piano and sang in the cathedral choir – an early introduction to the importance of choral singing. He explored the scores in the cathedral music library, and taught himself the cello to make up the numbers for his father’s domestic quartet-evenings. And he was already composing: in 1897 the school orchestra played an overture of his, to be followed by a Mass for chorus and orchestra a year later.
He started to study modern languages at the University of Sciences in Budapest in 1900, but the call of music proved too strong, so he also enrolled at the Academy of Music, taking a Ph.D. in 1906 with a thesis entitled "The Strophic Structure of Hungarian Folk-Songs". He was now composing prolifically – and he had already begun his fieldtrips, collecting folksongs in the Hungarian countryside with his close friend Béla Bartók. Though they published their first joint collection early on, it was not until 1951 that their comprehensive critical edition of Hungarian folksongs appeared.
After gaining his PhD in philosophy and linguistics, Kodály went to Paris where he studied with Charles Widor and discovered the music of Claude Debussy. On his return to Budapest in 1907 he was appointed professor of theory at the Liszt Academy of Music, and soon he began to teach composition as well. He was to teach there for most of his life: upon his retirement as a professor, he was brought back as the Director of the Academy in 1945.
His compositions began to make headway outside Hungary around 1910, stimulated by concerts in which Bartók and Kodály presented their own music. The real breakthrough came in 1923, with a commission to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the union of the cities of Buda and Pest. The result was the Psalmus Hungaricus, a powerful setting of a sixteenth-century Hungarian version of Psalm LV which established Kodály as both a national cultural leader and a figure of international standing. The first of the two operas which followed, Háry János (1926) and the Spinning Room (1932), yielded a suite that soon became internationally popular, as did the orchestral Dances of Marosszék (1930) and Dances of Galánta (1933), all presenting an authentic Hungarian national idiom in a manner that allowed it international prominence. His other orchestral works include a Concerto for Orchestra (1939–40) a Symphony (1957–61) and, one of his best-known scores, the Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song (1938–39), often referred to as the ‘Peacock Variations’. Among his choral-orchestral output the Missa Brevis (1942–44) enjoys considerable esteem, as does the Te Deum of Buda Castle (1936).
Kodály’s authority as a musical pedagogue is almost as high as his reputation as a composer. He was very interested in the problems of music education, and wrote a good deal of educational music for schools, as well as books on the subject. His work in this field had a profound effect on musical education both inside and outside his home country. Some commentators refer to his ideas as the 'Kodály Method', although this seems something of a misnomer, as he did not actually work out a comprehensive method, rather laying down a set of principles to follow in music education.
In 1945 he became the president of the Hungarian Arts Council, and in 1962 received the Order of the Hungarian People's Republic. His other posts included a Presidency of the International Folk Music Council, and Honorary Presidency of the International Society for Music Education. He died in Budapest on 6th March 1967, one of the most respected and well-known figures in the Hungarian arts.