The son of a stationmaster, Zoltan Kodaly spent his early years
living in rural Hungary, where he taught himself to play the
piano, violin, viola, and cello and had his first contact with
folk music. At the age of 18 he went to Budapest University to
read Hungarian and German, and also studied at the Academy of
Music. While studying in Berlin and Paris in 1906 and 1907 Kodaly
discovered the music of Claude Debussy.
His interest in folk songs led to a close collaboration and
friendship with Bartok, of which he later remarked: "The vision of
an educated Hungary, reborn from the people, rose before us. We
decided to devote our lives to its realization."
Kodaly was appointed professor at the Budapest Academy in 1907,
and over the next decade produced chamber and vocal music, and
continued research into folklore. He fell foul of the authorities
after the short-lived bourgeois revolution of 1919, but his
fortunes improved with the great success of his Psalmus Hungaricus, premiered in 1923 to mark the fiftieth
anniversary of the founding of Budapest.
The opera Hary Janos, and the suite derived from it,
further established Kodaly's international reputation. With these
pieces, as well as the Dances of Marosszek from
1927, the Dances of Galanta of 1933 and the orchestral variations on the Hungarian folk
song The peacock, Kodaly extended his use of folk material
and resources: the Hary Janos suite introduced the
cimbalom, a unique Hungarian instrument; the Dances of Galanta
evoked the sounds of the gypsy bands Kodaly remembered from
his boyhood.
This international success did not diminish the energy and
intensity of Kodaly's efforts to guide the Hungarian populace
towards musical literacy. He regarded singing rather than
instrumental performance as the key to musicianship, and composed
innumerable choruses and choral exercises based on folk song that
he presented to choirs all over the country.
Kodaly's public esteem was sometimes overshadowed by tension
with the authorities, and his Missa Brevis was completed in
1944 in the cellar of a convent where he and his wife were seeking
refuge. In the years following the war, he made triumphant
conducting trips to Britain, the United States, and the Soviet
Union, and received a constant stream of honours in recognition of
the breadth of his musical activities. Kodaly's energies as both
composer and musical ambassador continued undiminished through the
latter years of his long life. He lived to see two of his
long-standing ambitions under way: the publication of a scholarly
edition of Hungarian folk music, and the introduction of
elementary music education in schools, following his principles.
