Zoltan Kodaly (1882-1967)

The tradition of Hungarian folk music deeply influenced both Kodaly (pronounced ‘Kordie’) and his close friend Bela Bartok. Of the two, Kodaly drew more creative inspiration from the tradition and his musical development was less experimental than his compatriot. But although Kodaly saw it as his vocation to be a nationalist composer, he travelled to Salzburg, Berlin, Paris and Bayreuth, accepted commissions from Chicago and Amsterdam, and his works were taken up by, amongst others, Toscanini whose friendship and encouragement were enormously important to him. After the war he travelled to England, the U.S.A., U.S.S.R. and France to conduct his own music.

Kodaly is one of my earliest musical heroes. The six movements of the Suite from his opera ‘Hary Janos’ - with its famous sneeze – has been part of my record collection for a long time. He wrote three operas, some inventive, melodic and brilliantly crafted orchestral music including two sets of dances from the regions of Galanta ( now in Slovakia but then part of Hungary where he lived as a boy) and Marosszek, as well as a Symphony, a Concerto for Orchestra, and Variations on the Hungarian folk song ’ The Peacock’, and chamber music. He also wrote a great deal of music for children in the latter part of his life and for a while I had an L.P. of some of the beautiful part-songs he wrote for children’s voices.

He once said ‘ Our age of mechanisation leads along a road ending with man himself as a machine; only the spirit of singing can save us from this fate’. There is an upward surge to his music that is sometimes plaintive but always positive, and I find much of it thrilling and very moving. The ‘Psalmus Hungaricus’ (using a free translation of Psalm 55) is perhaps his greatest and most frequently played work, written after a short-lived Republic, which Kodaly had supported. When it was overthrown the he was brought to trial. He set the words to dissonant and passionate music. Hearing it again in the Decca recording of 1971, has brought tears to my eyes.

In 1994, on a visit to Budapest, I visited his house, now turned into a museum. Situated in a sober residential area of the city, it consists of four large but modest rooms. I was the only visitor that cold March morning. A distinguished lady who spoke no English hovered in a friendly way as I slowly looked at his study, his music room, living room and the bedroom that now contains many of his original manuscripts absorbing, as I did so, a sense of the man, and looking at his portrait with its finely featured face and white beard. A memorable moment, and especially poignant as the country he was so proud of and long under the sway of foreign empires, was just beginning to find itself after years of Soviet Russian domination.

B.R.