Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
The Composer
Zoltán Kodály's earliest compositions date from the 1890s and his last were written in 1966. During this long and productive life he created hundreds of pieces in a variety of media and genres. His style was profoundly influenced by his collecting and study of Hungarian folk music and by the works of Debussy. Among Kodály's compositions are stage works, orchestral and choral works, instrumental compositions as well as masses and songs.
The Educator
While standing up for the rightful place of music education in the school curriculum, Kodály also fought for the appreciation of music among the arts in society. "There is no sound spiritual life without music." "Music is an indispensable part of universal human knowledge." This is why he formulated a slogan: "Let music belong to everyone!" Then "it is only natural that music has to be made part of the school curriculum."
The Researcher
Zoltán Kodály 's interest in Hungarian folk music began with his 1905 PhD thesis on the strophic form of Hungarian folk songs based, in part, on the early recordings of Béla Vikár. Kodály, along with Béla Bartók, began collecting folk music himself and later founded the Institute for Folk Music Research of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. That institution has collected, transcribed, categorized, and systematized over 100,000 folk songs of the people of Hungary and of surrounding and related countries. The Corpus Musicae Popularis Hungaricae is the resulting published collection of these materials.
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