Kodály, Zoltán

Preface

Kodály, Zoltán – Theatre Overture

(b. Kecskemét, 16 December 1882 – d. Budapest, 6 March 1967)

(1927/31)

Preface
Apart from his friend Béla Bartók, who was almost two years his senior, and Lászlo Lajtha (1892-1962), who was almost ten years younger and outshone all his compatriots as a symphonist, Zoltán Kodály – together with Ernst von Dohnányi (1877-1960) and Leó Weiner (1885-1960) – can be regarded as the most important representative of that outstanding pioneering generation of Hungarian composers who conquered the musical world in the 20th century almost ‘at a stroke’. (This applies not only to Hungarian composers, but also to Hungarian conductors: following the example of the incomparable Arthur Nikisch, Fritz Reiner, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, Antál Doráti, Ferenc Fricsay, Georg Solti, István Kertesz and, at an advanced age, the great chamber musician and violinist Sándor Végh conquered the world’s podiums.) Two German composers, Robert Volkmann (1815-83) and Hans Koessler (1853-1926), who taught in Budapest one after the other, were the ‘driving force’ behind the surprising rise of Hungarian music to world renown – although attempts are still being made today to minimise their significance for nationalistic reasons.

Kodály, the son of a musically gifted amateur, studied composition with Hans Koessler at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music (now the Franz Liszt Academy of Music) in Budapest from 1900. He earned everlasting merits not only as a composer, but also as a researcher of Hungarian folk music (like Bartók and Lajtha), music theorist and educator (in the latter capacity, he remains the great model of Hungarian musical culture to this day).

As a composer, his greatest significance lies in the renewal of secular and sacred vocal music, especially choral music, on the basis of Hungarian folk music. The same applies to his chamber music, all of which was composed at an early age, and his orchestral music, most of which was composed in his mature years. Both his chamber and orchestral music œuvre consist of a small number of meticulously crafted compositions. In the 1920s, Kodály attempted to expand the terrain opened up by Ferenc Erkel (1810-93), the first Hungarian national composer, in the field of music theatre and to carry Hungary’s operatic voice out into the world. This is how Kodály’s two central music theatre works were created: in 1926 the Singspiel in four adventures with prelude and epilogue ‘Háry János – his adventures from Grand Abony to the Vienna Hofburg’, and in 1924-32 the one-act ‘Hungarian life story from Transylvania’ ‘Szekely fono’ (The Spinning Room). Of these, Háry János was the immediate great success, which had already been preceded by Kodály’s comprehensive breakthrough as a composer in 1923 with ‘Psalmus Hungaricus’. …

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