Abstract
Zoltán Kodály is best known internationally for his work in developing a music pedagogy for children. His educational interests grew out of his desire for a truly Hungarian musical culture and a culturally literate Hungarian public. He recognized the importance of developing skills in the youngest children and the significance this would have for the arts culture of his nation. His successful educational work and the work of several of his collaborators were recognized at the International Society for Music Education (ISME) conference in Budapest in 1964.
Anna Dalos’s book instead focuses on Kodály’s dedication to composition and philosophy—Kodály saw himself primarily as a composer. The author, a musicologist and Head of the archives for twentieth- and twenty-first century Hungarian Music at the Institute for Musicology of the Research Centre for the Humanities in Budapest, includes some biographical information, but centers the text around Kodály’s thought and music, with particular attention to linking his writings and compositions. Dalos draws on previous scholarship in musicology and uses primary sources in Kodály’s papers at the Kodály Archives and at the library of the Liszt Academy in Budapest. The book interprets and contextualizes Kodály’s music using his writings, biographical details, and parallel world events.
The book is divided into fourteen chapters, alternating between biographical information, the development of his thought as a philosopher, his use of musical forms, and investigations of some of his best-known works. Chapters address his youth, his international travels, and the influence of major world events on his work, particularly in the tumultuous first half of the twentieth century. Other chapters investigate his interpretation of folk songs as a source for composition, his interest in Debussy and modernity, his representation of women in his songs, and his views on church music. Several chapters look at his compositional style, especially his use of the folk song and counterpoint.
Some chapters focus on a single work: String Quartet No. 1, String Quartet No. 2, Peacock Variations, and his Concerto. In the chapter on Peacock Variations, for example, she employs the work of other musicologists and their interpretations of the work. One of Dalos’s unique contributions to the scholarship is to bring to light the connection of the work to Hungarian poet Endre Ady’s poem “The Peacock.” Though Kodály himself didn’t reference the poem in the composition, he did quote Ady in his writings and called him a “pathbreaking symbolist poet.” The poem and the composition use the bird as an analogy that juxtaposes beauty and flightlessness. Dalos, along with other musicologists, sees that the work may be an autobiographical work, summarizing his compositions after Psalmus Hungaricus, perhaps wondering if his works will take off and “fly.” She asks whether Kodály may be asking the same about Hungary itself and whether its high ideals will be attainable.
The author shows Kodály’s place in the neoclassical tradition and provides a resource for international scholarship, similar to what is already in place for Kodály’s contemporaries (e.g., Bartók). She argues that more than just an outstanding anomaly of genius, Kodály fits into the context of composers his era. This book will be of particular interest to musicologists and those interested in aspects of Kodály’s life that are not yet as celebrated internationally, but which remained a major impetus for his commitment to a better music education in Hungary.