Life and Musical Background

Zoltán Kodály was born on December 16, 1882, in the small town of Kecskemet, Hungary. His mother was Jalovetzky Paulina (1857-1935), a daughter of a Polish-born immigrant; his father, a railway official He was exposed to music at a young age — his father played violin, his mother piano — studying violin and began composing early in his life. His family moved to Nagyszombat, where he sang in the cathedral choir. He explored the musical scores of the cathedrals music library and taught himself the 'cello to fill out his father's domestic quartet-evenings. In his young adult years, he attended The Franz Liszt Academy and later the University of Hungary.

    The time Kodály spent in Hungary's villages during his younger years remained in his memory, and led to his interest in studying the folk music of his people. As a result of this interest, in the early 1900s he traveled throughout Eastern Europe with Belá Bartók to collect folk music. This expedition's influence may be found in Kodály' s compositions and later in the Development of his methodology (Choksy, 1981). He studied for a time with composer-organist Charles Widor in Paris and later became a teacher of theory and composition at the Budapest Academy of Music from 1907 until 1941.

    Kodály's was married to his first wife, Emma Gruber (née Schlesinger, later Sándor), for 48 years until her death in 1958. In 1959, he married Sarolta Péczely, — 58 years his junior — a student at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music with whom he lived until his death in 1967 at the age of 84 in Budapest. Neither marriage produced any children.

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    Zoltán Kodály's interest in ethnomusicology developed simultaneously with his journey as a composer. What started as a passing curiosity on the dawn of the 20th century and then continuing until his death, became the hallmark of his life's work.
 

    Kodály's system of teaching essential elements of music was through the use of folk songs, or "music mother tongue" (Benedict 2010). The use of folk songs not only united a people in their musical heritage, but it also led them to other forms of music appreciation - something that may have been lacking in war-torn, communist Hungry in the late 1920s. Kodály focused on defining a sequence of learning — starting with activities that focus on beat, simple rhythms, high/low, later increasing their knowledge to include pentatonic folk song material, tonic solfa, and Art songs.
 

    Kodály was quick to recognize authentic, genuine Hungarian folk songs could only be found as a result of visiting the original, authentic source — the oral traditions of local villages. His first tour collecting folk songs lead him to the region of Galante (North-West Hungary, today in Slovakia), this is where the first seeds of folk music appreciation were sown by his parents (Kodály and the Ethnomusicology, n.d.). The result of these escapades was his first publication, Ethnographia, in 1905. Soon after, he defended his doctoral dissertation, The Strophic Structure of the Hungarian Folksong, in 1906 (Cross, 1982).
 

    Around the same time, friend and colleague Béla Bartók — known as the 'father of ethnomusicology' — also became interested in studying and collecting the folk music of Hungry. Kodály mostly collected songs in the northern part of the Hungarian countryside, but also visited Transylvania sometime after 1910, and the Hungarian village of Bukovina in 1914 (Cross, 1982). Bartók collected mainly in the Carpathian Basin (then the Kingdom of Hungary), where he notated Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian, and Bulgarian folk music. He also collected in Moldavia, Wallachia, and (in 1913) Algeria (Béla Bartók & Suchoff, 1976).
 

    During their work, they came to recognize the importance of the 'comparative research' of folk traditions: connection with neighboring folk music, recognition of the differences, and then establishing the shared characteristics between Hungarian songs and those of related peoples (Cross, 1982).

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   Their collaboration came to fruition in the form of their first publication, a collection of folk song arrangements with piano accompaniments to popular peasant songs in 1906. They continue to publish smaller collections until 1910, at which time they felt the materials were large enough for an academic collection.

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This goal created a problem: how to create a musical classifying system, with the most useful examples found in the melodies of Finish ethnomusicologist, Ilmari Krohn (Cross, 1982). In 1913 The Plan of The New Universal Collection of Folksongs was presented at the Kisfaludy Society. Unfortunately, the lack of support and World War I made it impossible to realize the plan thoroughly. In the coming years, Kodály enriched ethnomusicology with other critical studies.
 

   In the 1920 Trianon Treaty, Hungary was shorn of two-thirds of its former territory and two-thirds of its inhabitants. Hungary had lost regions which had been very rich in folk tradition. The new borders made folksong collecting expeditions impossible for the researchers. This inspired them in 1923 to publish a selection of 150 Transylvanian songs with the introduction written by Kodály. Kodály did not give up field-work: he continued to enrich his collection mostly in Trasdanubia until 1950.
 

   Béla Bartók started to work in an official capacity at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1934. He worked on the systematization of the collection and the revision of folksong transcriptions. Kodály began searching for historical manuscripts and materials in archives and libraries. "In general, Bartók extended his interest geographically towards other nations' folk music, while Kodály wanted to give a historical perspective to the roots of Hungarian folk music. His fundamental study [of] Hungarian Folk Music was published in 1937" (Ethnomusicology, n.d. p1). This book presented the scope and range of materials collected by Bartók and his co-workers, and he placed Hungarian folk music in historical and international contexts.
 

   Bartók's emigrated in 1940 to the United States, but Kodály remained behind to continue his work at the Academy of Sciences. He enlisted colleagues to help in the preparation of Corpus Musicae Popularis Hungaricae, a publication based on the earlier works he and Bartók published in 1906 in 1921, finally coming together in 1951. The first volume of Children's Games, edited by György Kerényi, was also published in 1951 (Ethnomusicology, n.d. p1). Until his death in 1967, the preface for this and every other volume produced was written by Zoltán Kodály. From 1951 on, Kodály trained all would-be ethnomusicologists in the Department of Musicology at the Academy of Music. It showcased the international reputation of Zoltán Kodály's work as Hungarian ethnomusicology. So much so, he was appointed president of the International Folk Music Council (1961) again in 1964 at the IFMC Congress was held in Budapest.

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    It is important not to confuse Kodály's philosophy of music education with the Kodály Method — an approach to teaching guided by Kodály's philosophy of music education (Houlahan & Tacka). Throughout his life, Kodály wrote a copious amount of material on the teaching of children, as well as musical compositions intended for children to use.
 

    Beginning in 1935, along with his colleague Jeno Ádám — who was 14 years his junior — they undertook a long-term project to reform the music of Hungarian elementary and middle schools. Ádám, born in Szigetszentmiklós,  was a student at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music where he studied conducting and composition with Zoltán Kodály. While at the school, he developed a close working relationship with Kodály and later became a longtime instructor (Kodály). Their work together resulted in the production of several highly-regarded and influential texts.
 

    Kodály's renown as a music educator is almost as high as his reputation as a composer. He was very interested in the problems of music education and wrote a good deal of educational music for schools, as well as books on the subject. His work in this field had a profound effect on musical education both inside and outside his home country (Short Biography, n.d.).

 

    The Hungarian music education program developed in the 1940s became the basis for the "Kodály Method".]]

 

    While Kodály himself did not write down a comprehensive method, he did establish a set of principles to follow in music education, and these principles were widely taken up by pedagogues (above all in Hungary, but also in many other countries) after World War II.
 

    Kodály believed music was critical in the everyday curriculum of school-aged children. He believed music should belong to everyone and not just the music elite: “It is the right of every citizen to be taught the basic elements of music, to be handed the key with which he can enter the locked world of music. To open the ear and heart of millions to serious music is a great thing” (Houlahan & Tacka). Another tenant Kodály espoused was that of rigorous teacher training. He believed,

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"It is much more important who the singing master at Kisvarda (a small village) is than who the director of the Opera House is, because a poor director will fail (often  even a good one.) But a bad teacher may kill of the love of music for thirty years, from thirty classes of pupils” (Kodály).

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    Lastly, he encouraged children as stewards of their cultural heritage, performers, critical thinkers, and informed audience members and listeners.