KODALY, Zoltan
b Kecskeméf, Hungary, 16 December 1882
d Budapest, 6 March 1967, aged eighty-four

His father was a violinist and his mother a pianist. He took up the cello in order to help his father make a quartet. He went to Budapest in 1900 to study at the Academy of Music. In 1905, with Bartok, he began research into Hungarian folk music, using a recording cylinder. In 1906 he went to Berlin and in 1907 to Paris but returned to Budapest that year to take up a teaching post at the Academy. He was suspended from the Academy by the bureaucratic regime in 1919 but was reinstated in 1922, resigning in 1941. He travelled a good deal, especially to the USA.

1897 (15)

Overture for orchestra

1901 (19)

Adagio for violin (or viola)

and piano

1906 (24)

Summer Evening, for orchestra

1908 (26)

String Quartet No 1 in C minor

1909-10 (27-8)

Cello Sonata (Atonal)

1914 (32)

Duo for violin and cello (Atonal)

1915 (33)

Sonata for unaccompanied cello

1916-17 (34-5)

String Quartet No 2 in D major

1917-18 (35-6)

Seven Piano Pieces

1919-20 (37-8)

Serenade, for two violins and viola

1923 (41)

Psalmus Hungaricus, for tenor, chorus and orchestra

1925 (43)

Meditation on a Theme of Debussy, for piano

1926 (44)

Hary Janos, opera

1930 (48)

Dances of Marosszeck, for piano (afterwards orchestrated)

1931 (49)

Theater Overture

The Spinning Room, Lyric scenes (1931-2)

Pange lingua, for mixed choir and organ

1933 (51)

Dances of Galanta, orchestral suite

1934 (52)

Jesus and the Merchants, for chorus and orchestra

1936 (54)

Te Deum, for chorus and orchestra

1939 (57)

Concerto for orchestra

The Peacock Variations, for orchestra

1945 (63)

Missa Brevis

1947 (65)

Viola Concerto

String Quartet

1948 (66)

Czinka Panna, opera

1960 (78)

Symphony in C major

1965 (83)

Variations for piano 1

967 (85)

Laudes Organi, fantasia on twelfth-century sequence, for mixed choir and organ