Zoltán Kodály

Zoltán Kodály studied music at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, while concurrently following a course in German and Hungarian at the city's university. From both, he emerged with distinction and by 1905 had already received his teaching diploma. The following year he met his compatriot, Béla Bartók, with whom he conducted extensive research into Hungarian folk music. Having taken a doctorate in 1906, he left for Paris, where the second major influence on his life proved to be the music of Claude Debussy. On his return to Budapest in 1907, he was appointed professor at the Academy of Music, where he taught theory and, later, composition, remaining in his post until 1940. In all his music, he borrowed freely from Hungarian folk music but, unlike Bartók, retained a note of lyricism and tonal simplicity. He held a series of increasingly prestigious posts in his country's musical life, devoting much of his time to a multi-volume inventory of Hungarian folk music. A member of the Academy of Sciences, president of the Hungarian Arts Council and honorary president of the International Society of Music Education, he became president of the International Folk Music Council in the early 1960s. He died in Budapest in 1967.