A ZENESZERZÕ KODÁLY - Emléknap az MTA Zenetudományi Intézetében
Kodály Zoltán kalandozásai Ithakátul a Székelyföldig 239. - 250. o
Tallián Tibor abstract
The Adventures of Zoltán Kodály from Ithaka to the Székely Land
Tibor Tallián

Zoltán Kodály has been bound by an intense spiritual relationship to the Homeric epics, in particular to the Odyssey which he had thoroughly studied already as a student at the grammar school (Gymnasium) in Nagyszombat, when he also planned to compose an orchestral work with the title Nausikaa. 1906 he noted in his diary that “the plan for a symphonic poem on the same subject began do down again”. 1907 he composed the song Nausikaa published 1925 as No 2 of Four songs. From 1926 on he seriously considered the composition of an opera on the libretto of Zsigmond Móricz’s play Odysseus bolyongásai (The Wandering of Odysseus) which in its two first acts describes the amours of the hero with Nausikaa and Kyrke, and his return to Penelope in the third. Perhaps in connection with the planning of the opera Kodály sketched some musical ideas for both Nausikaa and Kyrke. The wife of Odysseus waiting faithfully for his husband may have inspired the figure of the Houswife in the second version of Székely fonó (Spinnery) whose pantomimic action was written by the composer. The early version staged 1925 dealt with the ambiguities of matrimony through the allegoric quotation of folk songs like El kéne indulni and the Ballad about the Evil Wife. The 1932 version systematically broadened the discussion on the chances of marriage by triplicating the figures of both man and woman. In working out the sujet Kodály may have been influenced by Móricz’s way of posing the problem of the relation of male and female in the Odysseus-drama.
Kodály Laudes organi címû mûvének keletkezéstörténete 251. - 260. o
Komlós Katalin abstract
The Genesis of Kodály’s Laudes organi
Katalin Komlós

The text of Laudes organi, the 12th-century sequence “Audi chorum organicum”, survives in several manuscript sources. Kodály had probably used the Leipzig version (14th-century Gradual from the Augustinian monastery) as it appears in the 1929 transcription by Peter Wagner (Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 12/2).
The autograph sketches (Kodály Archives, Budapest) provide valuable information about the compositional process: the gradual transformation of the melodic borrowings from “Audi chorum”; the development of the tonal structure; the painstaking work on the long solo sections of the organ.
The article closes with a suggestion for the overall form, and tonal plan of the composition.
Kodály: A rossz feleség balladája 261. - 272. o
Vikárius László abstract
Zoltán Kodály: The Ballad of the Heartless Wife László Vikárius In 1925, Universal-Edition published the first two volumes of Zoltán Kodály's Hungarian Folk Music for voice and piano (Magyar népzene, 1917-1932), a series of folksong arrangements that occupied the composer for more than a decade. Vol. 2 included the arrangement of the "ballade of the heartless wife" (A rossz feleség balladája), an arrangement that, along with several other pieces, also became part of Székely fonó (The Spinning-Room), both in its early occasional version (1924) and in its later full-scale stage form (1932). The direct source of the folk melodies arranged for Székely fonó as well as most of the vocal compositions of the period was Transylvanian Hungarians: Folksongs, jointly edited by Bartók and Kodály (1923), a collection of 150 songs. Kodály following the advice of Emil Hertzka, director of the Viennese publisher Universal-Edition carefully selected songs that had not been arranged by Bartók yet. The difference between the respective approaches of the two composers is evident in the choice of folk genre as well as that of individual songs. Thus the first two volumes in Kodály's Hungarian Folk Music for voice and piano show a particular preference for ballads, a genre that is rarely represented in Bartók's folksong based compositions, the "Ballade" of the Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs for piano (1914-1918) being the major exception.
The melody of the "ballad of the heartless wife" itself is representative of a rare and particularly interesting folksong type, characterized by the combination of two pairs of phrases of strikingly different make-up: one with a descending parlando melody akin to the type of Hungarian folk dirges and the other, more lively in tempo, being built up of smaller units with dance-like giusto rhythm closely related to certain instrumental pieces. One melody belonging to the same type, although its text is not a ballad per se, "Asszonyok, asszonyok" ("Women, women") had been arranged by Bartók in Eight Hungarian Folksongs for voice and piano (1907-1917). The variant with the ballad text selected by Kodály, however, is unique because of the contrast between its two pairs of phrases that can be interpreted as an example of overt "madrigalism" or word-painting, the first pair of verses being sung by the daughter who keeps asking her mother to come home to her dying father while the second containing the mother's repeated refusal who prefers staying out dancing instead of returning home. As a punch-line just before the end of the song, the wife even sings a brief lament on the ruined bed-sheet instead of her now dead husband. Its dialogue form and dramatic character made this song particularly suitable as a basis for the kind of composition Kodály regarded as representative of the "missing national song type" that could be modelled on and measured against some of the great Schubert lieder.
Through an analysis of both the folksong and Kodály's "Lied" based on it, relying on the piece's few surviving manuscript sources as well as the composer's writings from the period of its composition, the article approaches Kodály's ideas and main endeavours behind the launching of his first important large-scale series of folksong arrangements, Hungarian Folk Music.
A "konszonáns gesz" 275. - 284. o
Richter Pál abstract
The Consonant Gb
Pál Richter

In Kodály’s choral works without folk music background, the text usually has an influence on the melody and harmony structure. However, in his choral arrange¬ments of folk songs melody patterns esentially determine the harmonies. Each melody style, mode, and tonality (not only major-minor) can call into existence its own harmonies, which create repulsions and attractions. There are common harmonies from a formal point of view, they have a wide range relationships, and they can be used in various interpretations. As a composer Kodály was interested in the influence of partial tones, and he took them into consideration in part writing, particularly of choral works. An investigation of the choral works for 2, and 3 voices for children’s, and female choirs revealed that apart from the functio¬nal relationships of classical music, harmonies were assigned independent grounds, especially the minor seventh in Kodály’s compositions. Minor seventh harmonies were important to Kodály because of their ability to relate to different modes, and tonal systems. An obvious example is the use of the tones in the pentatonic system in Hungarian folk music, and its framing interval of minor seventh.
Kodály zeneszerzõi recepciója Erdélyben 285. - 299. o
Németh G. István abstract
Kodály’s Influence on Hungarian Composers from Romania
István G. Németh

The paper offers a review of those composers from Transylvania who had been influenced by Zoltán Kodály. Members of the older generation had known him personally. This group of Transylvanian composers includes Árpád László (1864-1960) who consulted Kodály about his own compositions in Budapest in the year 1928 and Gábor Jodál (1913-1989) who studied composition at the Budapest Academy of Music between 1939 and 1942 along with folklorist János Jagamas and choir director István Nagy. Some representatives of the later generation like Cornel Þãranu (*1934) still had the opportunity to pay a visit to Kodály. Others had access to Kodály’s art through Gábor Jodál, their teacher of composition at the Kolozsvár/Cluj Academy of Music - this is the case of Aladár Zoltán (1929-1978), Ede Terényi (*1935) and Csaba Szabó (1936-2003). Further compositions and statements of Csíky Boldizsár (*1937), Péter Vermesy (1939-1989) and György Orbán (*1942) testify that Kodály’s choral works were (for Boldizsár Csíky: are) considered as a model for new pieces. The paper also contains analyses of Aladár Zoltán’s Divertimento for chamber orchestra (1964), Péter Vermesy’s pair of hommage-pieces - Postludium in memoriam Kodály Zoltán (1978) and “... Super sepulchrum Kodály Zoltán” (1982) both of them quoting motives from Kodály’s Psalmus hungaricus and György Orbán’s mixed choir Kádár Kata (1971), an arrangement of a folk ballad modelled on Kodály’s Molnár Anna belonging to the same genre.
Tanulmány
A pályakezdõ Ligeti György Bartók-recepciója 301. - 311. o
Kerékfy Márton abstract
György Ligeti’s Reception of Bartók in His Early Carreer
Márton Kerékfy

Bartók’s music played a uniquely important role in György Ligeti’s musical world from the beginning. Even during his years of study at the Academy of Music in Bu¬dapest, Ligeti’s most important artistic model and idol was Bartók. As he put it in an interview conducted by Péter Várnai in 1979, it had been in the early 1950s that he had begun to feel that he had had to go beyond Bartók. “What I felt I had to abandon were traditional forms, a musical language of the traditional kind, the sonata form. [ ... ] I wanted to get away from all ready-made forms [ ... ]” Still, Ligeti’s most important compositions of this period, Musica ricercata and String Quartet No. 1, show that his reception of Bartók remained central in his striving for a non-traditional and wholly individual musical style. While both works already foreshadow many features of the “Ligeti style” of the 1960s, they also witness that Ligeti’s new compositional ideas came from his conscious and creative assimilation of the constitutive elements of Bartók’s style.
A misztikus akkordon túl : kompozíciós problémafelvetések Alekszandr Szkrjabin Prometheus címû mûvében 313. - 324. o
Ignácz Ádám; Szigeti Máté abstract
Beyond the Mystic Chord – Compositional Questions in Alexander Scriabin’s Prometheus: The Poem of Fire
Ádám Ignácz – Máté Csaba Szigeti

The core topic of Scrjabin’s analytics is the chord complex so called “mystic chord”. Most of the writings on Scrjabin’s late music concentrate on this chord phenomenon when examining the compositional structure of these opuses. Besides these sometimes very much different analyses, we offer a new alternative: our essay is focused on the chord construction and formal problems of the orchestral piece, Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, tied up with the cultural and philosophical background of the work.
Recenzió
„Magyar rondó” : Dalos Anna: Forma, harmónia, ellenpont: Vázlatok Kodály Zoltán poétikájához 325. - 330. o
Péteri Lóránt
A humanizmus utópiája : Zoltai Dénes: Zenében gondolkodni : válogatott esztétikai írások 331. - 341. o
Csobó Péter György
Gyorsírás és fonográf : Sebõ Ferenc: Vikár Béla népzenei gyûjteménye 343. - 346. o
Richter Pál
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