Dances of Galanta

Countless young musicians have benefitted from the Kodály disciplines outlined here and these sentiments are the backbone of his teaching methods. Today Kodály is known as a composer, educator, ethnomusicologist, linguist, author and philosopher - a genuine polymath. Even with such fine music as Dances of Galanta to confirm so positively his compositional skills, it is as an educator that his influence has had such a profound resonance through the Western world. Born in Kecskemet, a small town in central Hungary, Kodály showed an early aptitude for music which was encouraged by his music-loving father. At secondary school Kodály showed advanced musical talent and it was inevitable that he should enrol at Hungary's leading music and academic establishments, the Franz List Academy and the University of Hungary, achieving degrees in Hungarian and German and a Doctorate in Linguistics. As was also the case in England during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, foreign music and musicians were held in greater esteem than anything ethnic. Hungarian drawing room society listened to Viennese classical music and conversed in German.

In the early 1900's Kodály and Bartók set about the formidable task of changing the balance of power in Hungarian musical circles. By collecting, cataloguing, recording and utilising the thriving Hungarian folk music culture, they were able to draw to the attention of a world-wide audience the vibrancy, richness and originality of this endemic art. As might be expected, some of the establishment fought back, regarding this peasant music as rough and uncultured - of course it was, these were its great virtues. Undeterred, Kodály went on more expeditions collecting and writing down folk music. Not only did Bartók and Kodály introduce folk melodies, rhythms and feelings into their music but also they published works of impeccable scholarship leading to international recognition for their labours.Kodály remained devoted to education, becoming President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, President of the International Folk Music Council and Honorary President of the International Society for Music Education. Somehow he found time to visit schools and talk to music educators and he was actively involved in the development of music textbooks and other classroom methods. Indeed, on the day he died, 6th March 1967, he was due to carry out one of these many school visits.

Kodály wrote his Dances of Galanta in 1933 explaining their origins thus: "Galanta is a small Hungarian market-town, known to travellers from Vienna to Budapest, where the composer passed seven years of his childhood. There existed at that time a famous gypsy band which has since disappeared. Their music was the first orchestral sonority which came to the ear of the child. The forebears of these gypsies were already known more than a hundred years ago. Around the year 1800 some books of Hungarian dances were published in Vienna, one of which contained music after several gypsies from Galanta. They have preserved the old Hungarian tradition. In order to continue it, the composer has taken his principal subjects from these old editions". The dances that Kodály chose are known as verbunkos music, "recruiting dances" (from the German word Werbung meaning recruiting). The dances, consisting of slow steps alternating with lively ones, were performed by a group of Hussars led by their sergeant. The impressive display, designed to drum up support and enlist recruits, was accompanied by gypsy bands, whose players often performed breathtakingly elaborate improvisations over basically simple tunes.