The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1962 (3. évfolyam, 8. szám)
Tibor Kozma: Zoltán Kodály - Achievement and Promise
ZOLTÁN KODÁLY— ACHIEVEMENT AND PROMISE by TIBOR KOZMA I t is a curious sign of these curious times that the witness and advocate, the espouser and proclaimer of Kodály’s creative greatness must find himself—at least outside of Hungary—almost entirely on the defensive. The whirlpool of the contemporary musical scene, foaming and eddying in a permanent revolution between dodecaphony, electronic music, musique concrete and yet-to-be-devised methods of musical engineering, seems to have almost covered the tracks of the man who, nevertheless, must be regarded as one of the most meaningful phenomena in twentieth-century music. Meaningful, that is, if we are optimistic enough to assume that the history of music—with the history of man—is to continue into the future. Reference to the future may at first seem odd in connection with Kodály whom quite a few learned scribes on music damned with faint praise by opining that his style is “essentially eclectic” or “not revolutionary” or that he is “a twentieth-century romantic”—rather a term of opprobrium in these days. It seems that Kodály’s originality is being questioned, especially also in view of the fact that so many of his works are based on Hungarian folk—i. e., not “original”—thematic material. It may be almost superfluous to point out that originality a tout prix of the thematic material was a matter of sovereign unconcern to any number of great composers from Bach and Händel to Liszt, Wagner, Brahms and Moussorgsky. Beyond this prosaically pragmatic fact, it is fascinating to observe in the history of the arts how rarely highest originality and highest mastery, trail-blazing and fulfilment, revolution and perfection manage to coincide in one and the same artist. Dittersdorf was certainly more “original” than Mozart; Liszt’s harmonic innovations point well beyond Wagner; and Prokofiev, Hindemith or even Bartók have already been declared “old hat” compared to Webern, Boulez or Stockhausen. Sir George Grove’s dictum about Kodály’s music: “Its novelty derives. . . from his unconven