Zoltán Kodály

Zoltán Kodály (, ; , ; 16 December 1882 – 6 March 1967) was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, music pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is well known internationally as the creator of the Kodály method of music education. Life Born in Kecskemét, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary, Kodály learned to play the violin as a child. In 1900, he entered the Department of Languages at the University of Budapest and at the same time Hans von Kössler’s composition class at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music. After completing his studies, he studied in Paris with Charles-Marie Widor for a year. In 1905, he visited remote villages to collect songs, recording them on phonograph cylinders. In 1906, he wrote a thesis on Hungarian folk song, “Strophic Construction in Hungarian Folksong”. At around this time Kodály met fellow composer and compatriot Béla Bartók, whom he took under his wing and introduced to some of the methods involved in folk song collecting. The two became lifelong friends and champions of each other’s music. In 1919, Kodály was appointed alongside Béla Bartók to the Music Directory by the People’s Commissariat for Education and Culture in the short-lived Hungarian