Zoltan Kodaly – Budapest, Hungary
Posted by: 
dtrebilc
N 47° 29.960 E 019° 02.223
34T E 352164 N 5262523
Zoltan Kodaly was a musician, linguist and philosopher who devised a music teaching method for children. His method of hand signals for music notation was included in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Waymark Code: WMKXCB
Location: Budapest, Hungary
Date Posted: 06/08/2014
Views: 6
The Statue
Situated in a quiet corner of the grounds around Buda Castle, the statue shows Zoltan reclining in a relaxed pose on a stone bench. He is sitting with his legs crossed at the ankle.
The person
Zoltan learned to play the violin as a child and developed an interest in Hungarian folk music. Between 1905 and 1906 he visited remote villages to collect songs, recording them on phonograph cylinders. He also wrote the thesis on Hungarian folk song ("Strophic Construction in Hungarian Folksong") . Around this time Kodály met fellow composer 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.
His main interest in life became improving the teaching of music to school children. The first music primary school, in which music was taught daily, opened in 1950. The school was so successful that over one hundred music primary schools opened within the next decade. After about fifteen years roughly half the schools in Hungary were music schools. His ideas were also used in other countries.
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Publications
Zoltan Kodaly published both musical works and books about his teaching methods.
Although many of his ideas about musical teaching and notation and using hand signals were based on ideas from other people, his methods became known internationally as the Kodaly method.
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His teaching method using hand signals is so famous that in fiction it was used in the film 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' when UFOlogists were trying to use music to communicate with the aliens that had landed in their space craft.
His areas of musical output included operas, orchestral music, chamber and instrumental music and choral pieces.