Artist database

Nagykanizsa, 15th December 1905 - Budapest, 10th October 2000

At the Academy of Music Budapest (1922-27) he was a pupil of Leó Weiner and Albert Siklós, then continued his studies in Rome at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia under the supervision of Ottorino Respighi. From 1935 he taught at the Higher Music School in Budapest, then at the Conservatoire in Kolozsvár, and later at the Székesfehérvár Conservatoire (he was also director of the latter two).

In 1949 he was appointed teacher of composition at the Academy of Music Budapest, and as head of department he retired from there in 1965. György Ligeti and György Kurtág studied under him, and in the course of his long teaching career he taught several generations of Hungarian composers - his students included Emil Petrovics, Sándor Szokolay, Miklós Kocsár, Zsolt Durkó, Attila Bozay, Zoltán Jeney and László Vidovszky. His oeuvre (more than 700 works) embraces almost every musical genre: he composed operas, ballets, incidental music for the theatre, film music, masses, cantatas, choral works, songs, orchestral works and concertos, chamber music and also solo pieces. His musical profile combined Hungarian folk music, classical traditions, the melodiousness of the Mediterranean, and twelve-tone technique. His technical virtuosity as a composer, his knowledge of style, his fertile inventiveness and his wide-ranging culture won him international recognition. The Hungarian state conferred many honours on him, including the Kossuth Prize in 1950 and 1991, the Gottfried von Herder Prize in 1979, and the "Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Repubblica Italiana" in 1984. In 1985 and 2000 he was awarded with Béla Bartók-Ditta Pásztory Prize.