Chautauqua Institution - Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra with Time For Three

Zoltán Kodály

Dances of Galánta

Dances of Galánta [Galántai táncok] Zoltán Kodály

Composer, Ethnologist, and Educator Zoltán Kodály was born in Kecskemét, Hungary on December 16, 1882, and died on March 6, 1967 in Budapest. Along with Bartók, he made a careful study of authentic Hungarian and other East European folk music. Dances of Galánta was composed in 1933 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Society. The first performance of it took place on October 23, 1933 in Budapest with the Philharmonic Society Orchestra under the baton of Ernst von Dohnányi. The work is scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, percussion (orchestral bells, snare drum, triangle), and strings.

Although less frequently performed than his Suite from Kodály’s opera, Háry Janós, Dances of Galánta is a delightful journey through the area around the former Hungarian village that is located now within the borders of Slovakia. The composer’s father, Frigyes, was an amateur violinist who served as the village’s station-master when Zoltán was very young. He also grew up hearing his mother sing and play piano, but it was the music-making of the townsfolk that captured the boy’s imagination. When the family moved away from Galánta, Kodály began his more systematic and scholarly study of indigenous Hungarian songs and dances, by making recordings in various locales. He soon joined forces with his fellow composer and ethnologist, Béla Bartók, in pursuing the preservation of authentic musical folklore.

When approached by the Budapest Philharmonic Society in 1933, instead of delving into his own research, he turned to a pre-existent collection of Magyar tunes published in Vienna in the nineteenth century. He turned these tunes into a skillfully-orchestrated and delightful one-movement journey through a slice of rural Hungary, dominated by the verbunkos (recruiting song) tradition, marked by syncopations, dotted and long-short punctuations characteristic of this style of music. A melody emerges in the clarinet, leading to a suite of dances in various tempos. Some of these dances are filled with unbridled rejoicing, not without a moment of humorous intoxication. The revelry is interrupted by a wistful recollection of the clarinet melody before the work comes to its rousing conclusion.