Zoltan Kodaly
Zoltan Kodaly
Zoltán Kodálywas a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is well known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method...
NationalityHungarian
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth16 December 1882
beautiful comforting treasure
With music, one's whole future life is brightened. This is such a treasure in life that it helps us over many troubles and difficulties. Music is nourishment, a comforting elixir. Music multiplies all that is beautiful and of value in life.
numbers people treasure
Music is a manifestation of the human spirit, similar to language. Its greatest practitioners have conveyed to mankind things not possible to say in any other language. If we do not want these things to remain dead treasures, we must do our utmost to make the greatest possible number of people understand their idiom.
best children follows good
Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this... only the best is good enough for a child.
art intrinsic value
Only art of intrinsic value is suitable for children! Everything else is harmful.
building edifice fancy saw
We put up the fancy spires first. When we saw that the whole edifice was shaky, we set to building the walls. We have still to make a cellar.
law moral
The laws of morals and the laws of music are the same
art powerful real
Real art is one of the most powerful forces in the rise of mankind, and he who renders it accessible to as many people as possible is a benefactor of humanity.
way vain conviction
It is our firm conviction that mankind will live the happier when it has learned to live with music more worthily. Whoever works to promote this end, in one way or another, has not lived in vain.
song simple singing
Singing connected with movements and action is a much more ancient, and, at the same time, more complex phenomenon than is a simple song.
years symphony twenties
I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years time.
children reading giving
To teach a child an instrument without first giving him preparatory training and without developing singing, reading and dictating to the highest level along with the playing is to build upon sand.
fate men singing
Our age of mechanization leads along a road ending with man himself as a machine. Only the spirit of singing can save us from this fate.
book silence sound
We should read music in the same way that an educated adult will read a book: in silence, but imagining the sound.
children enough good-enough
Let us take our children seriously! Everything else follows from this...only the best is good enough for a child.