Zoltán Kodály

Kodály was born in Kecskemét, Hungary, and studied in Budapest, where from 1907 he taught at the Academy of Music. In 1905 he began collecting folk songs in Hungarian villages on phonograph cylinders, and he soon introduced Béla Bartók to the same work; the two remained close friends. He wrote on the pentatonic (five-note) scale in Hungarian folk music, and his ideas on teaching music through singing became known worldwide as the Kodály method.

His music joins Western traditions, late Romantic, impressionist and modernist, to the melodies, modes and rhythms of Hungarian folk music; on a study trip to Paris he came to know Debussy's music. Between about 1909 and 1920 he wrote mostly songs, piano pieces and chamber music.

The Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8, dates from 1915 and was written for the cellist Jenő Kerpely, who gave the first performance in Budapest on 7 May 1918, after a delay caused by the war; Universal Edition published it in 1921. Kodály asks the player to retune the two lower strings a semitone down, to B and F sharp. This retuning (scordatura) matches the open strings to the B minor and B major of the work and widens the cello's range of colour. The three movements are Allegro maestoso ma appassionato, Adagio con gran espressione and a finale, Allegro molto vivace, which draws heavily on Hungarian folk tunes and dance rhythms.