The Kodály Method

Tell me what songs you sing and I’ll tell you who you are. The melodies and fragments that vibrate on within us reveal things about us that no psychoanalysis can uncover. They shine a light in the hidden nooks and crannies of the soul otherwise inaccessible to us.

Can music be more important than words, can the soul be better than the mind? To quote Zoltán Kodály’s dream: “We can certainly hope that by the year 2000, all pupils leaving primary school will be able to read music charts fluently.”

In his opinion, it is just as important for a child to learn the Hungarian language as it is to learn Hungarian music. Music broadens not only our mind and soul, but through notes and lines, we can get a better understanding of our existence, our heart, about who we are here, between East and West. What would Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály today think of music, of Hungarians, of the world our children grow up in? And who were they actually in their day, why did they feel it was important to collect music? If they set out today, how far would they get?

This is not the first time the Stalker Team’s creative artists have worked with the National Theatre. After staging Richard III and Woyzeck, they present a new play of their own. They have focused on famous Hungarian poets’ life and works several times to date, including János Arany, Sándor Petőfi and Attila József.

“We find it important to rephrase the past, to retranslate it for ourselves, as that perhaps, brings us closer to understanding who we are and what our job is,” says Attila Vidnyánszky, director of the production. “It’s especially important to address such issues in the regions across the border, where the Hungarian language means a different thing. Beyond general statements and grand words, we must also ask the simple question of why a book or a reading experience has a different impact on us today than on our parents and grandparents? Is it possible that under the weight of the information we are bombarded with day by day, something inside us is starting to change? Is there a chance that the songs, lines and thoughts we hear at school, in our grandparents’ kitchen, on television, at the spinning workshop or in the pub no longer affect us the way they affected our forebears 50-100 years ago? This is how we got to Zoltán Kodály.