How History Influences Music | Class Notes

Music reflects the time and place of its composition. Historians often look to music to learn more about a society and its culture. This video explores the history surrounding Zoltán Kodály’s Dances of Galánta. 

Born in 1882, a time of great industrial and cultural change, Kodály grew up in Galánta, on a train line between Vienna and Budapest. There he was exposed to Hungarian folk and dance music. It made a lifelong impression on him. 

Later, wanting to preserve the music that entranced him as a child, and aided by the then-new technology of recording, Kodály went another step further by composing Dances of Galánta, a fusion of folk and classical rhythms and styles. This video links Dances to the culture, crises, and emerging technologies of its time.