Ifjúság, identitás, invenció. A magyar zenei élet feszült nemzedékváltása 1925-ben
Identity, Invention and Youth: The Clash of Generations in Hungarian Musical Culture in 1925

Summary/Abstract: The Hungarian musical culture’s sharpest, but natural (not politically forced) clash of generations took place in 1925, when the former director of the Hungarian Academy of Music, Ödön Mihalovich and the middle-aged Kodály fought a duel in the press. The two, different-styled composers tried to dominate the student composers’ education. Mihalovich wanted to protect the students from the newest modernist trends taught by Kodály, while Kodály disavowed his former boss’s national identity, to eliminate his musical production. The victor of the duel was Kodály, and the victory made him the leader of the young Hungarian musicians. This duel determined musicology, the canon and the concert repertoire as well. Mihalovich’s romantic orchestral pieces and the Romantic Hungarian symphonic oeuvre disappeared from concert life and music history books. The moral of this loss – the missing opuses in the concerts, the canon and music history writing – also deconstructs the international and national position of Kodály, the inventor of modern Hungarian music

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