Short description:

The music education concept of Zoltán Kodály relies on the traditions of Hungarian folk music and was formulated based on the idea that Hungarian children can learn high-class European art music and grow into a musically cultivated adult from being open-minded children primarily through learning the folk music of their own country, through getting acquainted with their own “musical mother tongue”. Music education relying on the Kodály principles develops the children’s intellect and through the dance associated with the song, their motor skills and owing to its stylistic versatility, their cultural mindset and it also teaches them close cooperation with the community and with their peers, especially if we take the composer’s-music instructor’s original intent as well as the idea of teaching music every day seriously. So Kodály’s music education concept goes way beyond the field of music education: its impact on the whole of the society is just as particularly important in today’s Hungary as it was at the time of its birth in the 1930s and its development in the 1950s and 1960s.

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