Scan 29
Groves Dictionary Of Music And Musicians,vol.5 L-m, 1900
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1Academy of Music in Budapest under Victor Herzfeld (composition) and Árpád Szendy (pianoforte), and concurrently read law at the University, where he obtained a degree in 1913. In 1910 he became associated with Bartók's and Kodály's folk music movement and joined their collecting expeditions, which he has continued independently and in the company of folklorists ever since. On his early travels he visited Leipzig (1910), Geneva (1910–11) and Paris (1911–13), where his becoming acquainted with some of the leading musicians contributed to the widening of his experience and outlook. In 1913 he joined the staff of the Ethnographical Department of the Hungarian National Museum. His travels were interrupted in Aug. 1914, when, at the outbreak of the first world war, he returned to Hungary and joined the services. After the war, in 1919, he was appointed professor of composition and of chamber music, subsequently also of musical aesthetics and theory of Magyar music, at the National Conservatory in Budapest, of which he became hon. director after the second world war and where he remained until the institute ceased to function in 1949.
3In 1926 Lajtha became choirmaster of the Goudimel Choir attached to the Budapest Congregation of the Calvinist (Presbyterian) Church. In 1929 he won the Coolidge Prize for his third string Quartet; from 1930 he was music expert of the Institute of Intellectual Co-operation, a League of Nations organization; and in 1932 he was appointed director of the music section of the Commission Internationale des Arts et Traditions Populaires. He organized a chamber orchestra in 1941 and conducted its performances until 1944. After the end of hostilities he was appointed director of the music department in the Hungarian Broadcasting Service in 1945.
5In the years between the wars Lajtha travelled widely in Europe, appearing frequently in Paris, the place of his most important successes. In 1947, when the C.I.A.P. held its first post-war meeting in Paris, he took part in the deliberations which resulted in the setting up of the International Folk Music Council. In the same year he visited London, where he finished his important third Symphony and Variations for orchestra. In 1951 he was awarded the Hungarian State Kossuth Prize in recognition of his merits in connection with Hungarian folk music. The following year he was appointed professor-supervisor of musical folklore researches by the Budapest Academy of Music.
7The Music.—Lajtha's musical personality occupies in many respects a unique position among Hungarian composers. Like Bartók and Kodály he is not only acknowledged as a composer of distinction, but also recognized as an authority on folk music; further, again like Bartók and Kodály, his activities have not been confined to creative and scientific work, but also included teaching: in this respect his influence is felt in the particular outlook of certain younger musicians. His main distinguishing characteristic, on the other hand, is his attachment to French—and generally to Latin—culture in sensibility and taste, discernible above all in the quality of his musical inspiration and in the manner of its expression. In this he is one of the few non-conformists among the personalities of Hungarian musical history, most of whose development was affected by German influences; while among living composers he is the only one who remains consistently faithful to French artistic ideals. Superior workmanship is the most prominent and consistent feature of his music; and the principle that "in all works of art the quality of craftsmanship is a decisive factor of evaluation" has always guided his artistic consideration. As a consequence his orchestral and chamber music respectively represent genuine works of their kind whose musical qualities cannot be divorced from their medium of expression.
9Regarding the Hungarian accent, the influence of Magyar folk music is less obvious in his works than in those of Bartók and Kodály, chiefly because Lajtha was attracted by another aspect of the traditional materials: it is their melodic shape and form—viewed primarily as an objective musical element regardless of their peculiarly national characteristics—which inspired him. This conception admits a considerable stylistic freedom of treatment: thus the Magyar flavour succeeds in permeating equally his Italianized passages (e.g. the slow movement of the Sonatina for violin and pianoforte; 'Aria' in Sonata for cello and pianoforte), his sectional forms (couplets, rondeaux, etc.) modelled on classical French prototypes, dance movements and contrapuntal textures (fugues). This conception also permitted him to resort to popular tunes—some of which would not satisfy the modern definition of a folk tune—often assuming the understanding of an allusive quotation, and to subject them to "western" treatment, i.e. elaborate harmonization and contrapuntal development (e.g. especially the Serenade for string trio; also the Sinfonietta for string orchestra). Here is to be observed an unexpected affinity with the 19th-century "romantic" Hungarian composers, who also availed themselves of popular tunes and treated them in western (mainly German) fashion, and whose style and endeavours were vehemently rejected by the generation immediately following, to which Lajtha himself belongs.
11These stylistic mainstays kept in view, a
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