Zoltán Kodály
Serenade
Duration: -'
Instrumentation details:
violin
violin
viola
Kodály - Serenade for 2 violins and viola
Translation, reprints and more
Zoltán Kodály
Kodály: Serenade for 2 violins and viola - op. 12 Available digitallyOrchestration: for 2 violins and viola
Type: Stimmensatz
Zoltán Kodály
Kodály: Serenade for 2 violins and viola - op. 12Orchestration: for 2 violins and viola
Type: Taschenpartitur
Work introduction
Kodály composed this
piece for two violins and viola shortly after his String Quartet II, during
a time when he was dealing with personal difficulties. Together with Bartók and Dohnányi, he
had taken part in the so-called Music Directorship in the 1919 Hungarian Soviet
Republic, for which he was resented after its suppression by the rightist
regime of regent Horthy. He wrote only a handful of pieces during those years;
after the Serenade, his Psalmus Hungaricus did not follow until
1923.
The Serenade’s path to
international renown began in Salzburg in 1922, as part of a chamber-music
festival which made musical history through the foundation of the IGNM. It was
performed by the Amar-Hindemith Trio, Hindemith playing the viola. The work was
discussed in publications including Universal Edition’s Musikblätter des Anbruch.
The Serenade impressed Bartók
very much. “This composition,” he wrote, “is a genuine, modern product of
Hungarian culture. It is extraordinarily rich in melodies with exotic
characteristics influenced by the strong rubato
of old peasant music.”