Hungry for Hungarian music? Give László Lajtha a shot.
A forgotten colleague of Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, Lajtha (pronounced “Loy-tah”) too busily collected and transcribed folk music from the Hungarian countryside prior to World War I.
Later, he was appointed Director of Music for Hungarian Radio, Director of the Museum of Ethnography, and Director of the Budapest National Conservatory. He was summarily removed from all three posts and his passport confiscated by the Communist regime after remaining in the West too long while at work on the film score to a British screen adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s “Murder in the Cathedral” (which went on to win the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival in 1951). He hadn’t even provided a film score in the truest sense, instead composing three concert works (the Symphony No. 3, the Orchestral Variations, and the Harp Quintet No.2), which were excerpted in the film.
Anyway, he was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1951 for his achievements as a folk researcher. At least that’s something. I devoted my life to Hungarian music, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.
Happy birthday, László Lajtha (1892-1963)!
An interesting assessment of Lajtha’s music:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2001/music-laszlo-lajtha-music-from-a-secret-room
Lajtha’s Symphony No. 4 “Le printemps”:
PHOTO: Not even that scarf could insulate him from the Cold War