Music Education across the Iron Curtain: The Kodály-Method and the Network of Hungarian and American Teachers, 1960s-1970s

• In Event: Musical Mediators, Contact Zones, and Networks during the Cold War

Abstract

In my presentation I will examine the transnational network of Hungarian and American music educators, centered on the worldwide promotion and adaptation of the Kodály-method during the 1960s-70s. The Hungarian composer and musicologist Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) conceived of a novel approach to education with the aim to democratize access to music. Music education based on his ideas was implemented in Hungary after 1945, generating international interest by the 1960s, especially among pedagogues from the US. I will explore the rich web of interactions between Hungarian and US music educators that bridged the Iron Curtain. Sharing the intention to make music comprehensible to all segments of their societies, they forged professional ties through participation in the International Society for Music Education (ISME). Furthermore, they progressed from creating an informal voluntary network to producing formal international forums (International Kodály Symposia, since 1973) and an umbrella organization (the International Kodály Society, founded in 1975). Built from the bottom up by non-state actors, this transnational network functioned as more than an epistemic community and a professional interest group, held together by intellectual, financial, and institutional ties. Reliant on trust and cooperation, and the intersecting identities emergent from a shared vision, this group of educators coalesced into a cross-cultural and trans-continental affective community. By focusing on the external constraints and the internal motivations of this collaborative network, I will investigate a rare case of East to West knowledge transfer in the context of geopolitical antagonism.

Author

• Szabolcs Laszlo, HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities (Hungary)