Classics For Kids Cincinnati Public Radio

Zoltan Kodaly developed a method for teaching music. It is still used by teachers around the world today. Jill Trinka, who teaches the Kodaly Method, talks with Naomi Lewin.

Zoltan Kodaly was not the only composer to use folk tunes in the music he wrote. Here are some others.

Kodaly's opera Hary Janos is about a real person who told real whoppers - big, fat lies. If you listened to him, you'd think he defeated Napoleon's army all by himself.

Zoltan Kodaly was born in a small town in Hungary. His father worked for the Hungarian railroad, so the family moved around a lot. This meant that as a kid, Zoltan heard folk music from many different parts of the country. When he grew up, Hungarian folk music became his passion. Kodaly spent a large part of his life collecting his native music, and teaching his countrymen about it.

"Rhapsody" is an ancient word that means "songs stitched together". The Greeks used to write long poems in praise of their heroes, and then take bits and pieces of those poems and string them together for performance. In music, a rhapsody is a free-form piece that takes different tunes and strings them together.

In his day Franz Liszt was most famous as a pianist. So, were Mozart, Beethoven and a lot of other composers.