Re: Re: reorganisation and destruction of irish catholic churches

László Dobszay
[…] was born in Szeged in 1935. He studied history and literature at the Lóránd Eötvös University in Budapest and music at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, with János Viski for composition, Iván Engel for piano, Zoltán Kodály for folk music and Bence Szabolcsi for music history. For a decade from 1956 he was principally occupied with pedagogical activities, writing papers, composing music and compiling materials as part of a wide-ranging reform of the Hungarian music teaching system.

In 1966 he was invited by Kodály and Benjamin Rajeczky to join the Folk Music Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (which in 1974 was integrated into the newly formed Institute for Musicology). As well as undertaking field collections in North-East Hungary and Transylvania he worked on the classification of melody (from which was to emanate a new systematic catalogue of the entire corpus of Hungarian folksong, made in collaboration with Janka Szendrei) and comparative studies in the history of folksong on the one hand and that of written European melodic traditions on the other. At the same time László Dobszay was making equally fundamental contributions to liturgical chant studies, surveying sources and repertories and classifying their contents on a systematic melodic basis, with the result that when the call came to compile a new history of Hungarian music, the chapters on chant could be written with unique authority. Some of the research material compiled at this time as well as subsequently has been published in the series Corpus Antiphonalium Officii Ecclesiarum Centralis Europae (CAO-ECE). […]

In 1970 László Dobszay was appointed teacher at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, and in the same year he, Benjamin Rajeczky and Janka Szendrei founded the Schola Hungarica. He gained his doctorate in 1975 with a dissertation on melodies of the “lament style” in Hungarian music. In 1976 he was appointed head of the Early Music Department of the Institute for Musicology. He was a member of the Committee for the post-conciliar reform of Catholic church music in Hungary. In 1990 he became head of the Folk Music Department of the Institute, and in the same year head of the newly founded Church Music Department at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music.

[…] The […] conferences on chant held in Hungary since 1984 […] constitute meetings of the research group “Cantus Planus”, working under the aegis of the International Musicological Society. Their success, indeed the fact that they take place at all, is due almost entirely to László Dobszay and his Hungarian colleagues. For many of us, they have been the occasion for some of our finest experiences at scholarly conventions. […]

László Dobszay has made outstanding contributions not only to chant studies, and not only to musicology, but also to music teaching, to music in present-day Christian worship, and to the performance of music. […] For example, as well as completing authoritative studies of the history and style of Latin chant, he has introduced chant into textbooks for school music right down to the primary level, he has adapted a very extensive corpus of chant for church worship in the vernacular, and with the Schola Hungarica has established new standards in the informed selection and performance of chant. […] Another example of the mutually beneficial interaction of complementary branches of music in László Dobszay’s work is the way in which experience gained in folk music research has been utilized in his chant studies, most recently in the forthcoming systematic edition of the complete office antiphon repertory from Hungarian sources. His musicological studies also encompass the music of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, he is an authority on Bartók’s music, and he has had responsibility for the monumental series Musicalia Danubiana.