Zoltán Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus

It is hard to imagine a more Hungarian work than Psalmus Hungaricus. A distinctively Hungarian composer utilizes Hungarian sounds to set a Hungarian text in celebration of a Hungarian holiday.

Zoltán Kodály’s (left) Psalmus Hungaricus for Tenor Solo, Chorus, and Orchestra is a setting of a text by the sixteenth-century poet Mihály Kecskeméti Vég. Vég transformed Psalm 55 into a personal yet nationalistic text. Kodály does not use any Hungarian folk melodies in this work, but he obtains a Hungarian sound by using rhythmico-metrical patterns that often appear in Hungarian folk tunes.¹The work is roughly in a rondo form and was commissioned to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Buda, Óbuda and Pest into what is now Budapest.^{2 (Program for the concert is below)}

Psalmus Hungaricus immediately intrigued me through the dramatic tutti orchestra opening. The pacing and character of the orchestral cadences gives the work a solemnity that is unique to Hungarian folk music. This character is reinforced by the solemn choir entrance through rhythmic and melodic repetitiveness. An aggressive tenor solo with the orchestra propels the work forward into a more dreamy section. The narrative of the tenor over this state is a heart wrenching cry that is interrupted by a loud, brash, choir & orchestra dialogue that culminates in a loud tutti orchestral climax. The work ends with a quite, meditation for the chorus with solo double bass. This coda displays an inconsaoble grief sadness.

Psalmus Hungaricus covers a huge range of emotion, and speaks to me strongly through its humanistic struggle and eventual defeat. I feel that the music attempts to achieve a higher, more spiritual existence, but cannot. This is from where the human relevance stems. Having music attempt to achieve something and then ultimately failing is a powerful statement that is exceedingly difficult to pull off. The goal is to leave the listener feel unsatisfied, but not musically unsatisfied, but rather with an emotional, intellectual, or spiritual longing that is the essence of humanity.

Kodály attempted to create such a work with Psalmus Hungaricus, and I certainly felt an odd dissatisfaction with the works completion, a dissatisfaction that I did not during the work. This lead me to believe that Kodály intended for this longing. But I do not feel that he fully achieves what was intended. The longing I felt was an unclear and queasy feeling that I attributed ultimately to general ambiguity of the music in reflection. Thus, Kodály does not achieve a lasting impression with this work that is required to balance the profoundness of the humanism in the actual music.

Psalmus Hungaricus is not in the canon of western music as it is not ultimately effective in achieving what the work sets out to do. There is a certain irony in that Kodály set out to create a work that sets out to achieve a goal and comes painstakingly close but fails, as he comes painstakingly close to his goal and ultimately fails.

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¹ Halsey Stevens, “The Choral Music of Zoltán Kodály,” The Musical Quaterly 54, no. 2 (1968): 149-50

² David Cooper, “Bartók’s orchestral music and the modern world,” The Cambridge Companion to Bartók, ed. Amanda Bayley (Cambridge: Cambrige Univeristy Press, 2001), 57