György Ránki [antikvár]

György Ránki (1907-1992) Creative Career György Ránki was bom György Gaszton Reisz in Budapest on October 1907 into an intellectual middle-class Jewish famüy. His father Dr. Frigyes Reisz was a chemical engineer, his mother Szidónia Hó'nig brought up therr three children, Vümos, György and Frigyes. During his childhood, György received the basic musical education typical in bourgeois families: he took piano lessons. It was during his years at the Royal Catholic University Secondary School* of the city's 1®' district (between 1917 and 1925) that he took a more serious interest in music. This was when, with his friend and school-mate Sándor Veress, who was to remain a good friend until his emigration to Switzerland, he discovered and began to study the music of Bartók and Kodály. Encouraged by Antal Molnár, after secondary school and a year at technical university, he took the entrance examination for the composition faculty at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. Between 1926 and 1930 he was a pupü of Kodály. The years under his guidance were an important experience in his Hfe. Ránki gives the following account of this influence: " .what he said was advice for life. His method was to encourage autonomy and form the character. He made his students stand on their own two feet, and taught them to be independent and unconditionally truthful in their music. Ránki's relationship with Kodály continued even after he had graduated. He visited his teacher once or twice a year and showed him his new compositions. The most important musical influence for him as a composition student at the academy was the closer acquaintance with new Hungarian music and folk music, as well as an acquaintance with the jazz world. In 1931, after graduating, the young composer sought to make a name for himself at 'New Music' composers' evenings, which were organised with his colleagues Sándor Veress, Pál Kadosa, Ferenc Szabó, and Ferenc Farkas, although during this decade he made his living primarily from film music and commissions received from Budapest's National Theatre. It was a piece of stage music written for the National Theatre which brought about his first success abroad. The incidental music written in 1935 for Goldoni's 'The Liar' was used for its own production in 1936 by Vienna's Burgtheater. While working at the A special type of secondary school not existing today, which specialised in sciences, (transl.)