Book Reviews: From Hungary with Love: A biography of Cecilia Vajda

This detailed biography of Cecilia Vajda, the Hungarian choral conductor and teacher who dedicated her career to furthering the Kodály musical approach in the UK, depicts a life in pursuit of the highest musical ideals. Author Kenneth Shenton proposes Vajda as a pivotal figure in British music education, and in doing so produces a text that is too adoring of its subject to be reliable as a scholarly account, though it is certainly touching as a tribute. Rather, the book's strength lies in its many primary sources – letters, concert programmes, course timetables and more – that shine a much-deserved light on Vajda's ambitious and accomplished musical endeavours.

Just what is the Kodály approach? Put simply, it is the musical methodology of the Hungarian composer and pedagogue Zoltán Kodály. Vajda was emphatic that Kodály's method was much more than the solfège hand signs that MT readers might know; for her, it was about building children's musical literacy to help them understand music on the deepest level, whether as listeners or performers. It was also about learning fundamentals through the simplest material, which Vajda believed could include British folk songs as well as Kodály's beloved traditional Hungarian melodies.

Born in 1923, Vajda thrived in her musical education and found lifelong inspiration in Kodály, who taught her at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest. Regrettably, it seems that her early career as a conductor and teacher was defined by male colleagues manoeuvring against her and claiming her to be ‘difficult’, which resulted in her losing various prestigious positions.

Such extreme challenges caused her to move to England in 1966 for a two-year contract at the fledgling Yehudi Menuhin School, teaching Kodály's method. Menuhin decided not to renew her contract once the two years were up, stating that the school could not give as much time to the method as it deserved, but he remained a fervent supporter of her work for the rest of his life.

The hand-to-mouth existence experienced by Vajda at this time is an interesting aspect of the book's narrative. Already an acknowledged expert in her field and increasingly in demand, Vajda nevertheless struggled to establish a reliable income. It is hard to ignore the possibility that, as a female immigrant teacher, she was offered lower rates and less favourable contracts than other (male and British) teachers might have been, although the book avoids delving into this. Happily, she soon found a sequence of more stable positions, but disagreements with male colleagues would remain a feature of her working life in the UK, the country she would call home until her death in 2009.

Chetham's School of Music in Manchester was her next major role, again as a Kodály musicianship teacher. This started well but ended in dispute, with the headmaster issuing a curt dismissal and Vajda describing a culture of ‘bigotry, hypocrisy and prejudice’. The Welsh College of Music and Drama, her next permanent appointment, took her through to retirement, but she declined to attend her retirement celebration on grounds of not wishing to hear ‘meaningless words’ from the management that ‘did its upmost to abolish my work’. It is left to the reader to conclude whether her exacting standards, which were so impressive to Menuhin, may have been the cause of professional friction, or whether she was again the victim of sexist workplace manoeuvring.

The rest of the book discusses Vajda's publications and her founding of the British Kodály Society (later the British Kodály Academy). Here the social history begins to focus on the comings and goings of various committees, which is perhaps less exciting than the first half of the book, although it does cover Vajda's establishing of the Kodály Institute of Britain, the result of irreconcilable differences with (and her resignation from) the British Kodály Academy.

The book is full of testimonies from significant names (Nigel Kennedy, Stephen Hough) and notable Kodály teachers (Cyrilla Rowsell, Lucinda Geoghegan), and it is clear that Vajda was greatly loved and highly influential. What also comes through is Vajda's (and others’) tendency to treat the Kodály approach almost as if it were a religion, with all the fervent devotion and bitter schisms that this can entail.

A question left for the reader to reflect on – and one that is not addressed by the book, perhaps because Vajda herself seemed unconcerned by it – is whether the Kodály approach has a future in the UK. Perhaps Kodály is too prescriptive by today's standards; but I find myself in agreement with Vajda about the importance of musical literacy. If Kodály-ism can find a way to interact with contemporary music education, it stands a greater chance of staying relevant. After reading this book and appreciating the work of Cecilia Vajda, I hope that it does.