The Forgotten Youth of Sándor Veress

Abstract

Although Sándor Veress achieved his first significant successes in Hungary and abroad at the turn of the 1930s and 1940s, musicological research still remains indebted to the detailed analysis of the composer's career related to the history of Hungarian music and cultural life. Based on press and archival documents, letters and recollections, and the historical literature of the period as well, the present study attempts to explore the socio-cultural environment that characterized and helped to unfold Veress's development. My study looks at the composer's network of contacts, his family ties and the political-ideological movements and relations with the Reformed Church that promoted his career, and examines their direct influence on Sándor Veress's works composed during this period, especially The Miraculous Flute (1937), the Japanese Symphony (1940) and Térszili Katica (1943).