Hungarian music legend Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967) was a prolific composer of music for all sorts of combinations. But his story does not end there. He was an authority on Hungarian folk music who worked with Béla Bartók to collect and set folk songs from around the country. He also was a teacher, holding a position at the Academy of Music in Budapest (his alma mater, now named for Franz Liszt) for more than 40 years. Today, he remains a household name in music education circles for his pedagogy, which is enshrined in the Kodály Method and propagated globally through organizations like the International Kodály Society and the Kodály Institute. See more about him and his work at Wikipedia, Britannica, Boosey & Hawkes, Classics for Kids, Kodály Hub, the Organization of American Kodály Educators, and Musical U.
The Entrance of the Emperor and His Court is a concert piece plucked from Kodály’s 1926 folk opera Háry János. A 1927 orchestra suite from the opera included The Entrance of the Emperor as its final movement. William Russell created an arrangement of this piece for Boston Brass, which Rick DeJonge then arranged for flexible ensemble. From DeJonge’s program notes:
The opera is based on fantasy but begins with a symbolic musical “sneeze”. According to Hungarian superstition, if a story is accompanied by a sneeze, it must be true. The story of Háry János begins with a sneeze of this kind. In this story, our hero, an old war veteran, regales an audience with tales that are too good to be true: from taming wild horses, to wooing princesses, and single-handedly defeating Napoleon in battle. In the scene you are about to hear, our hero is being honored by dignitaries. The style of the piece is familiar enough: It’s a march. But the harmonies and rhythms may be less familiar…drawn from the folk music traditions of Hungary.
The orchestral original:
A virtual version of the Boston Brass arrangement:
More about the opera: Wikipedia, Classics for Kids, Universal Edition.
More about the suite: LA Phil, IMSLP, Classic Alex Burns
Glenn Cliffe Bainum wrote an arrangement of the Háry János – Suite for band, which was performed by the Northwestern University Symphonic Band, conducted by John P. Paynter, in the 1970’s. I was lucky enough to be a member of the band at that time. The Suite includes six movements – Prelude: The Fairy Tale Begins, Viennese Musical Clock, Song, The Battle and Defeat of Napoleon, Intermezzo, and the Entrance of the Emperor and his Court.
A new edition, edited by Valerie G. Martin and Mallory Thompson, is published by Universal Edition.