Zoltan Kodaly (December 16, 1882 - March 6, 1967) was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, educator, linguist and philosopher. Though born in Kecskemet, Kodaly spent most of his childhood in Galanta and Nagyszombat (now Trnava, Slovakia).

His father was a keen amateur musician, and Kodaly learned to play the violin as a child. He also sang in a cathedral choir and wrote music, despite having little formal musical education.

In 1900, Kodaly entered Budapest University to study modern languages , and began to study music at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest, where Hans Koessler taught him composition.

One of the first people to undertake the serious study of folk song, Kodaly became one of the most significant early figures in the field of ethnomusicology. From 1905 he visited remote villages to collect songs and in 1906 wrote his thesis on Hungarian folk song (“Strophic Construction in Hungarian Folksong”). Around this time he met fellow composer Bela Bartok, to whom he introduced Hungarian folk song. The two went on to publish several collections of folk music together, and they both show the influence of folk music in their own compositions.

After gaining his PhD in philosophy and linguistics, Kodaly went to Paris where he studied with Charles Widor. There he discovered, and absorbed influenced from, the music of Claude Debussy. In 1907 he moved back to Budapest, and gained a professorship at the Academy of Music there. He continued his folk music-collecting expeditions through World War I without interruption.

Kodaly had composed throughout this time, producing two string quartets, his sonatas for cello and piano and for solo cello, and his duo for violin and cello, but had no major success until 1923 when his Psalmus Hungaricus premiered at a concert to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the union of Buda and Pest (Bartok’s Dance Suite premiered on the same occasion