"I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years' time"
About this Quote
The subtext is pragmatic, almost ruthless: art needs infrastructure. Not just funding or venues, but ear-training, attention, and pleasure learned early. “Decided” is the key verb. He’s not suggesting education is nice-to-have; he’s saying the fate of high culture is settled before most composers even meet their listeners. In that frame, the romantic myth of the solitary genius collapses. If your music is meant to be heard, you are implicated in the social conditions that make hearing possible.
Context matters: Kodaly wasn’t only writing music; he helped build a national project around musical literacy (the Kodaly Method), arguing that singing, folk material, and early training create citizens who can actually parse and love complex sound. The kindergarten is both literal and symbolic: the frontline where culture reproduces itself, or fails to. His warning still stings because it reframes “dumbing down” as the wrong fear. The bigger threat is skipping the ladder entirely.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
|---|---|
| Source | Evidence: And I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in at the kindergartens, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years’ time. (Chapter One (page number not verifiable from accessible primary scan)). Primary... Other candidates (1) Proceedings of the ... World Conference of the Internatio... (International Society for Music Educa..., 1998) compilation99.9% ... I would advise my young colleagues , the composers of symphonies , to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten , too... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kodaly, Zoltan. (2026, March 3). I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years' time. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-would-advise-my-young-colleagues-the-composers-129950/
Chicago Style
Kodaly, Zoltan. "I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years' time." FixQuotes. March 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-would-advise-my-young-colleagues-the-composers-129950/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I would advise my young colleagues, the composers of symphonies, to drop in sometimes at the kindergarten, too. It is there that it is decided whether there will be anybody to understand their works in twenty years' time." FixQuotes, 3 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-would-advise-my-young-colleagues-the-composers-129950/. Accessed 10 Mar. 2026.
