Mr Ferenc Tóth – or „Feri bácsi” as he was called by his young singers from the very beginning, even “our Feri bácsi”, as the immense group of alumni, these choral enthusiasts of thousands and thousands call him up to now – was in person-to-person, even a friendly master-to-follower contact with Kodály Zoltán. As a result of their music- and children-focused co-operation, a special music-class was set up in the elementary school of Komló, in a town, where the coal-mines gave work to most of the inhabitants. Tóth Ferenc had been the teacher and conductor of the music class and the school-choir for several decades. Kodály dedicated a piece to Mr Tóth and his choir, under the title: "Harasztosi legénynek”.

The name of Tóth Ferenc, Kodály and Komló are closely connected in the choral world: Mr Tóth initiated the “International Kodály Zoltán Children’s Choir Festival” in Komló is the early 70-ies, being the patron and jury-member of it even nowadays.

His choirs have been radiating the charisma of “Feri bácsi” ever since – showing the world the best quality of Hungarian choral traditions for the young.

His singing lesson- and rehearsal-demonstrations are abundant source for the generations of conductors and music teachers in Hungary.

Workshop led by Ferenc TÓTH: D. Children’s Choirs

Interview with TÓTH Ferenc

Ferenc Tóth, „Feri bácsi”, conductor of workshop „D”

Ferenc Tóth with his workshop, entitled „Songs of Angels” has undertaken a difficult job. He has prepared such a choir for the workshop concert held on 20 August arranged from the „angelic” songs of Kodály that had many non-Hungarian participants as well: children coming from Cyprus, Belgium and Thailand. What was Your secret, how did You build the necessary cultural background in the children – that was a firm ground to construct the songs?

To begin with, I have to point out that invitation itself was very honouring for me, to conduct and lead a workshop at Pécs Cantat since I am already over eighty-two. To the very end I have kept my fingers crossed, what would be outcome of the rehearsals and the concert itself but I have to admit, we accomplished it more decent than I expected first and obviously I was very pleased at the end of our performance. After the workshop concert, among others, the widow of Zoltán Kodály expressed her compliments with the following words: „One could have had no notice that not only Hungarians sang these beautiful songs.” This was a big tribute for me.

How was I able to achieve this? I have started the rehearsals of this workshop not with teaching the tune but I have explained my pupils what the texts were about. Let us take „Angels and Shepherds” – which is a beautiful folk song - as a demonstration of my method. What is the most important is that the primary layer is not the composer’s purpose here but what matters is the rhythm and message of the text. Obviously, since there were many such foreign children that are not so familiar with Christianity and its culture, I held a short presentation on the religion and step by step I guided them to the message of the song. For a better understanding of „Evening song”, we had to acquire knowledge in an entirely different domain: Hungarian history. They had to grasp the significance of the War of Independence of 1848-49 and its suppression. This song is a man’s prayer who had to flee the country, had to leave her pregnant wife by herself but right now he only one goal: peace what Heaven can give him.

After the explanation part I made them rehearse the texts. We had many rehearsals: I can tell you that we had almost more text-practice as song-practice but results show that it was worth to be concerned with them so much. My pupils have seized and performed the very soul of the score; they have not only learned its tune and text...

In the first days of the workshop rehearsals I was uncertain whether we can achieve it. The children – for obvious reasons – were always reading the score, so it was very difficult to encourage or correct them because of the lack of eye-contact. But then, one day before the final rehearsal a miracle happened, the elder ones lifted their eyes, winked at me, indicating that there won’t be any problem, I should not worry. Well, the concert justified them.

The interview was made by Zoltn Major.