MAJOR, ERVIN

MAJOR, ERVIN (1901–1967), musicologist and composer. Born in Budapest, the son of julius major , he studied composition with Zoltan Kodaly and leo weiner at the Budapest Academy of Music (1917–21) and philosophy at   the Budapest Scientific University (1920–24). In 1930 he received his doctorate for a dissertation on the relationship of popular Hungarian music to folk music. From 1926 to 1928 he was the editor of Zenei Szemle and later became a member of the editorial board of the periodicals Muzsika (1929–30) and Magyar muzsika (1935–36). He was also a librarian and lecturer of composition, music theory, and history at the Budapest Conservatory and at the Budapest Academy of Music. In 1951 he became a member of the musicological committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was one of the founders of Hungarian historical musicology, specializing in the 18th and 19th centuries and in the tracing of Hungarian influence in the works of classical composers. He also contributed a number of central articles to the Zenei lexikon ("Music lexicon"; edited by B. Szabolcsi and A. Tóth, 3 vols. 1930, 19652) and established successful methods of research, using public and private archives, periodicals, and collected editions of music. His compositions include chamber, piano, organ and choral works, and arrangements of old Hungarian melodies. -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grove online. (Israela Stein (2nd ed.)