Hungary thanks Australia for returning collection of ‘Hungaricum’ documents, music scores – photos

Hungary says thanks to Australia for its help “in healing the wound that the 20th century caused to us,” the deputy state secretary in charge of public collections and cultural development said in the National Széchenyi Library (OSZK) on Tuesday.

Máté Vincze addressed the presentation of a collection of 248 titles that include documents, scores and notes of Hungarian folk music and choral works and has been provided to OSZK by the National Library of Australia (NLA).

“In the 20th century, many things had to be taken abroad from Hungary in order to rescue them. This is why it is an outstanding development that these invaluable documents, scores and notes that were no longer in Hungary are returning to our country,” he said.
OSZK director Dávid Rózsa said the collection contains works exclusively by Hungarian composers including Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály and Hungarian music education publications. “More than one-third of the items were never to be found in OSZK’s collection before,” he said.

More than a third of the items, 87 works, were not previously in the collection of the national library,” Dávid Rózsa pointed out. “It is good to belong to a culture whose monuments are of value even a twenty-hour flight from Budapest,” the director general said. “Zoltán Kodály’s unique teaching method has conquered the whole world”, said Ian Biggs, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Commonwealth of Australia to Hungary, adding that the Kodály method, which has been present in Australia since 1973, when the Kodály Music Education Institute of Australia was established, helps to promote the love of music and its study, especially in primary and secondary education.