Soma Sipos

Photo: Gábor Fejér

Soma Sipos started his professional music training at the Zoltán Kodály Secondary School in Kecskemét, majoring in violin and solfege, and later viola and solfege. At this school, he had the opportunity to study the unique subject ‘Music in English’ which introduced him to the world of English music terminology and music history. In 2006, he successfully applied to study at the Liszt Academy’s Musicology Department, where his professors included – among others – Ilona Ferenczi (Schütz, Bach, paleography), László Dobszay (Gregorian chant, Mozart analysis), László Somfai (Urtext, Bartók), Sándor Kovács (Western music history), Péter Erdei (choir), Pál Richter (music theory), László Vikárius (Bartók) and András Wilheim (contemporary music). In 2011, he began working at the Kodály Institute of the Liszt Academy, where under the direction of professor Mihály Ittzés, he soon started to teach Western and Hungarian Music History and Kodály’s Lifework. He defended his thesis in 2012 (The Rhetoric of Heinrich Schütz as depicted in the Third Volume of Symphoniae Sacrae, supervisor Ilona Ferenczi), and received his degree in Musicology.

In 2014, he started his doctorate studies at the Liszt Academy, where he accomplished all the compulsory subjects and he is currently working on his dissertation about the life and work of Mátyás Seiber, the work being supervised by Tibor Tallián. His professors were – among others – Gergely Fazekas (Bach), Salamon Kamp (Bach cantatas), Sándor Nagy (contemporary music, jazz) and he also attended the special courses of William Kinderman (Beethoven’s Creative Process), Christopher Reynolds (Beethoven’s Ninth and Its Symphonic Echos) and Richard Taruskin (Stravinsky’s Aesthetics).