Ferenc Bónis passed away

Ferenc Bónis, a Széchenyi Prize-winning music historian, academic doctor and former student of Zoltán Kodály and Bence Szabolcsi, died unexpectedly in his home on 2 December, 2019. He was an outstanding figure of Hungarian musicology, who left a significant oeuvre for posterity as an author, publisher and editor. His works were instrumental with respect to 19th-century Hungarian music history, the art of Erkel and Mosonyi, but above all the oeuvre of Kodály and Bartók.

He was president of the Hungarian Kodály Society and the Ferenc Erkel Society. He was a member of the Musicology Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the board of the Hungarian Forum of Musicians. From 1950, he was an editorial trainee, later on programme editor, from 1970, editor, from 1993 the head of the editorial office and between 1994-1996, executive editor at the Hungarian Radio. Between 1961 and 1973, he was a research fellow at the Bartók Archives of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which was later renamed the Institute of Musicology.

Between 1972 and 1981, he taught at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. From 1959, he edited the volumes of Hungarian Musicology, and from 1968, the series of books entitled Studies on Hungarian Music History. From 1977, he edited and prepared the publication of Bence Szabolcsi's oeuvre. His last large-scale publications included summaries of Bartók's and Kodály's iconography as well as a set of documents of outstanding importance from their correspondence.

(source: www.zti.hu)