Tóth, Aladár
Tóth, Aladár
Tóth, Aladár, eminent Hungarian writer on music and opera administrator; b. Székesfenérvár, Feb. 4, 1898; d. Budapest, Oct. 18, 1968. He received training in piano and composition in his native city, then studied at the Scientific Univ. of Budapest (Ph.D., 1925, with the diss. Adatok Mozart zenedrámáinak esztétikájához; Contribution to the Aesthetics of Mozart’s Dramatic Music). He was a music critic for the newspapers Új nemzedék (1920-23) and Pesti napló (1923-39), and also for the literary journal Nyugat (1923-40). After living in Switzerland during World War II, he returned to Budapest to serve as director of the Hungarian State Opera (1946-56). In 1952 he was awarded the Kossuth Prize. He married the distinguished Hungarian pianist Annie Fischer (b. Budapest, July 5, 1914) in 1937.
Writings
(all publ. in Budapest unless otherwise given)Mozart: Figaro lakodalma (Mozart: Marriage of Figaro; 1928); ed. with B. Szabolcsi, Zend lexikon (1930-31; 2nd ed., rev., 1965); Zoltán Kodály (Vienna, 1932); Liszt Ferenc a magyar zene útján (Franz Liszt on the Trail of Hungarian Music; 1940); with B. Szabolcsi, Mozart (1941); Verdi muũvészi hitvallása (Verdi’s Artistic Confession; 1941); F. Bónis, ed., Tóth Aladár válogatott zenekritikái (Aladár Tóth’s Selected Criticisms of Music; 1968).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire