Autumn Professional Day of IAML Hungary

On 22 November 2024, the first snow fell in Hungary - and on the same day, IAML Hungary held its annual Autumn Professional Day in Kecskemét, at the Kodály Institute. The Kodály Institute of the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy is a world-renowned international centre for music education and methodology, training music teachers from all over the world to teach children the Kodály concept. In order to enable the students of the Kodály Institute to get acquainted with the activities of IAML, only the first half of the professional day was in Hungarian, the second half was in English. 

Judit Rajk, Director of the Kodály Institute, welcomed the audience at the beginning of the programme. Magdolna Friedler gave a lecture entitled "From the harmonium of the Buda Academy of Music to the organ of the Pál Járdányi Music School. History of the oldest music school in the country and its organ department." The lecture, which reviewed the 150-year history of the Pál Járdányi Music School, paid tribute not only to one of Hungary’s oldest music schools, but also to the internationally renowned music education centre in Kecskemét. 

In the second half of the morning programme, Ferenc János Szabó, president of IAML Hungary, reported on the 2024 International Congress of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (Stellenbosch, South Africa). He summarized the programme of the congress and briefly discussed the content of some of the presentations. He outlined the decisions taken at the General Assembly, and provided news on the activities of National Branches. 

After the lunch break, another conference report was presented. Emese Tóth, researcher at the Institute of Musicology, participated in the 2024 conference of Répertoire International d’Iconographie Musicale (RIdIM) in Vienna and shared her experiences with the audience. In her presentation entitled "Stepping out of the frame – on the latest trends in musical iconography in the light of the RIdIM conference in Vienna," she briefly summarized the history of RIdIM and its Hungarian aspects, presented the RIdIM database, and then described the current trends in musical iconographic research through some of the presentations of the Vienna conference. 

At the beginning of the English-language programme, Ferenc János Szabó gave a brief presentation on the activities, aims, events and projects of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres, and the history of its Hungarian National Branch. In his presentation he also mentioned the current projects of IAML Hungary: the RILM data provision with the support of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, and the training of music librarians planned for 2025, which will be supported by the National Cultural Fund of Hungary. 

The final lecture was given by Géza Kocsis, who, as the librarian of the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, introduced the audience not only to the history and collections of the Sacher Stiftung, but also to the activities of the institution. In his lecture "The Foundation Paul Sacher: Collection, Archive, Research Centre," he used the example of the legacy of György Ligeti to illustrate in detail the wide range of documents that a composer’s collection can contain, the long road that can lead to a collection arriving at the Sacher Stiftung, and how the legacy of composers is processed by the musicologists and librarians working together at the world-famous institution. 

After the lectures, the participants visited the library of the Kodály Institute, where librarian Ildikó Koós and research fellow Zsuzsanna Polyák (vice-president of the International Kodály Society) introduced the collection with a focus on music education and methodology. The personal nature of the visit was reinforced by the fact that, during the presentation of the legacy of Mihály Ittzés (former director of the library and deputy director of the Kodály Institute), his widow, Kata Kövendi, also shared her memories of the library. 

The professional day was supported by the Municipality of the 1st District of Budapest.

The photos were taken by Magdolna Friedler, Mária Gellért, Anna Laskai, Géza Pálffy and Ferenc János Szabó.