Dezso d’Antalffy

Early life

Dezso d'Antalffy was born into a musical family in Nagybecskerek, Banat, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary, (present-day Zrenjanin, Serbia). His mother, a pianist, recognized his musical talent when he was four. At the age of seven, d'Antalffy's piano instruction was taken over by Ferenc Ripka. When he turned ten, Herr Ödön supervised his musical progress. As a secondary-school student he practiced eight hours a day, which gave him a firm basis for his technique.

Study

D'Antallfy moved to Budapest in 1902, where he attended the faculty of law at the Hungarian Royal University according to his father's wishes, and studied the organ and composed music at the Academy of Music. For four years he was the student of Hans Koessler, who taught many Hungarian composers including Kodály, Bartók and Weiner. D'Antallfy graduated in 1906.

He studied composition at the Academy of Music in Berlin, a musical centre at the time, and had classes with Hungarian violinist and composer Joseph Joachim. D'Antallfy was a conductor at the Cologne Opera House in 1907 and 1908. In 1909, he continued his studies in Leipzig and Bologna.

Teaching

A decade in Budapest began with his return in 1909, when d’Antalffy composed most of his organ pieces. When his teacher retired in 1909, he became an organ teacher at the Academy of Music and received tenure in 1912. In 1919, d’Antalffy began teaching composition. His first solo concert in January 1911 was a success, and he received a wreath from his fellow musicians. The concert featured a wide range of music, from the early Baroque (Frescobaldi) to contemporary music (including his own pieces. He married Dalma Arkay in March 1911 and fathered his only daughter, Judith d'Antalffy, in 1912.

Until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, d’Antalffy continued composing. He began performing abroad, and his expertise in organ-building was recognized. He was recruited when war broke out, and remained in Großwardein (or Nagyvárad) for two years. In 1916 d’Antalffy began working again, giving charity performances in Budapest, Transylvania and elsewhere in the country. At the height of his career in 1917, he was the chief organist at St. Stephan's Basilica in Budapest (playing the largest organ in the country, built by József Angster in 1905.

Study abroad

In Leipzig, he studied composition with organist Max Reger. His organ teacher was Karl Straube, virtuoso organist of St. Thomas Church. Leipzig was an organ hotbed at the time, and its effects can be heard in d'Antalffy's works. Reger's combination of the tradition of Bach with Liszt and Brahms was part of his mindset when he seasoned traditional themes and melodies with impressionist, Debussy-like harmonies. Enrico Bossi, his teacher of interpretation and methodology in Bologna, had a similar influence since Bossi's works centred around the organ. Although Reger used liturgical genres such as the chorale and fugue, Bossi primarily composed concert pieces and D'Antalffy did the latter as well. Bossi's impact on d'Antalffy as a teacher became tangible in 1911, when he wrote his two-volume Organ Tutor (a detailed, versatile course book in Hungarian, focusing on the pupil's technical development with a variety of exercises).

Success in the United States

D'Antalffy arrived in New York on January 4, 1921, and appeared onstage as an accompanist on January 21. After the success of a concert with Duci Kerékjártó on the violin, they set off on a several-month tour. D'Antalffy and Kerékjártó traveled across the country—"half the continent", as he described it in a letter. In April Schirmer was ready to produce six of his pieces, which were published the following spring. Invited by entrepreneur Samuel Roxy Rothafel, d'Antalffy became the organist of the two-year-old Capitol Theatre, (where he played a concert the following April establishing him as the "Dohnányi of the organ" in the press). The 4,000-seat Capitol Theatre, was a forerunner of the later cinema palaces.

In September 1922, d'Antalffy became an organ teacher at the Eastman School of Music of the University of Rochester and, with John Hammond, an organist at the 3,000-seat Eastman Theatre.

In February 1924, d'Antalffy was asked to be the musical director of a series of performances. American producer Morris Gest brought The Miracle, a 1911 play by Kurt Vollmöller and directed by Max Reinhard in Germany, to the U.S. D'Antalffy was the organist, the choirmaster and the conductor of the three-act play. He met his daughter and returned to Budapest, where he accepted a teaching position at the Academy of Music after a three-and-a-half-year absence.

Budapest and the U.S.

Circumstances in Budapest were difficult. The organ of the Academy of Music was under reconstruction and temporarily unusable, making teaching and concerts impossible. D'Antalffy gave concerts in other towns, toured the United States in December 1924 to perform The Miracle and accepted lesser positions as a conductor and organist.

In 1925, d'Antalffy returned to teaching and giving concerts at the Academy for a year. For the third time, he then joined The Miracle company for a series of 32 performances in Los Angeles in January and February 1927. Producer Morris Gest asked d'Antalffy to compose music for Hofmannstahl's play, Everyman. His stay in the U.S. was lengthened by an invitation to teach from Union Theological Seminary in New York, and shortly afterwards his Academy of Music contract expired. D'Antalffy taught freshmen composition, counterpoint, music-reading, transposition and orchestration from 1927 to 1929 at the seminary's new sacred-music school, which existed until 1973.

The Miracle company offered him work again at the beginning of 1929; Morris Gest was looking for a composer and conductor for a new production, The Freiburg Passion Play, directed by David Belasco (Gest's father-in-law, who had staged John Luther Long's short story "Madame Butterfly"). The play's 1900 London production influenced Giacomo Puccini, who did not understand English, to compose an operatic version. From April to June 1929 The Freiburg Passion Play was presented in the largest theatre of the time, the 5,300-seat Hippodrome Theatre in New York.

In 1927, impresario Samuel Roxy Rothafel invited d'Antalffy to join the staff of organists at his new Roxy Theatre in New York City; at the time, the Roxy was the country's most prestigious movie palace. After the onset of the Great Depression, d'Antalffy toured in Europe during the spring of 1930. He became involved in the film industry, recording the soundtrack music for the Gaumont Film Company's The Miracle of the Wolves. D'Antalffy returned to Hungary, giving concerts in and outside Budapest, and was one of the first to play the newly-built Angster organ in Szeged's Votive Church. It was the second-largest organ in Europe at the time, with five manuals and 136 stops.

At the end of 1931, d'Antalffy returned to the U.S. and Rothafel commissioned him to compose an oratorio for the December 27, 1932 opening of Radio City Music Hall. Radio City was part of Rockefeller Center, at the time the world's largest privately owned enterprise which included fourteen Art Deco skyscraper office buildings, and was designed as the world's largest, most-luxurious theatre. The lyrics and orchestration of his oratorio, The Voice of Millions, were imbued with the idea of equal rights; his choir consisted of black and white singers, and his lyrics contained sacred texts from four world religions. The first worldwide broadcast by Radio City was a success, and d'Antalffy worked for the theatre as a staff composer and organist for ten years.

Native American opera and later life

At the peak of his career (contemporaneous with Kodály, Bartók and Stravinsky, d’Antalffy composed a Native American opera. Onteora's Bride, a version of an Indian story, was presented at Radio City Music Hall in 1934. In its two-week run, it was played four or five times a day for a total of 58 performances. The Indian Association of America made d’Antalffy an honorary chieftain.

In 1936 he orchestrated Bach's Concerto for Two Violins for the New York Philharmonic, and the orchestra (directed by John Barbirolli) made d’Antalffy an honorary member in 1938. The piece, his final success as a composer, was performed in 1940.

Hospitalized with heart failure in 1942, d'Antalffy was unable to follow his wife back to Budapest. Although he considered returning to Hungary, he was prevented from doing so by health and financial problems. D’Antalffy died in a Denville, New Jersey nursing home on April 29, 1945, at age 60.

Organ works

Piano works

Chamber music

Chamber music for violin and piano

Voice and piano

Choir

Instruction

Orchestra and choir

Plays

Accompanying music

Orchestrations