Artist database

1 February 1907, Kolozsvár (today: Cluj-Napoca, Romania) - 4 March 1992, Bern

Sándor Veress oeuvre can be looked upon today as one of the greatest achievement of the generation of Hungarian composers after Bartók and Kodály. Veress' comprehensive knowledge allowed him to enrich Hungarian musical culture in many ways. He was an outstanding figure in musical life both as performer, as an ethnomusicologist, and as a teacher.

The Second World War and the ensuing political changes brought about a hiatus in his career. In 1949, at the age of 42, he left for ever the land of his birth. He settled in Berne in Switzerland, where he remained until his death. He adopted Swiss citizenship in the last months of his life. The first stage of Veress' compositional development in Hungary was influenced decisively by Hungarian folk music, which Veress collected and researched himself. From his earliest youth, Veress was also keen to become acquainted with the stylistic trends of contemporary Western music, and to bring them into an artistic confrontation with his own personal style. As a result of study tours undertaken through Europe before the Second World War (to London, Rome and elsewhere), Sándor Veress acquired a European reputation as a farsighted representative of the new Hungarian music as early as the late 1930s. Before his emigration, Veress' oeuvre had reached a dual pinnacle with the one-act ballet Térszili Katicza (1942/43), and with the Sancti Agustini Psalmus (1943/44), composed to a text by Saint Augustine. In the years before his exile, Veress was considered the most promising young composer in Hungary. At Bartók's death, he was commissioned to compose a suitable threnody (Threnos, 1945). In 1949, Veress received Hungarys highest musical honour, the Kossuth Prize. In 1985 he was awarded with Béla Bartók-Ditta Pásztory Prize.


During his years in Berne, the extension of his artistic horizons brought about a gradual renewal both of Veress' musical style and of his compositional approach. He remained however devoted to a rich variety of musical genres. The chamber works grew to include the most varied instrumental combinations, while his concerti and orchestral works represent new, personal initiatives in contemporary Western music. The use of the twelve-note method of composing became decisive in Veress' stylistic development in the works he composed during his time in Switzerland. However, he employed this technique only as one aspect of his own personal style. Sándor Veress was professor of musicology at the University of Berne from 1968 to 1977, and was active as a visiting professor in Australia and in the United States as in the 1960s. He died in Berne on 4 March 1992.