Somfai, Laszlo

Music Historian

László Somfai earned his degree in History of Music in Budapest in 1958, and went on to receive a doctorate in Musicology in 1988. He has been a member of the Hungarian Academy of Science since 2004, and is a member of several academies of science abroad. He worked at the Széchenyi National Library between 1958 and 1962, at the Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 1963, and was head of the Bartók Archives between 1972 and 2005. He has been teaching at the Franz Liszt College of Music (today the Franz Liszt Academy) since 1969, and was made a Professor Emeritus in 2005. He has visited several universities in the USA as a guest professor. A key figure in the teaching of History of Music in Hungary, László Somfai has been head of the PhD programme since 1997. Many of his former students went on to become professors at foreign universities. His internationally renowned research covers areas such as the music of Haydn and Bartók, as well as musical interpretation. He is currently working on a critical edition of the works of Bartók.

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