The Significance of Zoltán Jeney’s Legacy in Hungarian Music

There comes a time in everyone’s life when one’s identity becomes crucial from a certain point of view, and I am no exception. In my case, the inner need manifested in searching for my roots as a flutist, driving me on and not letting me rest until the recent moment this thesis was born. Approximately 15 years ago, I began having an important question on the brain: to what extent are today’s young flutists aware of their instrumental past, are they familiar with the spiritual legacy their famous predecessors left behind, often at the high cost of hard work and severe ordeals? The answer came as a rather disappointing realization, after which I began my quest for the legacy of the great wind instrumentalists of the last century, focussing particularly on the oeuvre of one outstanding figure of flute education, Zoltán Jeney. I decided to collect and publish my findings. Throughout my career, I have participated in similar research on several occasions, and experience and achievements gained there were among the reasons for writing this dissertation. The final push was given by a festive event created from an idea of my own: on 17 October 2015, the Parnasszus Alapítvány (Parnasszus Foundation) of Pécel organized a memorial concert in the Ráday Castle of Pécel to celebrate Zoltán Jeney’s 100th birthday. I took part in compiling the programme both as a founder and as a program coordinator. The collection process started in summer 2015, and the memorial evening served several purposes: firstly, I intended to record all the knowledge I had gathered about Jeney during the three years of my research; secondly, I wished to commemorate worthily the excellent instrumental soloist the Hungarian woodwind profession owes so much