46. Sándor Weöres (1913-1989) poet.

Autograph letter to Zoltán Kodály, addressed „Kedves Mester!” (“Dear Master!”)
Weöres recalls his first meeting with Kodály and their enduring relationship: “I wrote the poem Öregek (The Old People) when I was fourteen or fifteen years old, and it was published in the Sunday edition of Pesti Hírlap, together with a photograph of me wearing a school cap. Master Kodály saw it, read it, and set it to music, and then, to my great surprise, I received a letter from Master Kodály asking for permission to perform and publish Öregek as a choral piece. […] From the time I had the opportunity to meet Kodály in person at the age of fifteen, this relationship remained until his death.”
It was also a working relationship: “There was hardly a year when I did not receive a few dozen – sometimes several hundred – little melodies from Kodály, for which he wanted lyrics.” (Mátyás Domokos: Alone with Everyone). Kodály asked Weöres to write lyrics for the Bicinia Hungarica series, a commission he gladly accepted. In this letter, he sends Kodály some of these lyrics—texts that later reappear in the Rongyszőnyeg cycle and in Bóbita, and that are also familiar to many from Ferenc Sebő’s musical settings.
On the fourth page of the letter are lines from an unknown drama. This piece is not included in the collected letters.
4 written pages. 
Dated: Csönge, August 4, 1940.
 
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