Béla Reinitz

Béla Reinitz (15 XI 1878, Budapest - 27 X 1943, ibid) - Hungarian composer, music critic and musical public figure. He took piano lessons from the composer V. E. Farkas in Kolozsvár and composition from A. Siklós in Budapest, studied at the Faculty of Law at the universities of Kolozsvár and Budapest. In 1908-17 he was a music critic of the newspaper "Népszava", in 1917-19 - of the newspaper "Világ". He was one of the first to highly appreciate the work of B. Bartok (review of the music for the ballet The Wooden Prince, 1917). During the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was an assistant to the people's commissar D. Lukács, governments, commissar of the Musical Directory (as part of E. Dohnany, Bartok, Z. Kodály), carried out reforms in the musical life in Hungary. After the defeat of the Commune, he was convicted, since 1920 he was in exile (Austria and Germany). In 1931 he returned to Hungary. He is the author of about 450 songs (about 130 have been published), among them are political couplets ("Revoluzzer", lyrics by E. Muzama) and combat songs ("Song of the Workers", lyrics by [a784539]; "Song of the Miners", lyrics by Kurt Tucholsky). Reinitz is the first composer to set to music the poems of the Hungarian democratic poet Endre Ady (more than 100 songs, 40 of them in 1908-11). In 1926-30 Reinitz's songs were very popular with the German proletariat. A. Gidash wrote two new texts to the melody of "Songs of the Miners"; songs called "March of the Hungarian miners" (Russian text by A. Kochetkov), "March of drummers" (Russian text by A. Romm) were widely known in the USSR.