Miklos Rozsa

Miklós Rózsa
(b Budapest, 18 April 1907; d Los Angeles, 27 July 1995). American composer of Hungarian birth.

Raised in Budapest and on his father’s rural estate in nearby Tomasi, he was exposed to Hungarian peasant music and folk traditions from an early age. He studied the piano with his mother, a classmate of Bartók at the Budapest Academy, and the violin and viola with his uncle, Lajos Berkovits, a musician with the Royal Hungarian Opera. By the age of seven, Rózsa was composing his own works. Later, as a student at the Realgymnasium, he championed the work of Bartók and Kodály, keeping his own notebook of collected folktunes.