Background
RANKI, Gyorgy was born on October 30, 1907 in Budapest. Son of Doctor Frigyes Reisz and Szidonia Honig.
RANKI, Gyorgy was born on October 30, 1907 in Budapest. Son of Doctor Frigyes Reisz and Szidonia Honig.
Born in Budapest, he studied composition with Zoltán Kodály at the Budapest Academy of Music from 1926-1930.
He became interested in folk music and ethnomusicology, working with László Lajtha at the Museum of Ethnography in Budapest and later further studies in Asian folk music in London and Paris (at the Musée de l"Homme). He directed the music section of Hungarian radio in 1947-1948, after which he gave his attention to composition. Ránki not only employed authentic folk melodies and musical idioms in his music but also pulled on jazz elements.
He possessed a gift for the grotesque and unusual, the colourful and humorous, which may be traced in part perhaps to his studies of non-Western music
Married Anna Dekany in 1940.