Endre Ady published his poem “The Peacock Flew” in 1907, in his epoch-making collection titled Blood and Gold. This poem was in itself a “variation on a Hungarian folksong,” a powerful, revolutionary rhapsody on the folk poem. It operated with two important images:  the peacock representing freedom, and the county jailhouse where the poor prisoners await their liberation.

When Ady wrote this visionary poem, only the text of the folksong was publicly known. The melody, discovered later, became the textbook example of old-style Hungarian folksong: its second half repeats the first half a fifth lower, it adheres completely to the pentatonic scale and follows the free rhythmic style of parlando-rubato. Therefore, it was hardly a coincidence that, from hundreds and thousands of folk songs, Kodály chose the “Peacock” when Willem Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam gave him a commission for a major orchestral work. In the course of his scholarly research, Kodály had found that the melodic type of the “Peacock” exists not only as a parlando-rubato melody but also as a dance tune in giusto rhythm. In other words, one of the main characteristics of his set of variations, the contrast between rubato and giusto, was already present in the folk material itself. Kodály had set Ady’s poem to music in 1937. In this famous chorus for men’s voices, he had also made use of the folk song. The orchestral work is then, in a sense, an outgrowth of the choral composition, developing its ideas further. Following an introduction played by the low strings, the oboe introduces the theme in its original form. There are no fewer than sixteen variations, presenting the most diverse musical characters, in turn lyrical, dance-like, mournful, reserved and impassioned. The triumphant return of the theme at the end of the work clearly suggests that the “liberation of the poor prisoners,” of which the poem speaks, is finally at hand.