Zoltán Jeney
Zoltán Jeney (4 March 1943 – 28 October 2019) was a Hungarian composer. He was born in Szolnok, Hungary. He studied piano and began composing at the Debrecen Secondary Music School, then studied composition with Ferenc Farkas at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest (1961–66). He also did postgraduate work with Goffredo Petrassi at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (1967–68).
In 1970 he helped found the Budapest New Music Studio with other Hungarian composers. Jeney’s early music shows influences from Béla Bartók, Luigi Dallapiccola, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, the Polish school, György Kurtág, and Zsolt Durkó. In the late 1960s he became interested in the ideas of Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen and in oriental philosophy, a direction that grew after his contact with John Cage. In the 1970s he began composing in a minimalist style, and his music is known for being very spare and quiet.
From 1986 he was a professor at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, and since 1995 he led the Department of Composition there. He also worked internationally as a research professor at Columbia University in New York and as a one-year visiting professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. Some of his works were released on the Hungaroton label.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 15:05 (CET).