Ferenc Bonis

Ferenc Bonis was bown on 17 May 1932 in Miskolc (Hungary). He studied music under Zoltan Kodaly, Antal Molnar, Bence Szabolcsi and Lajos Bardos at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. Since 1950 Ferenc Bonis worked for Magyar Radio, the national broadcasting organisation. First as an editor, than chief editor and finally as the head from 1994 to 1996. A second activity of Ferenc Bonis was his work as a musicologist on the history of Hungarian music. Since 1959 he published the book series "Hungarian musicology" which focused on the national music since the 16th century and from 1968 a similar series dealing with the history of Hungarian music. Ferenc Bonis also wrote numerous books and articles on specific composers like Bela Bartok, Zoltan Kodaly, Ferenc Erkel, Pal Kadosa or Bence Szabolsci. Between 1961 and 1973 he was staff of the Bartok archive at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, later at the institute for musicology. In addition Ferenc Bonis lectured at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music since 1972.
In this later years Ferenc Bonis was president of the Hungarian Kodaly Society (1992-2007) as well as co-founder and president of the Ferenc Erkel Society (1989-2012). Ferenc Bonis was awarded the Ferenc Erkel Prize in 1973, the Bence Szabolsci Prize in 1979 and the Szechenyi Prize in 2008.
Ferenc Bonis died on 2 December 2019.

12 easy piano pieces

In my possession is the autograph manuscript of the composition "12 könnyű zongora darab" (12 easy piano pieces) by Ferenc Bonis. The work is dated 1948 and so was composed when Ferenc Bonis was 16 years old. The manuscript seems to be complete but only contains 9 small piano pieces.

I found no information about other compositions by Ferenc Bonis and so it seems that after this juvenile score no other works followed.