(b Tápiószele, ? 5 Oct 1831; d Budapest, 15 Dec 1888). Hungarian composer. His title of nobility was ‘marosvásárhelyi’. He was a lieutenant in the Hungarian War of Liberation, and after a short period of hiding lived in Nagyabony and later in Cegléd, where he organized and conducted a choral society. A self-taught composer, he began to attract attention in the mid-1850s with his songs, particularly the cycles Vadrózsa (‘Wild Rose’, 1853) to a text of Kálmán Tóth, Hegyháti dalok (‘Songs of Hegyhát’) and Cipruslombok (‘Cypress Leaves’). By the 1860s he had become the most popular song composer in Hungary. Simonffy also held a number of government posts in the 1860s and 70s. As a member of parliament (1872–5) he played an important part in the founding of a national academy of music. For several years he was the vice-chairman of the Hungarian Singers' Association, and for a long time he was a land registration supervisor. Towards the end of his life he suffered from attacks of depression, and he was mentally deranged by the time of his death.
Simonffy's songs, to poems by Tóth, Sándor Petőfi, Mihály Vörösmarty and others, are rich and many-faceted in their melodic invention and unquestionably represent the peak of 19th-century Hungarian popular song. Many of them were spread by choral societies and gypsy bands to the widest strata of society and came to be thought of as folksongs. Simonffy himself travelled through the countryside (with Károly Fátyol's band) and abroad in 1860 and 1862–4. He was also the author of numerous essays on Hungarian music, including a portrait of János Pecsenyánszky and a series of polemical articles taking issue with Liszt.
ZL (E. Major)