Zoltán Kodály composed Tänze aus Galánta for the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra in 1933. He chose the themes from written librettos: “Galánta is a small, Hungarian market town on the old railway line between Vienna and Budapest, where the composer spent seven years of his childhood. At that time, a famous gipsy band lived there, who gave the child his first taste of ‘orchestral sound’. Several volumes of Hungarian dances were published in Vienna around 1800, including one ‘by various gipsies from Galánta’. The principle motifs of this work come from those volumes.” (Kodály, from the preface)