Istvan Anhalt, born into a Jewish family in Budapest in 1919, studied with Zoltán Kodály before being conscripted into a forced labour camp during World War II. In the late 1940s he studied under Nadia Boulanger and Soulima Stravinsky before emigrating to Canada in 1949, where he has been an important figure in the Canadian music scene for the last fifty years.

associate professor, Queen's University School of Music, Canada