EMBrace music
Embrace music — That is the motto we have adopted. In other words, we want to help you to make music an integral part of your life.
Music is all around us these days; it stimulates us more intensely and prevalently than ever before. But do we relate to it passively or actively? Are we merely consumers or makers of music as well?
We at EMB know that making music brings joy. That joy is multiplied and shared by playing to others. What’s more, making music develops individual values, such as concentration, openness, sensitivity, collaboration, and concern for others.
Our aim is to allow as many people of all ages to experience the wonder and value of music.
Bartók's Mikrokosmos is perhaps the 20th century's most influential set of piano pieces and one of the milestones in pedagogical piano repertoire.
The Microcosm of String Ensemble Music provides 148 transcriptions from this series for making music for various string ensembles and graded in four volumes according to level of difficulty.
1. Elementary (first position): for three violins and cello or children's string orchestra
2. Intermediate: for three violins and cello or string quartet or junior string orchestra
3. Advanced: for string quartet and quintet or string orchestra
4. Advanced: for string orchestra
Recordings are available at our YouTube channel.
Each choral works by Bartók can be purchased as single sheets now. The complete series of the offprints from Béla Bartók’s Choral Works has been issued.
Béla BARTÓK:
Choral Works for Children's and Female Voices – 28 offprints
Béla BARTÓK:
Choral Works for Male Voices – 5 offprints
Béla BARTÓK:
Choral Works for Mixed Voices – 3 offprints
All offprints include rough translation of the texts in English in the appendix.
The choral works by Bartók have been published in cloth-bound edition in slipcase, too.
Our publishing house supports the Virtuosos V4+ classical music talent competition television show with printed music publications of great value. Not only the weekly favourites of the audience, but also their music teachers will be rewarded by our company. Please watch the introductory video made for this occasion. |

A new Urtext edition of Béla Bartók’s complete choral works was launched in March 2021.
The three-volume edition is based on volume 9 of the Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition (Z. 15009), a joint publication of G. Henle Verlag, Munich, and Editio Musica Budapest Zeneműkiadó. The lyrics in this edition are in the original languages and in the translations authorized by the composer. Literal English translations are provided in the appendix, which also includes early and alternative versions of the works.
Our edition is distinguished by absolute authenticity regarding both the musical text and the style of notation, as well as superior engraving and print quality. The edition is complete with informative prefaces (in Hungarian, English, and German) and detailed Editorial Comments (in Hungarian and English). The Comments give an overview of the textual, folk-music, and compositional sources, and provide detailed information on the performance practice of Bartók’s choral works.
The volumes have been printed on high-quality and environmentally-friendly paper.
The three volumes are available in two formats: paperback and clothbound. The paperback editions can be bought separately, while the clothbound volumes are available only together in a slipcase.
Each work included in these volumes will also be published separately during the following months.
Seventy years ago, the Hungarian State Music Publisher first opened its doors for business. In honor of this momentous anniversary, starting on July 1st and for the 70 days thereafter we will be sharing a different publication on our Facebook page - one to honor each year of publishing since 1950.
Due to the many travel restrictions that are currently in place, Musikmesse Frankfurt 2020 has been canceled. As a result, we will not have the opportunity to present our newest publications in person as we normally would.
While this is unfortunate, worry not! We are working in close cooperation with our network of partners and music shop owners to make our new releases available to you as quickly and easily as possible.
As always, check here for the latest updates on our most recent publications - think of it as our virtual exhibition booth.
We will continue servicing all orders and doing all that we can to put great scores in your hands.
On October 1, 2019, Editio Musica Budapest Zeneműkiadó marked the occasion of World Music Day by joining the GVIDO digital music score display system.
Using digital paper display technology on a device comprised of two large, connected screens, GVIDO allows users to view digital music scores in a way like never before.
The system works through an online music store that allows users to purchase and download high-quality musical scores which can be organized into digital lists and notated using a special pen exclusive to GVIDO’s device. Pages can be turned by touch or using a blue-tooth pedal, and the two screens allow for different page-turning modes.
The GVIDO store offers an ever-expanding selection of sheet music from many music publishers around the world. GVIDO equipment and accessories (leather case, page-turning pedal) can be also ordered from our publishing office.
Editio Musica Budapest is proud to announce the release of the extended and revised edition of Zoltán Kodály: Choral Works for Mixed Voices.
Seventy-five years after their first release, the time has come for Kodály’s collected choral works for mixed voices to appear in a completely new, expanded edition. This collection contains six compositions that were not included in earlier editions. It is printed in a slightly larger format than previous editions and is available in a hardcover version as well as a softcover version for practical purposes. We whole-heartedly recommend the canvas-bound edition to libraries, collectors, and Kodály enthusiasts alike.
This is the most complete and most authentic collection of Kodály’s mixed choruses to date, and it contains new easily-legible music scores and an informative epilogue written by Péter Erdei.
More information on the publications can be found here.
We’d like to warmly invite you to Musikmesse 2018, the year’s foremost event for musicians, trade and industry in Europe. Let us show you our new publications and best-sellers. Come and visit our booth (Hall 8.0 at Stand B70).
In 1845 Franz Liszt embarked on a project to compose an Italian opera based on Lord Byron’s tragedy, Sardanapalus (1821). It was central to his ambition to attain status as a great European composer. But he abandoned it half way through, and the music he completed has lain silently for 170 years. Editio Musica Budapest will shortly publish the first edition of this score, edited and critically reconstructed by David Trippett (University of Cambridge). Read more...
Universal Music Publishing Group is pleased to announce that the printed music publishing and distribution business of its Hungarian affiliate Universal Music Publishing Editio Musica Budapest Zeneműkiadó Kft. has been transferred to a new entity, Editio Musica Budapest Zeneműkiadó Kft. EMBZ will be owned and managed by a group led by UMPEMB Director of Printed Music László Sigrai. Long-time UMPEMB Managing Director Antal Boronkay will also participate in the direction of EMBZ.
EMBZ will distribute all existing UMPEMB printed music products, and will work closely with UMPEMB to continue to develop new high-quality printed music products in both physical and digital form for the educational and performance markets. EMBZ will also continue to distribute sheet music products of other publishers.
For information, please contact:
For EMBZ: László Sigrai, sigrai@emb.hu, www.emb.hu
For UMPG: Tünde Szitha, szitha@emb.hu, www.umpemb.com
The piano series entitled Games, written from 1973 onwards, was conceived originally as a piano method. Its early volumes introduced children to the basic elements in piano-playing and musical thinking, and, more importantly still, taught them to play music without inhibitions. As the years went by, the view of the series lost its didactic character. It came to be seen as a document from Kurtág’s workshop, offering a key to his grander symphonic, chamber and vocal works as well. This change is exemplified in the subtitle Diary entries, personal messages added from the fifth volume onwards.
The pieces in the ninth volume date from 1989‒2009, except the youthful Apple blossom, written in 1947. The movements, often aphoristic in their briefness, conceal associations with various aspects of European music history. Many of them are hommage or in memoriam pieces, or subjective personal messages to friends, colleagues, beloved family members or students, and thereby to all music-loving people.

Composer Kamilló Lendvay passed away on 30 November 2016 at the age of 88. He was one of the most important members of the generation of Hungarian composers whose careers began in the 1950s.
Virtuoso Hungarian pianist and conductor Zoltán Kocsis dies aged 64.
We are proud and grateful that we could be the publishers of his compositions and transcriptions in the past decades.
With sadness we also realize that we must continue further common projects on our own.
Leó Weiner (1885–1960) belonged to a generation of composers including Dohnányi, Bartók and Kodály; however, his music is in an entirely different orbit. At the age of 21, he finished his studies at the Budapest Academy of Music as a composer with various prizes and laudations. He turned to music with Hungarian intonation very early, although it was the German and French masters between Beethoven and Brahms who exerted a decisive influence on his personal style, conservative and attractively colorful at the same time. Most of his compositions are orchestral, chamber and piano works; however, he also composed an excellent ballet and a couple of choruses. More...
Flowers we are… – Seven notes, which not only cover the piano's entire range but practically György Kurtág's entire life’s work. Already it is there, concealed in the Op. 1 quartet, confessionally in The Sayings of Peter Bornemissza, in the Games piano pieces, in numerous solo, chamber and orchestral works. As in all great music and every significant artistic creation, it is about man's beauty, fragility, fallibility and fears. And as is: Kurtág's art.
The whole musical world celebrates Kurtág on February 19. Our birthday present is two new publications: one is the piano piece composed in 2013, entitled …couple egyptienne en route vers l’inconnu… (…an Egyptian couple on the way to the unknown…) which was inspired by a more than 4000-year-old Egyptian statue. The other is the reproduction of the music notebook, into which, over 32 years, György Kurtág copied a succession of newly ready movements of the series of Games for Zoltán Kocsis. This notebook – Kocsis Zoli's manuscript book – is a constant participant even now in those concerts where Kocsis plays Kurtág's works.
Embrace Music — That is the motto we have adopted this year. In other words, we want to help you to make music an integral part of your life.
Music is all around us these days; it stimulates us more intensely and prevalently than ever before. But do we relate to it passively or actively? Are we merely consumers or makers of music as well?
We at EMB know that making music brings joy. That joy is multiplied and shared by playing to others. What’s more, making music develops individual values, such as concentration, openness, sensitivity, collaboration, and concern for others.
Our aim is to allow as many people of all ages to experience the wonder and value of music.
The 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of contemporary music was awarded to György Kurtág on February 10th, 2015. The renowned Hungarian composer was nominated by both the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music and the Széchenyi Academy of Arts. The award is funded by the Spanish BBVA Foundation in order to promote and disseminate world-class scientific research and artistic creation. This honorable prize (worth 400,000€) was presented to Kurtág by the BBVA on June 23th, 2015. As the part of the celebrations (beside the orchestral works by Ravel and Berlioz) Kurtág's juvenile work Movement for viola and orchestra was performed by Philip Dukes and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Euskadi conducted by Jun Märkl.
For more information, please click here.

The great choral festival EUROPA CANTAT is being held this year in Pécs, Hungary, from 24 July to 2 August. The event is justifiably well known worldwide for its standard and its inspiring atmosphere. The festival, held every three years in a different country, presents a colorful cavalcade of programs for those attending it to choose from. The choral festival offers almost 60 workshops for singers, as well as special events for conductors, composers, and the youngest age group of little children. For more...
It is a great pleasure for us that two of our composers have been presented the most prestigious Hungarian award, the Kossuth Prize, which is awarded to artists, scientists and writers.
György Orbán’s new work: Aulos – Piano Pieces for Practising Poliphony and Ferenc Jávori’s Klezmer Miniatures were among our highlights presented at the Frankfurt Music Fair this March.
Read more news on composers, new works and concerts.
In 1970, Editio Musica Budapest embarked upon a massive project - to present the most authentic and complete critical edition of the entire catalog of Hungary's favorite son, Franz Liszt.
Forty years and 50 volumes later, EMB is just now finishing up the piano solo component, with seven volumes yet to come in the Supplement series.
The New Liszt Edition is the finest edition of Liszt that the world has ever seen.
Contact us for special pricing on complete sets of Series I, Series II, or both!
Welcome to EMB Online, the internet home for Hungary's largest sheet music publisher. For over 60 years, we've been publishing and distributing educational publications and performance materials for classical instruments, ensembles, orchestras, voice(s) and choir.
You can buy printed and digital sheet music publications in our new online shop, and send requests for orchestral material for hire.
London (6 April, 2011) - Universal Music Publishing Classical (UMPC) and Hal Leonard Corporation today announced a deal for Hal Leonard to provide UMPC exclusive services for world-wide print distribution and for hire (rental) rights fulfilment for UMPC's prestigious and content-rich classical music catalogues, commencing July 1, 2011.
UMPC's Universal MGB Publications in Milan oversees publishing, sales, marketing and distribution of printed editions and hire (rental) parts for the music publishing catalogues Ricordi, Éditions Salabert, Éditions Durand, and Éditions Max Eschig. Under the terms of the new deal, Hal Leonard will manage print distribution and hire (rental) operations, and jointly developing with UMPC new publications for global sale. Hal Leonard's subsidiary, De Haske, will be integrally involved in the European operations.
UMPC's Editio Musica Budapest (EMB) will continue its operations independently, with Hal Leonard assuming EMB printed music and hire (rental) distribution in certain territories.
UMPC will continue handling all other rights and repertoire matters relating to all of the catalogues, including grand and small performance rights, synchronization, mechanical and all other licensing rights, promotion, and other operations for all of the catalogues.
We are adding more and more cover images, sample pages, sound samples and other information to our on-line sheet music catalogue. The following signs - you can find them next to the titles - help with orientation:
You can listen to the music | You can see sample pages |
New publication (issued within the last year) |
CD is included |
Digital sheet music |
Downloadable PDF |
EMB signed several license agreements with Chinese music publishers in order to publish and distribute works of Liszt, Kodály and Bartók in China.
The volumes of the New Liszt Editions and Bartók's For Children are already available in Chinese music shops.
Mr Fei Weiyao - President of Shanghai Music Publishing House, and Mr László Sigrai - Director of Printed Music, EMB
at Music China 2008 fair in Shanghai
New Liszt Edition: Supplement volumes for series 1-2
The New Liszt Edition (NLE) was launched in 1970 in order to provide a reliable edition of the complete works of Ferenc Liszt (1811-1886). Of the planned ten series of the complete edition, grouped by genre and performing apparatus, between 1970 and 2005 Series 1 and 2, containing the definitive version of all the works for solo piano, were completed.
During these 35 years, in accordance with changes in the requirements relating to critical complete editions, the principles followed by the NLE publishers also underwent modification. Zoltán Gárdonyi and István Szelényi, who initiated the complete edition, bore in mind principally the needs of performers when they concentrated exclusively on the final version of each of Liszt's works ("Fassung letzter Hand").
Though the primary purpose of the NLE is still the publication of the final form of each work, an earlier version of many of the works, where this differed significantly from the final form, has been included in the appendices to the volumes, especially in the second series.
The NLE Supplement volumes which have been published from 2005 are the successors of those appendices; in making available the earlier versions, their function is to enable the reader to look into Liszt's compositional workshop and to provide an opportunity for pianists and musicologists alike to form a closer acquaintance with Liszt the creative artist. Publication of the Supplement volumes is also justified and supported by the quantitatively and qualitatively significant achievements of Liszt philology in recent decades in the field of research into sources. These findings are, as always, fully taken into account and utilized by the NLE editors in preparing the Supplement volumes for publication.
The main aim of the editors, Adrienne Kaczmarczyk and Imre Mező in compiling the Supplement volumes has been - as befits the complete edition of an oeuvre - to make accessible here, in the case of every solo piano work, the earlier versions published at the time by the composer or others. In addition, they have included in them complete, fully worked out compositions and earlier versions surviving in manuscript form which are of indubitable musical value and thus may find a place in the concert repertoire.
Finally, the appendices to the planned volumes will also contain some fragments of interest chiefly to musicologists. Since some of these have been issued on recordings (e.g. Leslie Howard's complete set of recordings of Liszt's piano oeuvre), respect for the composer and the interest shown by pianists justify publication of Liszt's original. Though the magnitude of Liszt's piano oeuvre is such that it is impossible to publish every sketch and draft of each individual work, by publishing the compositions that have survived in manuscript the Supplement volumes make it easier for researchers also to survey and study his oeuvre.