Three generations of children have now received their first introduction to music from the books of Klára R. Chitz (1888-1965), which have been translated from Hungarian into several other languages. Chitz managed to turn on her readers not only to music, but even to the study of music theory, which is sometimes thought of as a rather dry affair. Yet if she was the first to tell you about major and minor scales, or sharps and flats and naturals, you learned these concepts without any effort, and you learned them for life.

Yet not even the best music book can make music by itself; the help of a composer was needed to give Peter and his instrument friends a real voice to sing with. No one could have been better suited for this task than György Ránki, the unforgettable composer of the comic opera King Pomádé. Ránki’s simple but witty melodies, which constantly surprise us by the unexpected turns they take, offer perfect portrayals of all the characters, whether they be people, instruments, or accidental signs. Ránki’s collaborator was the legendary József Romhányi (1921-1983) who turned Klára Chitz’s story into supremely ingenious verse, filled with virtuosic, untranslatable puns.