To celebrate the 85th birthday of Árpád Balázs, a selection of his rich output of choral music has been published. Árpád Balázs is an outstanding artist of his generation who is known and sung not only in Hungary. His compositional technique is unmistakably individual, characterised by a festoon of easily singable "outer-inner" voices that embrace one another, and a linear thinking deriving from Palestrina through Kodály. Even as a young composer, he was active in the choral scene both in Hungary and internationally. He sensed the basic principles of singability and applied them consciously, and he spoke in a musical language comprehensible to singing communities. Imbued with the spirit of Kodály, raised on Ferenc Farkas's excellent school, with experience gained at masterclasses by Khachaturian and Petrassi, with his oeuvre he has significantly contributed to the flourishing of the Hungarian culture of vocal music, and to its success in Hungary and abroad.