János Decsényi was born in 1927 in Budapest. He studied piano under Magda Vásárhelyi and composition under Rezső Sugár at Conservatory and graduated from Endre Szervánszky’s composition department of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music. Since 1951 he has been on the staff of Hungarian Radio’s Music Department.
His works display his intense interest in other art forms and the classics.

His works are, on the one hand, oriented towards the material: they test out many different instruments and several technical possibilities inherent in them – he carefully designs his compositions to fit the instruments. However, he also strives to achieve in them an emphatically beautiful sound and characteristic tonal colourings.
These two principles are juxtaposed in his works: the micro-structures are arranged within the whole so that their own, independent existence does not hinder and actually promotes the appearance of major surfaces of sound. The pieces that primarily depict colours and moods, are at deeper levels constructed according to a strict principle, not a single bar of the great colour patches being left as random simultaneities of sound.

(Anna Tóth, notes to Hungaroton SLPX 12122)