Veress left his home town of Cluj for Budapest in 1916, where he studied piano under Bartók and composition under Kodály at the Liszt Academy. It appears that in the 1930s, his work gaining increasing popularity, Veress was on course to become the Next Big Thing in Hungarian music. He took over the composition chair from Kodály in 1942 and, following brief stints in England and Rome, where he immersed himself in the musical avant-garde, he returned to Hungary, and joined the Party in 1945. However, he didn’t return to Hungary after travelling with permission to Italy in 1949, and settled in Switzerland.

When applying for a job in Pittsburgh at the height of the McCarthy era, he was required to write a letter explaining his brief membership of the Communist Party, and it was this letter that provided the context for discussion of writing one’s past. On the advice of historian István (Stephen) Borsody, Veress claimed that he had joined for artistic and personal gain, and that he had always been pro-Western. Successive edits gradually removed his autonomy, until his statement resembled a seamless narrative to fit the new political context in which he sought a home. Veress was not finally able to move to the States, but remained in Bern teaching and composing music, and he never attained the recognition of either his predecessors, Bartók and Kodály, or his one-time students, Ligeti and Kurtág.