György Kurtág is the most widely known, and frequently performed, contemporary Hungarian composer. His music, which has achieved worldwide recognition since the 1980s, has intrigued audiences with its enigmatic conciseness and unprecedented powers of expression. Kurtág has created a uniquely individual sound through the synthesis of three elements – the experiments of the avant-garde composers, his Hungarian musical inheritance, and many strands from the music of previous centuries. In spite of his refusal to court popularity his music speaks to audiences at the end of the twentieth century with a directness which can only be compared to that of Bartók in the first half of the century.
Below is the text of Péter Halász’s short monograph titled György Kurtág (Budapest: Mágus , 1998), translated by Peter Woodward; the complete volume can be downloaded by clicking here.
Student Years
György Kurtág was born on 19 February 1926 in the Romanian town of Lugoj (formerly known by its Hungarian name of Lugos). He began the formal study of music in Temesvár (Timisoara), where from 1940 he studied piano with Magda Kardos and composition with Max Eisikovits. In 1946 he continued his studies at the Music Academy in Budapest where he studied piano with Pál Kadosa, and in 1951 was awarded his degree. His composition teachers were Sándor Veress (1946–1948) and Ferenc Farkas (1948–1955). During this time he also studied chamber music with Leó Weiner. Kurtág came under many important influences in the stimulating environment of the Music Academy, He attended lectures on folk music given by Zoltán Kodály, took part in the choir conducted by Jenő Ádám and benefited in particular from Bence Szabolcsi’s music history classes and Ernő Lendvai’s analyses of Bartók’s music. Kurtág formed a close friendship with his fellow student György Ligeti, and after their first meeting he looked upon him as his „spiritual mentor”. This friendship, which continued even after Ligeti emigrated in 1956, remains a continual source of stimulation for Kurtág.
In 1947 Kurtág married the pianist Márta Kinsker, a contemporary of his at the Academy. Márta had a deep understanding of her husband’s music and proved to be a dedicated and persuasive performer. Their son, also named György, was born in 1954, and like his father has become a composer. Since 1979 he has lived in France. Kurtág’s earliest compositions show the influence of Bartók. The result of this choice of role-model can be felt most strongly in the Viola Concerto, which gained Kurtág both his degree and the Erkel Prize, named after Ferenc Erkel, a 19th-century Hungarian opera composer. The Bartókian traits in the Viola Concerto are i) the use of octatonic scales, ii) the juxtaposition of keys according to the Axis System of Lendvai, and iii) rhythmic and scoring characteristics. In later years when looking back on his student work Kurtág said: „It is clear today what features of my Viola Concerto are outmoded. In those days I regarded them as novel and daring.”
In the spring of 1957 Kurtág went to Paris, originally planning to emigrate. During the course of the following year he was to experience events that led to the development of his own individual voice and to his first mature creative period. He attended composition classes given by Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen, Milhaud’s liberal approach was a revelation to Kurtág, after the traditional and strict teaching of the Budapest Academy, Messiaen’s methods of rhythmic organization proved to be of particular interest. Most important of all, however, was the contribution made by a study of the music of the Second Viennese School, little of which was available in Hungary. In particular the scores of Webern’s music and a close study of Hanns Jelinek’s book Anleitung zur Zwölftonkomposition proved to be valuable in widening his horizons and enabling Kurtág to become acquainted with the possibilities of free atonality and the dodecaphonic system.
Ultimately his discussions with the psychologist Marianne Conversations with Marianne Stein were even more important, for out of these sometimes turbulent, informal conversations developed one of the important principles of Kurtág’s musical thought processes: the search for the most concise and economical ways of expression. Marianne Stein formulated a compositional maxim: “Combine no more than two sounds.” During his months in Paris, Kurtág wrote several piano pieces, which around 1960 developed into Eight Piano Pieces Op. 3 and were evidence of his striving for the utmost economy of expression. Over and above the musical value of his stay in France, he learnt a lesson that was to be crucial for the remainder of his life: “I returned home in the knowledge that I now know what my task will be, and that outward circumstances cannot influence what is now happening to me.”
On the way home from Paris, in the spring of 1958, Kurtág stopped for a few days in Cologne. There he heard a recording of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gruppen, as well as a recently composed piece of electronic music by Ligeti. These two works helped formulate his aesthetic principles: “The intensity and directness of expression, the fine balance between humour and tragedy appeared unsurpassable to me. … On returning to Hungary … I began a ‘new chapter’ with my Op. 1—I vowed that I would strive to produce in my own way something similar to what I experienced in Cologne when listening to Artikulation.”
The Development of a Personal Style
During the ten years following his return from Paris Kurtág composed the first works that can be said to indicate the development of a personal voice. First there appeared a set of instrumental pieces, and then, between 1963 and 1968, a “concerto” for soprano and piano to texts by a sixteenth-century Hungarian literary preacher, Bornemisza Péter mondásai (The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza) Op. 7. As György Kroó remarked in 1970: “Kurtág is the only Hungarian composer over forty for whom music is a language, not merely a sound or a seeking for effect. He is the only one who during the last ten years has written not merely his ideas but his anguishes and emotions as a new chapter in the history of his nation’s music.”
In the first works of this period Kurtág remains, on the whole, true to the traditional techniques of the time as regards instrumentation, a large amount of dissonance, and controlled rhythms. There are, however, several indicators that are relevant for the future. Among them are his use of chamber combinations, music built up from short or very short pieces, the breaking away from traditional forms of thematic development, and here and there the use of free, almost improvisatory rhythms. The influence of Bartók, Webern and Stravinsky is usually quoted as the source of this new style, for it was from a close study of Bartók’s scores that he learned about symmetrical structures, from the Viennese master about conciseness and brevity of expression, and from the Russian composer about timbre and tone colour. From the integration of these influences Kurtág developed an individual voice and, without doubt, a new way of composing.
The works that he wrote during this period (scarcely more than an hour of music) ensured his unique position in the musical life of Hungary. A devoted performing group, committed to a deep study of his music, was formed around him.6 His work as a tutor at the Bartók Music School in Budapest (1958–1963) and as a musical coach employed by the concert agency National Philharmonia (1960–1968) enabled him to evolve his own ideas about teaching methods, which he was able to develop further after 1968 in his work as Professor of Chamber Music at the Budapest Music Academy. These responsibilities helped him to maintain continuous contact with masterpieces of music history and to refine a unique method which was concerned with all the smallest details of interpretation.
The first composition in this “new chapter” of Kurtág’s creative life was the String Quartet Op. 1, which was completed in 1959. It is not merely its chronological order that makes this work a significant milestone, but also its extensive (by Kurtág’s standards) and rigid construction. The work has six movements, rather similar to Bartók’s “bridge form”, but without a central turning point, in which each pair of movements reveals characteristic relationships: the two inner movements are reminiscent of the contrast between a slow movement and a scherzo. The closing movement sums up all that has gone before and even quotes from the opening movement. The movements have the brevity and precision of Webern. However, the lasting influence of the classical tradition is still noticeable, in that a scherzo and a slow movement occur also in the Wind Quintet Op. 2, whilst in the Eight Duos Op. 4 and Jelek (Signs) Op. 5 Kurtág writes slowly unfolding slow movements and fast finales. Instead of the traditional four-movement sonata form, series of short movements with similar characters fulfil the function of the individual movements. This method of structuring a work is reminiscent of The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza where 24 short movements are combined to form four larger sections. Vallomás (Confession) suggests an opening movement, Bűn (Sin) a scherzo, Halál (Death) a slow movement, and Tavasz (Spring) a finale.
Kurtág regards the first bars of the String Quartet as a summary of his compositional techniques, so it is worth examining them in more detail. The meticulous structure and overall arch-form are in the spirit of the classical/romantic tradition, but what is missing is that essential musical device – a theme. Instead, we find isolated, individual “points” of sound, all differing in pitch, rhythm and character. They form refined and transparent textures, and with a single sound can portray meaning. Scarcely audible harmonics are followed by a harsh chromatic chord. This is succeeded by a tower of bare fifths, which in its turn is interrupted by a new dense, but widely spaced chord. After a series of glissandi, pizzicati and quickly repeated sounds, a more tuneful, short musical sigh closes the section. The rhythm of these few bars is equally varied, and the dynamic markings range from ppp to fff. All the various sound effects to be obtained from string instruments are found in this short section. In the space of barely 30 seconds we hear some ten different musical effects which are linked with, but also contrast with, one another. Each, however, is full of meaning. At the same time a more thorough analysis of the organization of this apparently random sequence of events reveals a strict, almost serial system of working.
Although the score does not contain a literary quote, it nevertheless has a programmatic element. The composer revealed that he had wanted to preface the work with the words of Tudor Arghezi: “I have caused a new beauty and worth to rise from mould, suppurating wounds and mud.” That art should be created through humiliation, and self-torture has been a central belief for Kurtág. It enables us to understand his striving for the latent possibilities hidden in the simplest musical procedures. There is a paradox at the centre of his output: How is it possible to elevate a work to its highest level of expression using the simplest compositional devices?
Succeeding instrumental works carried on along the route taken by the String Quartet, but there were indications of new developments that went hand in hand with increasing economy and extreme condensation of Kurtág’s musical ideas. The Wind Quintet Op. 2 has shorter movements and a more simple structure than the String Quartet. Various innovations are discernible, such as the rhythmical freedom from the tyranny of the bar line in the second and eighth movements, and the experiment with aleatoric techniques in the fifth movement. Some movements of Eight Piano Pieces Op. 3 were the outcome of his work in Paris with Marianne Stein. Her dictum “Combine no more than two sounds” was realised to an extent in the first movements, which begin on C and close on C sharp. The fifth and eighth movements bear the influence of Stockhausen’s Piano Pieces, which Kurtág held in high esteem. The next work, Eight Duos Op. 4, shows a new departure in instrumentation – the combination of violin and cimbalom. These two instruments were to play an important role in Kurtág’s later works, but it was in these duos that he purported to have captured the “essence” of the cimbalom. He did not write for it in the traditional Hungarian manner but in a way reminiscent of Webern’s short studies. In these duos we become increasingly aware of the characteristic “soundscape” of Kurtág. His use of trills, muted tremolos, percussive sounds, his imaginative use of ostinato techniques – all indicate that a new musical language is being developed. The composer was aware of the dangers of self-repetition, and the last of his early instrumental works Cinque merrycate Op. 6 for guitar remained unpublished. Ten years later he used just two movements in a new context, in Szálkák (Splinters) Op. 6c and 6d.
Bornemisza Péter mondásai (The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza) Op. 7 for soprano and piano already lay claim to be Kurtág’s most important work so far. It was written after a study of Heinrich Schütz’ sacred concertos, and from twenty-four short movements he creates a cycle of almost forty minutes duration. The text is powerful, and has surprisingly modern psychological overtones, which allow the composer many opportunities for madrigalian “word-painting” and directness of expression. As György Kroó commented: “Kurtág’s music is proof that we have a creative genius in our midst.”
It is worth noting the links that exist with the music of previous centuries in the complex web of sound that constitutes The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza. Echoes of Beethoven are discernible in the large-scale organization of the opening movement, and of Monteverdi in the agitated concitato-style writing. Bach is brought to mind in the dense polyphony of the piano accompaniment, as is the tradition of the German Lieder, baroque cantatas and ancient dirges in the voice part. Naturally Kurtág’s immediate predecessors, Webern and Bartók, also make their influence felt. In the slow movement, Halál (Death), a tone-symbol appears which later became a feature of Kurtág’s work. The text of this part is a simple sentence, “Virág az ember” (Flowers we are). These few words distil the essence of man’s helplessness in the face of mortality, and at the same time the beauty of maintaining his life. The first four melodic sounds quote the pair of thirds as symbols of purity from the opening chord of the String Quartet. The rhythmic notation is noteworthy in that exact time values are not indicated, only an approximation of the relationship between long and short notes. Details of the interpretation are left to the performer. This movement indicates that Kurtág was gradually moving away from a belief in strict structural procedures and saw the composer’s task as creating less well-defined musical gestures with a strong irradiation.
The world première of The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza took place on 5 September 1968, as part of the Darmstadt Festival. Although some of Kurtág’s music had been heard before at Darmstadt, and Westdeutscher Rundfunk had recorded various pieces, international recognition remained non-existent. For an audience entranced by the music of Stockhausen, Kurtág’s music proved to be too modern, and at the same time too traditional.
Játékok and Beyond
After The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza Kurtág entered a period of crisis. In five years he completed just two vocal compositions. It seems that in addition to periods of inspired creativity Kurtág also experiences periods of involuntary cessation in the creative process. We are entering a very personal area when we discuss the self-torment of such unproductive years, but crises such as this are an inevitable element in the struggle towards a mature style.
Kurtág really mastered the art of song-writing for the first time, in one of the two works mentioned above, Egy téli alkony emlékére (In Memory of a Winter Sunset) Op. 8, which consists of four fragments to poems by Pál Gulyás. As an accompanying instrument to the solo voice he used not the “neutral” piano, but the combination of violin and cimbalom that he had already used in his Eight Duos. The use of this particular timbre forged a common link between the two works. The first and third songs quote respectively from the last and third movements of Duos, whilst the tormented ostinato in the final song is a portent of the opening piece in Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova Op. 17. In the other vocal cycle of this period, Four Capriccios Op. 9, István Bálint’s poems with their dry humour, sometimes verging on the absurd, are much more akin to Kurtág’s own personality. The colourful instrumental accompaniment, consisting of wind and string quintets, harp, celesta, piano and percussion was an innovation for Kurtág, and he treated it using all the timbres that such a combination offered.
The largest, but most frustrating, undertaking during this period was the composition of 24 Antiphonae which Kurtág worked on whilst he was on a DAAD scholarship in West Berlin in 1970-71. He said later about the reasons for the trouble he experienced with this work: “I had definite ideas about two of my works, but both remained unfinished. One of them was the 24 Antiphonae – I worked on them in Berlin in 1971, and have only finished three to date. … It appears that if one knows too much about a certain work the creative process does not flow – at least that’s the case with me.” It seems a touch ironic that whilst in this period of crisis Kurtág was awarded the highest Hungarian state honour for culture, the Kossuth Prize.
A resolution of the predicament came about in 1973. Kurtág recalls it thus: “A piano teacher by the name of Marianne Teöke asked me to write a few pieces for her collection of pedagogic pieces. … Within a short space of time I had written almost 200 pieces. Before this I had written nothing for three years.” After this fortuitous beginning, this series of pieces, entitled Játékok (Games), has increased to become a collection of over 300 short items. Presumably the weight of his creative impasse was taken off Kurtág’s shoulders by the idea that these teaching pieces did not represent “real composing”. It is worthy of note that Játékok is the first mature work that does not have an opus number, i.e. it cannot be counted as a “work of art”. Although not regarded as “real compositions” they enabled the composer to explore all the possibilities of extreme brevity and conciseness of form.
To a degree Játékok follows in the tradition of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos in that they are both intended for pedagogical purposes. Kurtág’s aim was that young children should approach the piano without having to learn precise note values, awkward fingering systems or carefully prescribed ways of playing, but should take joy in a command of the keyboard in a different way than hitherto. As he wrote in his preface: “Let us tackle bravely even the most difficult task without being afraid of making mistakes: we should try to create valid proportions, unity and continuity from long and short value notes – just for our own pleasure.” However, Játékok is rather more than this, for it is a veritable treasure house and workshop of the composer’s techniques. Compositions of the next decades have always to be viewed in the context of Játékok. That’s why similar genres appear later on for string or wind instruments and for orchestra. Together with his wife Márta, the composer has often given performances of items from Játékok. These occasions also served to introduce him to the public, as he is naturally shy and retiring. The atmosphere at these concerts – intense, intimate and almost ceremonial – had an influence on Kurtág’s later international following, and on the picture audiences formed of his individuality.
The pedagogical idea in Játékok is really only manifested in Book I, where often the same musical idea is presented twice; for the first time with indefinite pitch sounds and clusters of notes played with the palm of the hand, and then with more accurate and precise indications of pitch. Kurtág, who in earlier works had been meticulous in his indication of pitch relationships, now suddenly abandoned this principle, and preferred to give approximations. He freely and intentionally used ideas gleaned from his predecessors or contemporaries. “I hardly ever dismissed a single idea. If a piece resembled the style say, for example, of Ferenc Szabó [an elder contemporary Hungarian composer, writing in a rather conservative style], nothing prevented me extending it in the same style. The result would be entitled Hommage à Ferenc Szabó. … Besides such compliments I added other snapshots’, just like a musical diary in which I could jot down just what came into my mind.” In addition to influences from the past a number of more recent experiences are discernible in the first four books of Játékok, for example the influence of his composer colleagues from the Új Zenei Stúdió (New Music Studio), and his knowledge of Gregorian chant from when he sang in the choir Schola Hungarica conducted by László Dobszay. The diary-like character of the collection is shown by musical obituaries to friends who have passed away.
The period during which Kurtág was involved with Játékok marked the beginning of a renewal of creative energy. Two of the abandoned guitar pieces Cinque merrycate were rearranged for cimbalom and completed with two other movements, one of which, written in memory of a violinist friend Ștefan Romașcanu, establishes an atmosphere of mourning, which was to become typical of Kurtág. The title of this new cycle Szálkák (Splinters) is borrowed from the Hungarian poet János Pilinszky. The next two song cycles are based on his and on Dezső Tandori’s poems. Both have as a common theme the closed world of the lonely and alienated human being and his search for redemption. This paradox is depicted in the first cycle in a tragic, and in the second in a satirical manner.
Four Songs to Poems by János Pilinszky Op. 11 contains, in its first piece, the most sombre of Kurtág’s compositions. The singer recites the words on one single pitch with agonising slowness, and following instructions such as “on the palate”, “with a pressed sound”, “with glottal sound”. The opportunities for word-painting present themselves to the composer in setting the words “a house stands on it and a bush, / a silent, silent creature, / and a trouser leg in falling darkness” (translated by László András), but Kurtág avoided these opportunities for word-painting and opted for a simpler setting, which only becomes a reality through the self-tormenting performing style. This is enough to create the necessary tension. Kurtág’s aesthetic principle at this time was: „A minimum of notes – a maximum of expression.” Eszká-emlékzaj (S. K. Remembrance Noise) Op. 12 continues the self-mocking tone of Four Capriccios, but the colourful instrumentation of the latter is replaced by a sparse accompaniment from a single violin which throws an even sharper light on the ridiculous nature of a senseless world. The key to the work is in the use of the „objet trouvé” (found object). This idea, of elevating everyday objects to the status of art, originated with the painter Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), who invested quasi-functional devices with human foibles and characteristics. Kurtág’s use of the term “found object” derived from a volume of poetry by Dezső Tandori. A single word suffices, or an interval, a glissando, a rhythm. It is important only that the insignificant trifle being positioned at the central point should be invested with unexpected quality. The meaning of the poem is revealed using simple musical ideas such as an ascending scale, a waltz rhythm, intervals of a third, slowly expanding chromatic passages. These elementary ideas can, however, illuminate with perfect brightness the meaning of the words.
The compositions called “microludes” which were used by Kurtág as part of Játékok attained independent status in the string quartet Hommage à András Mihály Op. 13, written in 1977–78. The idea behind a series of microludes is like the rediscovery of tonality, that is the recognition that music is in some way related to a single basic sound. The twelve microludes are based on each degree of the chromatic scale – similarly to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Kurtág’s interpretation of scales is not based on theoretical preconceptions but on practical experience and associations with musical history. The first movement of the string quartet, based on the note C, has a festive character; a developing melody represents C sharp; shrill repetitions of an ostinato pattern from long-held chords, shimmering tremolos and a whispering in thirds characterise the one on D; E flat evokes a world of mystery and fear; and E, in a glorious melody, creates a musical picture of almost heavenly quality. (Ten years later this melody was to be used again in the closing movement of …quasi una fantasia… Op. 27 to represent an ideal world.)
The experiences of Játékok were carried on in the small cycles of Op. 14. The aborted guitar pieces of Op. 15 were later rearranged as Op. 15b and Op. 15c. The former one, A kis csáva (The Little Predicament) Op. 15b, with its distinctive instrumentation (piccolo flute, guitar, trombone) betrays the influence of Russian culture. Kurtág was at this time (1978) making an intensive study of the Russian language and literature. We can hear echoes of Moussorgsky’s Promenade in the Fanfár (Fanfare) for trombone, of Stravinsky’s Symphony of Wind Instruments in Himnusz (Hymn), whilst the mysterious trills and ghostly glissandos above the guitar chords of the final movement, Nachtstück (Night Piece), summon up the world of Dostoyevsky. This is no coincidence as Kurtág was already working on his first Russian-language cycle, Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova.
The Spell of the Singing Voice
The recognition that eluded Kurtág on the occasion of the world première of Bornemisza was forthcoming on 14 January 1981 when the first performance of the Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova took place in Paris. The work, commissioned some four years previously by Pierre Boulez and his Ensemble InterContemporain, was Kurtág’s largest work to date and excited the international audience. An English musicologist remarked: “One almost expects Kurtág to experience now the same kind of uncertainty about what direction to take next as he did after the earlier work [i.e. Bornemisza].” But a combination of factors helped to maintain this renewal of creativity. He had found the ideal performer in the singer Adrienne Csengery, for whom other song cycles were written in the 80s. A very important element was Kurtág’s intense interest in, and feeling for, the Russian language, especially for the work of Rimma Dalos, a Russian poetess living in Hungary. The brevity and precision of her work, in particular her poems in the form of the Japanese haiku, suited Kurtág’s way of working. The subject of her poetry – woman’s alternation between suffering and despair – opened up new vistas for the composer.
It is not easy to classify the genre of Troussova. There are those who see it as a twentieth-century equivalent of Schumann’s Lieder cycle Frauenliebe und -leben. Others see it as an opera in disguise, or a sort of stageless monodrama. The organisation of several short movements into larger sections is reminiscent of Bornemisza, but Troussova is not a structure built on the solid support of four symmetrical pillars, but on the dynamic contrast of three disproportionate sections. The longer, and internally more sectional, six movements make up the first two parts. The fifteen shorter songs which constitute Part Three give the impression of being a coda. Because of its greater variety, however, Part Three seems to dominate, which leaves the listener at a loss to find the central climax. Entitled Loneliness, the first part is built on the contrast between anxiety and a disturbed tranquillity. The heroine of Troussova fluctuates between protesting against an intolerable situation and resigning herself to the inevitable. In the second part (A little eroticism) the brutality of passion breaks through most powerfully in the central instrumental intermezzo. It is a characteristic paradox of Kurtág that the meaning of the text becomes more evident when it is silent and becomes more comprehensible when crossing over into incomprehensibility. The third part (Bitter experience – Delight and Grief) is constructed from a series of short mosaic-stones in which happy and memorable moments are juxtaposed with depressing and agonizingly unforgettable experiences. This last part acts as a counterbalance to the more extensive preceding sections. The intense emotion of this last section is made more tolerable by its brevity, its sudden changes and its use of snapshots instead of longer descriptive passages.
One of the features of Troussova is an unprecedented range of tone colors. For the most part the ensemble of over 20 instruments is used in smaller, chamber music combinations, but there are movements for solo voice (Why should I not squeal…), imitating the sound of a pig, plus one in canon form for voice and cimbalom (Great misery – that’s love). Percussion plays a very important role. Shivering is suggested by the swish of maracas, whilst a scraped cymbal and the sound of broken glass illustrate a metaphorical stab through the heart. Textual meaning is mainly carried by a clear system of musical motifs, but these examples of “word painting” are merely the outward manifestation of an inner meaning. The irrevocably lost companion of the abandoned woman is always associated with the horn, which is also used in the epilogue, where it highlights the final loss of dignity and tragic descent into despair: “For everything/we did together at some time—I’m paying” (translated by Stuart Campbell and Ksenia Norall).
Troussova appears to be a love story, but one that consists only of fragments of memory. The differing emotions of the three parts have a common characteristic in that the individual songs do not sustain a common thread. They are more like brief jottings torn from a notebook or diary. The logical continuation of Troussova, and at the same time its counterpole, is Scenes from a Novel Op. 19, in which the concept of passing time is all-pervasive. In the second verse, which in another scoring closes the cycle, the poet is obsessed with the transitoriness of time: “From meeting to parting,/from leave-taking to awaiting—that was my woman’s lot” (translated by Peter Sherwood and Gillian Howarth).
There can be no doubt that the heroine in Novel is identical with the heroine in Troussova who travelled from desire through disappointment to a symbolic death. As István Balázs put it: “The heroine of Troussova is resurrected in Novel.” But this heroine, who perhaps speaks to us from the next world, has gained new experiences. The universal solitude, disturbed sensuality and perpetual disillusionment of Troussova become a closed, introspective world. Anxiety is replaced by intense self-reflection, and the scoring takes on a more bleak and sparse texture. Novel uses a “gypsy band” instrumentation (violin, cimbalom and double-bass) where a sharper, more homogeneous and precise timbre dominates. The emotional pendulum swings more often towards the grotesque. Contrast is used as the most common dramatic device. Trancelike lyrics alternate with more clearly delineated songs. Two perpetuum mobile movements (Rondo and Sundays) form the climax of the cycle. In the final song the heroine’s last bleak farewell is illustrated by a timeless descending scale passage.
The last cycle that Kurtág composed to poems by Rimma Dalos, Requiem for the Beloved Op. 26, is, in its closing movement a symbolic completion of the interface between musician and poetess. “Farewell, Beloved, forgive me/I have nothing to regret. I have nothing to forget” (translated by Éva Mikes). The major chords in the accompaniment slowly drift away – an effect that was to reach fruition years later, in a rearrangement of the same song at the end of the Double Concerto, Op. 27 No. 2.
Following the series of works based on poems by Rimma Dalos, Kurtág turned once more to his native Hungarian poets, namely to Attila József. This meeting of minds was only to be expected, but it is somewhat surprising that the composer turned for inspiration not to the regular canon of the poet’s output, but to incomplete and hastily written fragments. It was equally innovative to set them for unaccompanied voice. These Attila József Fragments Op. 20 are so natural and unsophisticated that they give the impression of someone reading or humming them to himself. Kurtág compares them to leaflets or notes that can be handed out to all and sundry. They do not adopt a strident tone, but rather that of a gentle protest which alienated and unloved man shows to the world, sometimes with an accusing finger, at other times with self-pity. Compared with the Russian settings they express a broader range of thought. Beyond the intimate concerns of the individual there arise general questions such as crime and punishment, death and art, much as they did fifteen years earlier in Bornemisza. In some unfathomable way the composer’s personality illuminates the texts so powerfully that in spite of their fragmentary nature they appear before us as if carved in stone.
It would appear to be a natural progression from here to Kurtág’s next, and to date most important vocal work Kafka-Fragmente Op. 24, which is set for minimal forces of soprano and violin. The great variety of thought expressed in Kafka’s phrases – sometimes commonplace, sometimes innocently childlike, and occasionally enshrined in an enigmatic parable-like form, led Kurtág to possibly his most comprehensive portrayal of the world. The meeting of minds between writer and composer brought about a union of two personalities that complemented each other perfectly. The quotations from Franz Kafka’s letters and diary combine every aspect that can be found in earlier settings by Kurtág. These fragments are characterized by a consistent philosophy which emerges from frightening and wonderful moments, from tragedy and satire. Individual and collective disintegration and unity are contrasted, a grandeur is detected in trifles, and a necessity in chance. The form is built on small cycles containing a series of aphorisms, as in Bornemisza and Troussova. In Kafka-Fragmente, however, the individual sections do not have specific subjects because the whole cycle is concerned with the same problems. After contradictions and remote structural connections, the last movement links vocal and instrumental sounds in a final apotheosis which fulfils Kurtág’s omnipresent seeking for beauty.
There is scarcely another work of Kurtág’s in which brevity and elegance combine in such a natural way. The composer’s virtuosity is evident in every bar, yet there is no indication of ostentation. Every word and nuance is transformed into a sound picture. Meanwhile the musical motifs derived from the words are musically complete in themselves. However, the Kafka-Fragmente only forms a perfect unity in the combination of words and music. The psychological and physical worlds meet here, and Kurtág’s work achieves the ultimate aim of all music: to add its own existence to the image we create of our own.
Orchestral Works and Composed Programmes
By the end of the 80s Kurtág had become one of the most widely known of contemporary European composers, and his works were performed at international festivals in Berlin (1988), Salzburg (1993), Paris (1995) and Edinburgh (1996). In addition, he was the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Herder and Siemens prizes in 1993 and 1998 respectively. This recently found international recognition has enabled him to live abroad since 1993, first in Berlin and Vienna, and lately in Amsterdam where, besides completing commissioned works, he directs a series of very popular chamber music courses. A further result of these changes in Kurtág’s circumstances is that his music was played and recorded by international artists such as Kim Kashkashian, the Arditti String Quartet and Claudio Abbado.
After he set aside the composition of 24 Antiphonae in 1971, Kurtág did not try to compose anything for large-scale orchestra. This lacuna in his output appeared to be rectified when, following the success of Troussova, the BBC commissioned a piano concerto. Again, however, the music remained in sketch form only. Another commission, this time from the Berlin Festival, resulted in a work for piano and instrumental groups …quasi una fantasia… Op. 27 which can be described as an orchestral work, but with certain reservations. The instruments are not used as an orchestra in the traditional sense but are arranged in groups and positioned not only on the platform, but in various locations in the auditorium. This “stereophonic” effect was not new in music, but Kurtág was able to treat it in an individual way.
…quasi una fantasia… signalled the beginning of a stylistic change in the composer’s output. The intense concentration and economy of means which had been a feature of his work hitherto was now succeeded by a more expansive form and an increase in instrumental resources. World premières took place in Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna of works such as …quasi una fantasia…, Grabstein für Stephan, Op. 27 No. 2, and What is the word? – all of which varied in length between fifteen and twenty minutes and used thirty to fifty-plus accompanying instruments. When these works are compared with those dating from ten or fifteen years earlier it is almost as if one were dealing with a different composer. There are links, however, with the past. …quasi una fantasia…, for example, begins with a mysterious Introduction. This is followed by the nightmarish images and fantasy of a Schumannesque scherzo, and a Recitative in which the trombone is used to summon up the Last Judgment. Then comes the final Aria which is a reworking of a movement of the string quartet Hommage à András Mihály, thus providing a link with the past. A feature of the movement is the contrast between the staccato “points” of the piano chords and the more sustained phrasing of the strings. This contrast is reflected also in the accompaniment where the “points” of sound are supplied by instruments that are essentially percussive, such as harp, cimbalom, vibraphone and celesta, whilst the more lyrical moments are scored for flute, horn and harmonica. The “points” finally die away, and the original string melody descends until it comes to rest on a single cello sound. One scholar called this movement “a promise of Paradise”, an apt description of this almost inaudible search after beauty and purity of sound.
Beethoven described his sonatas Opus 27 No. 1 in E flat and No. 2 in C sharp minor as “Sonata quasi una fantasia”, and it may have been chance that led Kurtág to give his work with the same opus number a similar title. However, it must have been a much more conscious decision that led to the numbering of his next work as Op. 27 No. 2. Its relationship with Beethoven is to be found not in the superficialities of genre and style, but somewhere in a more abstract sense. The work in question is a double concerto for cello and piano, accompanied by a double chamber orchestra.
In this composition Kurtág tries for the first time to write movements whose internal construction is organized on more traditional lines. The slow opening and final movements, both reworkings of earlier songs and piano pieces, are linked by two fast movements in which musical ideas are repeated and developed. This hitherto unknown way of working raised its own problems for the composer. Having replaced his former epigrammatic brevity with expansion and development, he was inevitably faced with having to distinguish between thematic and non-thematic material by the composition of “neutral transitional passages”. Kurtág was incapable of sacrificing the tautness, tension and concision of his writing for the sake of irrelevant passage work. Some indication of the struggles can be recognized in the constant stops and starts that characterize these two movements.
It is remarkable that Kurtág had not attempted to compose a work in one movement for thirty years. Only in works composed in the early 90s such as Grabstein für Stephan Op. 15c and What is the word? Op. 31, do we find compositions that are not based on the principle of contrast between individual sections. The former work, which is based on one of the unpublished guitar pieces of Op. 15, is built upon a stylistic feature of the 70s – a “found object”, in this case the plucking of open strings. This “mourning” motif, suggestive of peace and tranquility, is surrounded by the murmuring sounds of other instruments dispersed in different parts of the performing area. Contrast is still found, however, in the middle section, where a unique outburst of emotion contrasts with the inevitability of mortality expressed in the outer movements.
Samuel Beckett’s last complete work What is the word? was written in the poetic idiom associated with him—that of “disruptive continuity.” Contrary to his usual practice, Kurtág set the work to a Hungarian translation. The reason for this decision must be sought in the person of the performer who was the inspiration behind the composition. Ildikó Monyók, a former pop singer, had suffered an impairment of speech as the result of an accident, but after much therapy and hard work she recovered sufficiently, with the result that Kurtág could compose the piece for her. The text, a meditation on the futility of expression, has links with the struggles that the composer had endured in his own creative development. Words, music, and performer proved to be ideally matched. Just as in Kurtág’s first vocal work Confession in Bornemisza this new composition is about the hazards of creation. In the 60s this self-torment was embodied in an unprecedented density of texture and in the composer’s acknowledged problems with the creative process at the time. A quarter of a century later Ildikó Monyók’s efforts in articulating the words and sounds are sufficient to express the same situation. The original setting for reciter and upright piano (probably an out-of-tune piano) became known in a later version for large orchestra – used in spatially separated groups – and choir, enunciating the original English version of the text. What is the word? is the one work of Kurtág that encapsulates the essence at the core of his art – frailty. That desperate, intolerable, inhuman frailty which makes the creative act both impossible and, at the same time, necessary.
Although these latest works were a step towards writing for full orchestra, Kurtág had not yet reached the stage at which the orchestra was seated on the platform in the traditional manner. This only happened in 1994 with the composition of Stele (i.e. tombstone), a commission from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Like other works written in the previous decade, this one too retained links with the past. The first section of this three-movement work uses a motif from Lebenslauf (written in 1992 for the 85th birthday of Sándor Veress—a Swiss composer of Hungarian origin who studied with Bartók and was Kurtág’s composition teacher). The second movement features a typical Kurtág-type obstinately revolving motif. A slow, mournful chorale-like succession of block chords – quoting from In memoriam András Mihály (included in Book 6 of Játékok) – brings the whole work to a close.
Although Stele is scored for an orchestra of more than 100 instrumentalists, all seated on stage in the traditional manner, it has several features unusual in orchestral writing. Kurtág hardly ever uses doubling, nor does he contrast subtle combinations of tone colour. Emphasis is placed on clarity of texture, as in other complex scores such as Troussova or Op. 27 No. 2. Homogeneous groups of instruments play an important role, such as the choirs of flutes and clarinets in the opening section, or the chorale-like Wagner tubas at the close of the first movement (hommage à Bruckner). The finale uses one of the composer’s favourite instrumental combinations – that of piano, harp, cimbalom and vibraphone, as well as a percussion group consisting of bass drum, cymbals and tam-tam. The sombre, opalescent timbres of the latter group become, in later years, an indispensable part of the composer’s “mourning” motif.
Two external factors are involved in the construction of Kurtág’s third string quartet, Officium breve in memoriam Andreae Szervánszky. Understandably one of them is the use of the slow movement, Arioso, from Endre Szervánszky’s Serenade for String Orchestra (1947). The other is the closing movement of Webern’s last work, Cantata No. 2. These two works, composed within a few years of each other, inhabit different worlds, but taken together they symbolize Kurtág’s own student days, his Hungarian roots and his European orientation. Webern’s piece, with its canonic textures and stark harmonies, is paraphrased in movements V, VI and VIII before appearing in its original form in the tenth movement. Szervánszky’s Arioso is also paraphrased in the second and third movements and is then quoted directly in the fifteenth, the last, movement. There is no parallel in subtle artificiality to Officium in the rest of the composer’s work.
In the 90s Kurtág has gradually become more involved in ways of presenting his works in the concert hall. He deems it ideal if the audience experiences his music as if partaking in a special kind of ritual. This had already happened with his performances of Játékok, and he created the same atmosphere for works such as Kafka-Fragmente. He refers to them as “ceremonial concerts.”
In 1993 Kurtág assembled a concert programme based around his “orchestral” works composed between 1988 and 1991, which he called a “composed programme.” In it he attempts to give a portrait of his work and, whilst demonstrating the links between the various pieces, he also aims to safeguard their individuality. In a similar composition, Rückblick (Retrospect), emphasis has been put on the ordering of works both old and new, in original scoring or in revised versions, in such a way as to reveal connections that may not have been perceived hitherto. The performing group consists of four musicians – two of whom play contrasting melody instruments (trumpet and double-bass), and the others a group of keyboard instruments (grand piano and upright piano, celesta and harpsichord). This particular combination of instruments is explained by the dedication of the work to Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose son, daughter and son-in-law played in the world première of the work in Berlin.
The range of music in Rückblick spans a period of more than thirty years, between 1960 and 1992. In choosing such a wide spectrum Kurtág ignored the striking stylistic changes that had taken place in the meantime. He once said, with characteristic naivety, that he agreed with Joyce, who remarked: “I always keep in mind the ideal reader – one who will devote his life solely to reading my works.” More than fifty short pieces are used in Rückblick, among them the cycle of Eight Piano Pieces Op. 3, Four Songs to Poems by János Pilinszky Op. 11, and some movements from The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza Op. 7 rescored for the occasion, as well as a series woven from the hommage movements or scherzo-like pieces in Játékok. Their order is determined by dramaturgical considerations rather than chronological ones, and the resultant smaller series are framed by a new three-part sequence of movements written for the Rückblick ensemble.
It cannot be said, however, that Rückblick provides a comprehensive overview of the composer’s achievements. Thoughts of death and mortality are never far from the surface, as his quotation adapted from the Great Testament by François Villon testifies: „In this xth year of my life / When I had drunk down all of my shames / Being neither wholly wise nor foolish” (translated by Anthony Bonner). It is characteristic of Rückblick that the period following 1975 is represented not by compositions supplied with opus numbers, but by a steady stream of Játékok movements. The feeling of farewell that is undoubtedly present in Rückblick is not simply the introspection of a 67-year-old who is conscious of his own mortality, but a nostalgia for lost youth, and for colleagues who have passed on.
