Original title: Eszká-emlékzaj
Subtitle: Seven songs to poems by Dezső Tandori, for soprano solo and violin, in Hungarian
Dedication: Lajos Bárdos
Premiere location: Budapest
Premiere date: 1976.12.28.
Premiere performers: Júlia Pászthy (soprano); András Ligeti (violin)
Lyricist name: Dezső Tandori
Language: Hungarian
Composition end date: 1975
Genre: Chamber Music with Voice
Instrumentation: soprano, violin
Duration (minutes): 8
Year of publication: 1978
Publisher: Universal Edition/Editio Musica Budapest
Publication number: Z. 7940

1 Road to Damasacus
2 Kant-Remembrance Noise
3 Two lines from “Tape” (first-last)
4 Kavafis-haiku
5 So that we never get out of practice
6 The sadness of the bare copula
7 Les Adieux

1. Road to Damascus
Now when it just the same as ever,
time's come, it is high time that –

2. Kant Remembrance Noise
The lawnmower hums (over there)
My electric razor (over here)

3. Two Lines from 'Tapes'
This I want to keep in memory.
Oh yes. Want to keep a memory of this.

4. Kavafis-haiku
It's half past two!
Never has a
year passed so soon.

5. So that we never get out of practice
There's solace
Thure's surlice
Thare's salace
Theere's sillice
Thoore's soolus

6. The Sadness of the Bare Copula
I should have liked it to be so.
It wasn't so.
I asked: be it so.
So 'twas.

7. Les Adieux
So long I've missed her!
Odd but I seem to grow more and more like her -
(While she's getting more like
somebody else now.)
'The endless confrontations, identifications:
turned and turned around road sign boards,
guideposts,
are particularly fatal
for those who always stand
move on."

Translation by László T. András

Reviews of the world premiere

Review by Lajos Fodor
(Esti Hírlap, January 3, 1977)

[…] György Kurtág composed seven short songs based on poems by Dezső Tandori. When the composer read the texts aloud – each consisting of barely a few words – we smiled at the self-mocking language, the wordplay, and the poetic “jibes” that poked fun at poetry itself. But there is not a trace of cynicism in Kurtág. When he listed the “connecting words, articles, and the debris of filler and subordinate clauses” (István Vas), we had to realize that he did not choose these banalities – which are musical in themselves – merely for the sake of wit, but rather to reveal the poetic intent within them. Just as we recount, again and again, / the always “new” “same thing,” and again: as a joke, / it is unclear whether distance tames / one thing or another, or whether it is the fact that we relive / (and therefore exchange it for narrability, / indeed barter it away) something of ours. [Quote from a poem by Tandori] It is this ars poetica that clarifies the musical articulation of the emotions behind the words: a composition that illuminates every letter of the clichés, every nuance of the vowels, and – through Júlia Pászthy’s delicate singing and András Ligeti’s meticulous violin playing – is deeply embedded in the realm of poetry. The same poetic sensibility of Kurtág came to life under Zoltán Kocsis’s masterful fingers, in short piano pieces that express a worldview through the microstructure of emotional movements. [...]

(„Pulóveres koncert”, Esti Hírlap 22  [1977]/1, 2.)

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Review by Péter Várnai
(Magyar Hírlap, January 6, 1977)

[…] The situation is diametrically opposed with György Kurtág’s new songs. Kurtág also writes contemporary music using contemporary means, but his music is alive, genuine, and authentic, realized as musical invention in every note. The seven songs set to Dezső Tandori’s poetic grotesques (Eszká-emlékzaj) continue in the vein of his earlier Four Capriccios. With a skill in tone painting and depiction that is almost reminiscent of Heinrich Schütz, he shapes the poems into music. He pairs the poems’ “everyday” vocabulary with equally “everyday” musical means, transforming both poem and song into something grotesque. That all of this never devolves into mere jest or simple tonal painting but instead coalesces into a musical whole – a logical musical process, true music – is only natural for a composer of such significance and stature on the world stage as György Kurtág. The cycle, written for soprano and violin, was performed superbly – and above all with great wit – by Júlia Pászthy and András Ligeti.

(„Bemutatóest a főiskolán”, Magyar Hírlap 10 [1977]/4, 6.)

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Review by Előd Juhász
(Program Booklet of the National Philharmonic , January 17, 1977)

[…] Júlia Pászthy, accompanied by violinist András Ligeti, performed György Kurtág’s new opus, whose full title is S. K. Remembrance Noise – Seven Songs on Poems by Dezső Tandori, op. 12. A magnificent composition!

It exerts an elemental force; it is impossible not to be drawn in – so evocative, witty, condensed, and beautiful! This time, the vocal part captivates us primarily with its effusive abundance of melody and, along with it, its rare emotional richness. The musical setting brilliantly preserves and refreshes the mood of the “satirical verses” (parodies?), where every word, every thought – indeed, every letter – carries genuinely dramatic significance. The violin “accompaniment” also suggests this unusual character, but only for a few moments; afterward, its part blends completely naturally with the vocal line. Each of the seven poems reveals a different microcosm – or, more aptly, a quip – that Kurtág recreates with consummate artistry. Despite – or rather, precisely because of – his wry touches and his solutions designed to provoke laughter, the music resonates throughout: artfully crafted, distinctive Kurtág music, blessed with artistic intuition. I doubt I am mistaken in saying that Kurtág’s oeuvre has been enriched by a significant new composition. […]

(„Bemutató hangverseny”, Országos Filharmónia Műsorfüzet [1977]/3, 31–32.)

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Review by György Kroó
(Élet és Irodalom, January 22, 1977)

György Kurtág’s recently premiered work, performed by Júlia Pászthy and András Ligeti, is another song cycle, the fourth of twelve numbered opuses. Since the Bornemisza cantata, the composer’s interest in the human voice and in the possibilities of setting poetry to music has noticeably grown. This series, written for soprano and violin and based on poems by Dezső Tandori, is now the fourth mature fruit of that fascination. Kurtág selected six poems from the collection Egy talált tárgy megtisztítása (The Cleaning of a Found Object) in the order in which they appear in the song cycle: “The Road to Damascus”, “Kant-Remembrance Noise”, “Kavafis-haiku”, “So that we never get out of practice”, “The sadness of the bare copula” and “Les adieux”, along with an excerpt (two lines from “Tape”) as the third piece in the cycle. The order of composition was different, but the entire cycle was completed over a period of ten months, between October 1974 and August 1975.

Those familiar with Tandori’s tone and poetic virtuosity may suspect that Eszká-emlékzaj is connected to Kurtág’s Bálint song cycle [Four capriccios, op. 8], further developing the capriccio strand of his oeuvre. This is indeed the case.

But direct currents also flow into the Tandori cycle from the lyrical depths of the cantata. The capriccio character is more evident in the musical rendering of poetic microforms – in the selection of musical movements and accompanying figures, such as the principles of perpetuum mobile and the rolling snowball in the final song. It also features flashes of illustrative material even within the songs themselves, such as the waltz at the beginning of “Kant-Remembrance Noise”, the blues allusion in the second line of the “Kavafis-haiku”, and the tango motif at the end of the first stanza of “Les adieux.” Kurtág settles for simply setting the poet’s wiggling irony to music in a single song (“So that we never get out of practice”): a six-note motif that bounces up and down, alters its intervals, and shifts its pitch according to the play on vowels (“There's solace / Thure's surlice / Thare's salace / Theere's sillice / Thoore's soolus”). I hasten to note, however, that the similarity in tone in this case does not imply a copy of the formal idea. The five-line poem is paired with a fantastically interesting, independent musical structure. Four short symmetrical lines, a symmetrical fragmentary line, then a long pair of lines in the accompaniment that shifts the direction, and a polyphonic, self-referential vocal motif sequence – partly symmetrical, partly domed in arrangement – extended to six lines with an echo of the fifth line of verse. In the other six songs, the independent musical structure also colors and reinterprets the poems in terms of content.

It’s very difficult to explain in words how the unique flavor – and indeed the technique – of the poems is preserved in the songs, and yet how these lines find their place within the timeless, grand forms of music and, at the same time, at least for me, how their significance grows. In “The Road to Damascus,” for example, whereas the poem remains open-ended and pierces the heart (“Now when it just the same as ever, / time's come, it is high time that –”), the song brings it to a close, framing it, and because it departs from and returns to the perfect fifth, it offers a different perspective. In “Kant-Remembrance Noise,” the new perspective emerges from the contrast between “outside” and “inside” (the vocal part preserves the poetic rhyme and even relates the two complete lines to each other in terms of interval), and this contrast is associated not only with two different genres (waltz and buzzing, respectively), but the latter is also transformed into a hallucination, an inner substance (sul ponticello); at the same time, it is linked to the home symbol of the minor third, shrouded in the shadow of a seventh. Taken together, this is essentially different from the poem. Since the two lines of “Tape” are a fragment, I cannot compare them directly to the poem. However, it can be said that they deal with the relationship between a single, constantly recurring note and a closed musical circuit. The vocal part – let’s call it the “brain” – switches at the penultimate moment (it is the note closest to, or, if you will, farthest from, the constant), and after the circuit closes, these two repeated vocal notes become the memory itself: “This I want to keep in memory. / Oh yes. Want to keep a memory of this.” The musical wonder of the “Cavafis-haiku” lies in its ability to convey, through the mistuning of a harmony, the sadness that washes over us between the poem’s two lines: “It’s already half past two! How quickly a year has passed.” The beginning resonates even in the closing chords, which – following the blues-style passage (which to me sounds more like the ticking of a clock or the chirping of birds) – are so strikingly different from the harmonies that quietly open the poem. The sixth song is a magnificent example of a composer’s interpretation: “I should have liked it to be so. / It wasn't so. / I asked: be it so. / So 'twas.” Once again, the musical setting follows a dual path of vocal and instrumental parts. The instrumental formula creates a four-part structure: the first and last sections provide a frame, while the inner pair interacts with the lyrical-vocal motif. It preserves the verse rhymes and semantic connections, but, by using specific musical devices – increasing volume and duration – it alters the mood of the key phrase, turning “I asked” into a command. The final poem is the only two-stanza piece in the cycle; the music is composed as a single unit. The instrumental and vocal lines run together until the complete form reveals itself, after which the vocal part breaks through the strophic instrumental structure. This, in turn, inspires the vocal line to embrace asymmetry; then, left alone like a good student, it recites the disrupted lesson. The poem’s title (“Les adieux”) refers both to the end of the cycle and to the parting gift we receive from it. The poem confronts us: “The endless confrontations, identifications: turned and turned around road sign boards, guideposts, are particularly fatal for those who always stand move on.” The song unfolds at the very end and offers comfort in the way only masterpieces can, whatever their subject may be.

I can only point to the remarkable unity that permeates the style and expressive range of the seven songs, making them a true cycle. The exclusive, homogeneous sound of the solo violin and the human voice; the resonance of the violin’s open strings that permeates the entire series (the materiality of the texture, its acoustic beauty); the consistent intonation of the intervals, the order of the movements, the logical progression of moods (the second song is a genre piece, the fifth a scherzo, the seventh a finale), the interrelated variety of formal patterns, or even a secret thread that links two songs placed side by side: the harmony of one (“There's solace”) offers solace to the other (“It's half past two!”).

The Tandori song cycle is Kurtág’s “simplest” composition published to date. In the strictest sense, it is devoid of artifice. It barely touches the poems, gently enfolding them in the “garment” of music. The elements of the score may seem like clichés, but only through their function and interrelationships do they become the spokespeople for unique, inimitable poetry. If a non-poet, or even a slightly less talented composer, were to work in a similar manner, the result would be either primitive or affected. Kurtág’s simplicity – whether in his musical material, compositional style, or technique – is of unparalleled value and a unique phenomenon in contemporary Hungarian music and, in my opinion, in the music of the entire world. Today, his work is free of all constraints. His weighty words are charged with energy and passion, yet the poet also marvels at the harmony of the world, revealing the truth as it is. Kurtág’s brevity, focus, and ability to get to the heart of the matter make him comparable to Anton Webern among the composers of our century. Yet he is free as a bird. With a light flutter of his wings, he soars above the heads of scholastic musicians of one sort or another. For us, his art represents the organic unity and continuity of the past and the landscape of European musical culture.

(“Eszká-emlékzaj,” Élet és Irodalom 21 [1977]/4, 13.)

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Review by János Kárpáti
(Muzsika, March 1, 1977)

[…] György Kurtág’s composition Eszká-emlékzaj, based on poems by Dezső Tandori, directly continues the four Pilinszky songs premiered in the fall of 1975; indeed, in some respects, it reflects the new artistic direction begun there even more radically and consistently. While in those songs the ensemble accompanying the vocal part gradually expands, here the entire cycle is accompanied by a single violin, representing the most ascetic reduction of instruments. We know of hardly any other 20th-century composer who could have offered such a complete artistic experience, such inexhaustible richness and concision through a duet of singing voice and violin as Kurtág does here in this cycle. Let us add that the literary material is similarly aphoristic, with a staggering density of thought, depth, and humor. From the question mark of “The Road to Damascus”, through the chilling jokes of “Kant-Remembrance Noise” and “So that we never get out of practice”, a short but breathtakingly steep ascent leads to the intellectual heights of “Les adieux”. Only Kurtág could have set to music, after the Dostoevskian horror and density of the Pilinszky songs, a similarly concise yet fundamentally different kind of lyricism. Here we sense the humor of the Four Capriccios, based on the poems of István Bálint, returning – and indeed reaching its full expression – because Kurtág is visibly and palpably more confident as he treads the more difficult path. In the Four Capriccios, a larger chamber ensemble accompanied the soprano voice; here, it is reduced to a single instrument. This brings to mind the seventh melodrama from Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, in which the singer is accompanied by a single flute: whereas there the two parts merge into an almost homogeneous texture through contrapuntal interweaving, here the singing voice and the violin exist in separate worlds, in separate spheres, each following the model of its own distinct character.

A multifaceted, wittily irreverent, and astonishingly profound world unfolds in György Kurtág’s latest song cycle, within a system of expression reduced to the extreme, in a wholly new kind of simplicity. This simplicity, however, has nothing in common with the neo-primitivism of certain contemporary trends. Kurtág’s linguistic simplicity does not arise from an artificial impoverishment of ideas or from ostentatious, “scandalous to the bourgeoisie” gestures, but rather from a distillation that intensifies the self-restraint and economy of works such as the Duos for violin and cimbalom and the Bornemisza Concerto, and is capable of endowing every note with a background and content that cannot be described in words.

The Eszká-emlékzaj bears opus number 12, which in more ordinary cases would mark the first chapter of a budding composer’s career. In the case of György Kurtág, however, it represents a true pinnacle in the career of a great master.

The great responsibility of premiering this work – which is extraordinarily difficult despite its simplicity – was shouldered by two highly talented young artists, Júlia Pászthy and András Ligeti; thanks to them, we immediately formed a positive and unforgettable impression of Kurtág’s new work. Among the other performers at the concert, we should also mention two outstanding interpreters of Zoltán Jeney’s work: Zoltán Szűcs and Pál Petz. As we have already noted, Zoltán Kocsis’s composition has been performed by so many musicians that we cannot even attempt to list them all.

(“Bemutatók krónikája,” Muzsika 20 [1977]/3, 24–26.)