Original title: Hét dal
Subtitle: To poems by Amy Károlyi and a haiku by Kobayashi Issa in the Hungarian translation by Dezső Tandori, for soprano and cimbalom (or piano)
Dedication: „To Adrienne Csengery for 3 January 1982"
Premiere location: Glasgow
Premiere date: 1985.10.07.
Premiere performers: Adrienne Csengery (soprano); Márta Fábián (cimbalom)
Lyricist name: Amy Károlyi, Kobayashi Issa
Language: Hungarian
Composition end date: 1982.01.09
Genre: Chamber Music with Voice
Instrumentation: soprano, cimbalom / piano
Duration (minutes): 10
Year of publication: 1987
Publisher: Editio Musica Budapest
Publication number: Z. 12499 – ISMN: M-080-12499-4

1 Slowly, o so slowly
2 Balance
3 Where does it end…? (Chorale)
4 With lock on the door
5 Labyrinth (Perpetuum mobile)
6 What remained…  (Evocation of a soul)
7 Ars poetica

 

1. Amy Károlyi: Slowly, o so slowly
To sink like a flower on water,
unconsciously
slowly, so slowly, little by little,
while the sinker learns to forget.

2. Amy Károlyi: Balance
Excess and restraint: these two
will in the end tear me in two.

3. Amy Károlyi: Where does it end…?
Where does sound end?
Where does silence begin?

4. Amy Károlyi: With a lock on the door...
Stumbling along the boundary between the tolerated
and the forbidden I stand amazed by the world.
Even like this it's beautiful, with these half-words,
in this half-light, with a lock on the door.

5. Amy Károlyi: Labyrinth
Labyrinth. No Ariadne, no thread.

6. Amy Károlyi: What remained…
What remained
one morning
one afternoon
the hyacinth scent
the hyacinth left behind.

7. Issa Kobayashi: Ars Poetica
Climb carefully and slow, snail
steady as you go,
up the slope of Mount Fuji.

(Translated by Peter Sherwood)

Reviews of the world premiere

Review by János Maróthy
(Muzsika, August 1983)

[…] György Kurtág’s songs – composed for voice and cimbalom and compiled into a cycle (Six Songs on Poems by Amy Károlyi and Ars Poetica, the latter based on a poem by Issa Kobajashi, translated by Dezső Tandori)—were performed by Adrienne Csengery and Márta Fábián with the nuance Kurtág’s works demand. These are internal moments that seem to stretch endlessly, posing a major challenge for both performers and audience. Here, attention cannot be allowed to wander even for a second; every microgesture must be executed with absolute precision and understood in every detail. […]

(Muzsika 26 [1983]/8, 42.)

______

Review by Márta Grabócz
(The New Hungarian Quarterly, 1984)

[…] György Kurtág’s Op. 22, Six Songs, composed to poems by Amy Károlyi, and the Ars Poetica prepared from the Kobayasi Issa–Dezső Tandori haiku, is a new piece (this time with cimbalom accompaniment) belonging to the series of vocal cycles composed since the Messages of the Late R. V. Troussova. The work presents us with a multiplicity of characters and genres, condensing the whole of musical history in its system of symbols: from mediaeval polyphony, through the baroque fugue and the classical dualistic principle, to almost every stylistic–technical achievement of the 20th century – moreover, the meanings and intonations conveyed by the compositional principles embracing musical history. It was given a superb performance by Adrienne Csengery and Márta Fábián. […]

(The New Hungarian Quarterly 25 [1984]/1, 209.)