One of the most extensive branches belongs to Dávid Kurtág (c. 1799, Domony–1864, Békéscsaba), whose gravestone has also survived in the Jewish cemetery in Békéscsaba. The 1852 census already indicates that he was a teacher, making him one of the first educators in the local Jewish community. His descendants believe that he also served as cantor for the Jewish community, a role closely related to his teaching. The community’s respect for him is further evident in the inscription on his tombstone:

Here lies the pious and upright man, a rabbi of outstanding learning, kind and honest,
who devoted himself to the Torah from his youth, our teacher and master
David Hersch Kurtág,
who passed away on Tuesday, the 5th of Elul, in the year 5624.
May his soul be bound in the bond of life.

His wife was Teréz Perlusz (c. 1810–1865, Békéscsaba), with whom he had seven children, six of whom are known to have descendants. Both of his sons also founded large families. Emánuel Kurtág (1838–1917) had twelve children (!) from his marriage to Hanna Grünbaum, while Ábrahám Bernát Kurtág (1848–1932) also had twelve children (!) with Hanna Rosner. In addition, taking into account the daughters of Dávid Kurtág, we currently have civil registry records for a total of 51 (!) grandchildren. The living male and female descendants identified so far are scattered across many countries around the world, including Hungary, France, the United States, England, Slovakia, and Israel. Below, we focus on two branches of Bernát Kurtág’s descendants in which musical talent has emerged strongly, though we certainly do not rule out the possibility that other, currently unknown members of this large family have also pursued musical careers.

Bernát Kurtág worked as a merchant; in the 1920s, he was involved in the food trade in Békéscsaba. This may have influenced his eldest son, Dezső Kurtág (1873, Békéscsaba–1941, Oradea), who also began his career in the food trade but increasingly turned toward more specialized, higher-quality spices and colonial goods, the associated delicatessen shops, and ultimately the restaurant business. It is worth taking a closer look at his career, as he became an active participant in the turn-of-the-century coffeehouse scene, whose strange, vibrant life may later have influenced his son as well. Dezső Kurtág learned the hospitality and retail trades in Selmecbánya, where he worked for several years in one of the city’s largest spice and delicatessen shops. He then began his independent career in Győr, where, together with his brother-in-law, Pál Gyárfás (Goldspitzer), he opened and ran the Kisfaludy Coffeehouse for five years. The Győri Hírlap wrote the following about the café in 1899: “The Art Nouveau Kisfaludy Café is causing a sensation. A Negro, a lively Negro, walks there beneath the nymph-like paintings, occasionally tossing his shiny black ringleted hair with flair. He is a highly educated young man. He speaks fourteen languages fluently, and if Allah allows his beard to grow even longer, he may learn even more. Gyárfás, the café owner, acquired him in Budapest.”

The Kisfaludy Café, which quickly became popular, was sold at a good profit; according to the August 11, 1905 issue of the newspaper Független Magyarország, they made 30,000 forints on the deal. In 1903, however, they made a major move: Pál Gyárfás and Dezső Kurtág relocated their headquarters to Nagyvárad, one of the country’s fastest-growing provincial cities, where they opened the Bihar Café at a cost of 60,000 forints. It quickly became a popular venue for social life in Nagyvárad after it became home to the city’s first motion picture screenings. However, things did not go as smoothly as they had in Győr, because Gyárfás soon withdrew from the business with heavy losses. The brothers-in-law also went their separate ways: Gyárfás moved to Budapest, where he first took over the Schön Café at the corner of Nagymező Street and Bajcsy-Zsilinszky Road (then Váci Boulevard), but it went completely bankrupt, accumulating enormous debts, from which he briefly fled to America. A few years later, he returned to Budapest and took over the management of the Medical Casino. However, his spinal injury had become so severe that on December 1, 1908, he threw himself from their third-floor apartment at 24/b Teréz Boulevard into the courtyard and died.

Unlike his brother-in-law, Dezső Kurtág’s career in Nagyvárad took a more favorable turn. By January 1904, he had also withdrawn from the operation of the Bihar and taken over the Lloyd Café, where he immediately introduced electric lighting and, as a new solution, installed electric ventilators to eliminate smoke from the café. He continued the motion picture screenings at the Lloyd as well, which the contemporary press reported as follows: “Every evening, moving picture and magic lantern shows are presented in the pleasant surroundings of the Lloyd Café. The latest films are shown, providing highly enjoyable entertainment. Two performances daily featuring a new family program. Free admission; performances begin at 8 o’clock. With excellent drinks, a cold buffet, and attentive service, we respectfully ask for your patronage, Dezső Kurtág, café owner.” In addition, variety shows were held at the Lloyd, where one of the most popular performers was Mariska Rienzi, “Oradea’s beloved eccentric singer.” In 1905, Master Rogee performed at the café; he was “a European instrumental mimic and whistler who captivated the large and distinguished audience with his sensational, humorous performance.” In addition to the Lloyd, Dezső Kurtág also rented the Trade Hall for a short period.

Dezső Kurtág ran the Lloyd until October 16, 1909, when he moved to Nyíregyháza, where he took over the newly built Royal Hotel and Café: “Under the name Royal, I am opening a thoroughly modern café and hotel, furnished in the style of the capital and meeting even the most demanding standards,” he announced of his new venture, where bowling alleys and game rooms also awaited the genteel café clientele. The Royal opened on February 22, 1910, but Dezső Kurtág did not run it for long; his heart drew him back to Nagyvárad.

Upon his return, he purchased Molnár Confectionery on Bémer Square and transformed it into a lavish café called Elite. It opened its doors on November 14, 1910, and soon became a favorite haunt of the city’s most distinguished citizens thanks to its confectionery specialties. After the opening, the Elite Café was described as follows: “…It has made our greatest pride, the panorama of Bémer Square, even more beautiful, more dazzling, and more metropolitan. The walls of the old, intimate Molnárda have opened up, gleaming mirrors shine from every corner, and the old tables have been replaced by tasteful, exquisite booths. … Dezső Kurtág’s long-standing, excellent reputation is an absolute guarantee that the café’s management is in the best hands…”.

A year later, the press remained generous with its praise: “The new tenant, Dezső Kurtág, has preserved this charming atmosphere and, at great personal expense, has created a true café-restaurant modeled after those in major cities – complete with modern conveniences, every comfort, and splendid grandeur – in place of the old confectionery. Since its recent opening, it has already become the most intimate and beloved entertainment venue for Oradea’s elite.”

In the following years, he further expanded the café by purchasing neighboring storefronts and then, in a bold move, discontinued the musical evenings, offering guests quiet, peaceful entertainment. The bold move paid off, and, indeed, Dezső Kurtág, ahead of his time, banned smoking inside the café. “Riviera in Oradea. This name, a testament to proud local patriotism, was given to the laurel-fringed terrace of the Elite Café by its regulars, who came there to relax in the summer heat.”

According to an anecdote, on June 28, 1914—a fateful day not only in the history of the Monarchy but also in the history of the entire world – one of Hungary’s most significant poets, Endre Ady, was found on the Elite’s terrace in the company of the bourgeois radical politician Oszkár Jászi. While sipping coffee on the terrace, they received news of the assassination in Sarajevo and the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

“What will come of this?” asked Oszkár Jászi, distraught.

“World war…” replied Ady.

The war years and the accompanying restrictions made the hospitality business increasingly difficult, as even coffee was rationed. Following the Treaty of Trianon and the change in government, Dezső Kurtág embarked on a new venture in 1921, opening the Lucullus delicatessen, which became one of the first of its kind in Romania. He later left this business and founded the Kurtág Buffet. The shop offered first-class delicacies, as evidenced by the fact that when it was burglarized in 1930, and only small change was found in the cash register, the burglars began to plunder the inventory: “…they ate all the goose livers, packed up the ham, dozens of sardines, and as many bottles of wine as they could carry. Naturally, they chose wines from the Rhine, Tokaj, and the finest Romanian cellars.”

A later Oradea commercial almanac remembered Dezső Kurtág as follows: “A well-known, reliable merchant who lives only for his work and his family, yet participates in every social and charitable initiative.”

He did a great deal for his family; he and his wife, Hermina Goldner, had three children: Imre, Rózsi, and Pál. He paid close attention to their upbringing; according to a 1909 newspaper ad, he was seeking a qualified governess for his two older children. However, the bloody and turbulent history of the 20th century tore their family apart in a horrific manner. In the 1920s and 1930s, he sent his sons abroad to study; he did not want them to remain in Romania, but he could not afford to educate them in Hungary because of the numerus clausus. Only his daughter, Rózsi, remained in Oradea; later, her husband, Árpád Kallós, also became his father-in-law’s business partner.

In 1940, under the Second Vienna Award, Oradea was returned to Hungary, but this did not bode well for the city’s Jewish community. The Jewish laws already in effect in Hungary were extended to Oradea as well. In early October, Chief of Staff Henrik Werth, while visiting Northern Transylvania, arbitrarily tasked the military administration with implementing a comprehensive “Aryanization” plan: “Hotels, restaurants, pastry shops, pharmacies, and similar businesses owned by Jews – primarily those managed by the owners of larger establishments – must be taken over by Christians, or transferred to Christian ownership, in such a way that they come into the hands of reliable, reputable, and financially sound Hungarians.” The decree almost certainly affected Uncle Dezső’s business interests as well, particularly because the military commander of Oradea, Károly Rajnay, hastened to implement the higher-level decree.

On November 24, 1941, Dezső Kurtág’s decades-long creative energy and work ethic could no longer sustain him through his latest trials: he hanged himself in their Oradea apartment. According to a brief report in the newspaper Ellenzék, “genuine concern for his sons living abroad weighed heavily on his mind, and it is considered likely that this led him to commit suicide.” Given that he himself had sent his sons abroad in the 1920s and 1930s, the newspaper’s assumption is hardly accurate. It is far more likely that the collapse of his business, lost as a result of the anti-Jewish laws, was the underlying cause.

His wife, Hermina Goldner, their daughter Rózsi Kurtág, and his son-in-law, Árpád Kallós, were deported in 1944; none of them returned from Auschwitz. His American and French grandchildren believed that Uncle Dezső had committed suicide at the start of the deportation. His name even appears among the victims of the Jewish community of Oradea. In reality, however, Dezső Kurtág had already died in 1941, though it is highly likely that persecution and the loss of his civil rights drove him to his death as well.

Of his two sons, the younger, Pál Kurtág (1914–1992), studied medicine in Reims and Paris, France, beginning in 1933; under the name Paul Curtay, he became an outstanding dermatologist and a pioneer in the treatment of varicose veins. In France, a whole circle formed around the Jewish refugee intellectuals from Oradea, mainly doctors and musicians. During the German occupation, many of them managed, at great cost, to flee to the Toulouse region in southern France, where Paul also participated in the French resistance movement. Later, he gave up his medical career and devoted his energies to building an organization he had founded himself, the ADCV (Association for the Development of Character and Human Values). He had two sons and passed away in Paris in 1992. Paul visited Oradea in 1960. As his descendants noted with sad irony, because of Dezső Kurtág’s suicide, there was at least one grave in Oradea where he could go. An old colleague had kept a few items from Uncle Dezső’s estate and handed them over to Paul: a silk tablecloth, some silverware, and a painting. That was all that remained of a life spent as a wealthy restaurateur and merchant. Interestingly, in the 1980s, Paul contacted György Kurtág—who was living in Paris at the time—through , but they were unable to determine the exact nature of their relationship.

The older son also led an adventurous life. Imre Kurtág (1903–1984) was born in Győr, where his father began his career at the Kisfaludy Café. He began his musical studies alongside his sister in Nyíregyháza, at Rózsi Virányi’s music school, while his father managed the Royal Hotel there. He completed his secondary education at the main secondary school in Oradea, and continued his musical studies in Oradea under the guidance of conductor József Vomácska, a student of Antonín Dvořák. He then studied at the Vienna Conservatory as a student of Joseph Marx, eventually completing his studies in composition in Frankfurt. After finishing his studies, he tried to find work in Oradea, where he served as a répétiteur at the local theater, but was unable to secure a permanent position. So he went to Paris to try his luck, and indeed soon found himself in the circle of musical salons. There he met the theater director of Martinique, one of France’s Caribbean colonies, who offered the young Kurtág the position of conductor at the theater in the island’s capital, Fort-de-France, in 1924. The city had a population of sixty thousand at the time, and its theater primarily staged opera, comic opera, and operetta productions, essentially replicating the Parisian theater repertoire. They set out on this adventurous journey from Paris with a company of eighty people, which included a thirty-piece orchestra and fifty singers. In a 1925 report in the newspaper Ellenzék, Kurtág himself described life on the island, which at the time had a total population of 300,000. In addition to the indigenous Caribbean peoples, the colonial rulers later brought in Black African slaves, and significant Chinese and Japanese communities also settled there. The European colonial class was also very diverse, however: alongside the strong French presence, Spaniards and Italians also arrived; this ruling class viewed not only non-whites but also the newer European immigrants with suspicion. All of this resulted in a tense social atmosphere, into which various political and ideological currents drew further fault lines. Among Black people, for example, communist ideas quickly gained popularity; they even launched their own newspaper. As Imre Kurtág put it, in this tense environment, “local conflicts only subside within the walls of the theater.”

The position of principal conductor at the island’s theater seemed a promising springboard; Imre Kurtág spoke of future plans as follows: “According to the director’s plan, we will spend next year’s break in Argentina or Brazil, going on a concert tour for which I will also serve as musical director. We also have prospects for securing theater concessions in a few more major colonies—We’ll get that too. Management values my work so highly that they’ve already offered me a multi-year contract. This is unusual; no foreigner has ever been so fortunate.” His annual visits home to Oradea were not without their own share of good fortune either; in 1927, set off for the island of Martinique not alone, but in the company of Anna Büchler (1904–1940), also from Oradea, whom he married en route in Paris.

His final destination was not Latin America, but the United States: in 1928, he arrived in New York with his wife aboard the ship Dominica. That same year, he opened a music school where he taught piano and music theory. He also sought to find a place for himself within the local Hungarian community; for example, in 1932, he performed Bartók songs at a soirée hosted by the Ady Endre Society in New York. For a short time, he also served as music director for a New York radio station, and in 1930 he performed in Quebec, Canada. At the same time, however, he sought to explore new paths. He studied sociology at Columbia University and later taught there briefly, but he also wanted to test his skills in practice. He joined the Henry Street Settlement, a social initiative founded in the late 19th century in the Lower East Side slums of Manhattan. Initially, they focused primarily on providing free healthcare services, mainly by establishing a network of public health nurses, but they soon launched an increasing number of development and educational programs. The essence and guiding principle of the organization was that they did not try to help from the outside, but rather moved into the neighborhood, integrated into the community, and worked together to improve the environment and the lives of those living there. By 1937, Imre was already one of the organization’s leaders; according to a 1940 New York Times report, he was the director of the Workers Education School of the Henry Street Settlement.

By this time, both Imre Kurtág (in 1934 as Emeric Kurtagh) and his wife, Anna (in 1935), had obtained U.S. citizenship. Anna was teaching clothing design and construction at a vocational school for household science (Faculty School of Household Science and Arts) at the time. In 1937, they made one final visit home to see their elderly parents in Nagyvárad; on this occasion, Imre’s younger brother, Pali, also joined them from Paris. This was the last time the two brothers saw their parents. A few years later, in 1940, Anna died tragically young, after which Imre moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1942, he remarried, taking as his wife Cathryn Hitchcock (1913–2008), a San Francisco native who worked as a nurse at his former workplace, the Henry Street Settlement. They lived in New Orleans until the early 1950s, and their first two children were born there. Imre Kurtág continued his social work there as well.

In New Orleans, the Kingsley House was a settlement initiative similar to Henry Street in New York. It was also established in the late 19th century to provide community, educational, and social support to the poorer segments of society. Imre took over the leadership of the institution in 1941 and played a key role in its revitalization: he reorganized the board of directors, launched new programs, strengthened the role of professional social work, and sought to adapt the institution’s operations specifically to the “current social realities” of the era. She is credited with the so-called Kingsley House Extension Program (1945–1949), which launched youth and recreational programs in the neighborhood surrounding the Lane Cotton Mill, a district with a population that was partly white and partly African American. This initiative was considered extremely groundbreaking in the Southern states, as it operated as a racially dual program, extending its activities to both the white and Black populations. This alone openly defied the legally and socially highly segregated environment, yet Imre Kurtág’s efforts were, at best, merely a precursor to social integration as we understand it today. Serious controversies nevertheless erupted around the program: resistance from white parents, institutional and funding difficulties, high staff turnover, and the increasingly oppressive political atmosphere of the Cold War all undermined its operations. The conflict finally came to a head in 1949, when the House Un-American Activities Committee accused Kurtág of ties to communist organizations. Although Imre Kurtág denied the allegations, the board of directors forced him to resign and soon shut down the Kingsley House Extension Program as well. On the eve of the Black civil rights movements, Kurtág proved to be a cautious reformer who sought to find a middle ground toward social justice while avoiding open confrontation.

After leaving New Orleans, Imre took on the leadership of the Tau Beta Community House in Detroit. The house was located in the Hamtramck neighborhood, where around 1950, 12% of the population was Black African American, allowing Imre Kurtág to put his New Orleans experiences to good use. However, by the 1950s, a significant shift in attitudes had taken place, which also affected the American settlement movement. Many of the earlier challenges and problems that had emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries—such as mass urban poverty—or in the 1930s following the Great Depression, and for which the settlement movement had sought to offer solutions, ceased to exist as a result of the postwar American economic boom. Instead of the earlier programs tied to a central building, the focus shifted to problem-centered fieldwork, so the settlement movement’s services were reorganized into a more mobile form, with the creation of Neighborhood Service Organizations. Imre Kurtág played a decisive role in shaping and repositioning the new approach to social work; in the 1960s, he led the Detroit Neighborhood Service Organization.

There is no evidence that he was professionally involved in music after the early 1930s. Newspaper articles reporting on his 1937 visit to Oradea also emphasized only his achievements in social work on Henry Street. Imre Kurtág—Emeric Kurtagh—died in 1984 in Highland Park, near Detroit. His wife, Cathryn Hitchcock, outlived him by many years and passed away in Dearborn in 2008. They had two sons and a daughter, all of whom are still alive today.

There is another family worth mentioning in Dávid Kurtág’s branch of the family. Lajos Kurtág (1882, Kondoros – 1944, Auschwitz), a textile merchant, was the sixth child of Bernát Kurtág and Hanna Rosner. It was he who, in the 1930s, visited his relatives in Lugos by car during a business trip—meaning he was still aware of how and to what extent the branches of Dávid Kurtág and Zsigmond (Selig) Kurtág were related to one another. Lajos Kurtág married Jolán Szemere in Budapest in 1910; three daughters were born of their marriage: Anna Kurtág (1911–1949), Piroska Kurtág (1913–2019), and Edit Kurtág (1917–1944). All three daughters were students at Ernő Fodor’s Music School—mentioned earlier in connection with the Jakab Kurtág branch—during the 1920s. Piroska’s daughter, Ágnes Gádor, recalls this as follows: “Anca, the eldest daughter, learned to play the piano. Mami would have liked to learn the piano too, but since the instrument was already ‘taken,’ she started playing the violin. She attended the Fodor Music School, which at the time was equivalent to today’s secondary specialized school, that is, a conservatory.”

In the early 1930s, the family moved to the suburban area of Rákospalota, then still an independent village, a decision that would prove fatal a decade later. As rural Jews, the grandparents were deported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944, from which none of them returned. Their daughter, Edit Kurtág (née Südfeld), was also murdered there. Anna Kurtág (née Havas) did return home, but her health was so severely compromised that she died a few years after the war. Thus, Piroska was essentially the only member of the family to survive the war.

Piroska Kurtág studied at the Fodor Music School only until she graduated from high school, because thanks to her outstanding talent, she was admitted to the mathematics program at the university, where the world-renowned mathematician Professor Lipót Fejér became one of her mentors. Piroska Kurtág is credited with compiling the textbook Comprehensive Collection of Mathematics Problems, which was “dreaded” by generations of students and from which the mathematics high school graduation exam questions were drawn until the 2000s. She continued to take on private students until the age of 95; parents simply called her “miracle-working Aunt Piri” because she was able to bring even the most hopeless, failing students up to par within a semester. When the author of these lines visited Aunt Piri—then 97 years old—in 2010 with Dezső Kurtág’s descendants living in France, she switched effortlessly between Hungarian, French, and English, and even speaking German posed no problem for her in this little family-style Tower of Babel.

Piroska Kurtág married electrical engineer Endre Gádor (Gottlieb) (1905–1965) at the Újpest synagogue in 1941. They had two children: Ágnes Gádor and, after the war, Róbert. In the winter of 1944, Piroska was sent to an aircraft factory in Penig, Germany; her husband was continuously conscripted into forced labor during the war years and finally returned home from the Mauthausen camp in 1945. Their daughter, Ágnes, was therefore hidden with a Christian couple using false papers during the winter of 1944–1945.

Although Piroska eventually pursued a career in mathematics, her love of music remained with her until the end of her long life, and this also influenced her family. Her daughter Ágnes began learning to play the piano while still in elementary school and soon became involved in the choral movement. Her high school, the Szilágyi Erzsébet Girls’ High School choir, played a particularly significant role in this. From this, under the guidance of teacher Mária Katanics, the Szilágyi Erzsébet Chamber Choir emerged, which gained European renown. They won or achieved prestigious placements in numerous European choral competitions; in 1969, following the Arezzo competition, they performed in Castel Gandolfo before Pope Paul VI for “cultural diplomacy” purposes. She has also been a member of the Goldmark Choir since 1994.

Since her father owned a small electrical engineering plant in the 1930s and 1940s, Ágnes was not allowed to attend university for years after graduating from high school because she was classified as being of “Class X” origin, i.e., “class alien.” She was finally able to begin her university studies in 1965, majoring in library science and geography. After college, she began working at the National Technical Library in 1970, but through her connections in the choral world, she transferred to the Library of the Academy of Music the very next year—the very Academy of Music where her application had previously been rejected twice due to her lack of a music school diploma and her background. At the same time, she joined the National Council of Choirs, and her first writings on music criticism and music history were published. As a librarian at the Academy of Music, she attended the lectures on Arnold Schönberg given by library director János Kárpáti, and this is how she also ended up in György Kurtág’s chamber music course. Ágnes Gádor recalls it this way: “The third-year class at the time had to sing one- or two-part pieces from Heinrich Schütz’s Kleine geistliche Konzerte series (…) He spent a great deal of time on one of the pieces; he wasn’t satisfied with any of the performances. Then he called me over. ‘But Professor, I’m just a guest!’ I said. ‘That’s all right, come on in!’ he replied. (…) I sang the piece, and Kurtág said, ‘Well, you see, that’s how it should be performed!’”

At that time, her interests in music history and musicology centered primarily on Franz Schubert and the German Lied genre. She maintained a close relationship with the opera singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who did much to promote the acceptance of art song within the musical culture of his time. In 1978, Schubert’s letters were published in Hungarian, translated by Ágnes, by the Music Publishing House, marking the 150th anniversary of the composer’s death. From the 1980s onward, she also turned her attention increasingly to the institutional history of the Academy of Music and the library. In 1997, her joint publication with Gábor Szirányi on the history of the Academy of Music was released. By then, Ágnes Gádor had already become the deputy director of the Academy of Music Library in 1996, and then its director from 2005 until her retirement in 2012. Now retired, she wrote the history of the library, which was published in 2017 under the title “The History of the Library of the Academy of Music in Documents, 1875–2005.” He continued cataloging the Dunkl–Mihalovich collection and served as co-editor of a commemorative volume dedicated to Mária M. Katanics, head of the Erzsébet Szilágyi Women’s Choir. Today, even in his eighties, he remains an active member of the Goldmark Choir.