Premiere location: Budapest
Premiere date: 1990.10.08.
Premiere performers: Gellért Tihanyi (clarinet); Zoltán Gál (viola); Márta Kurtág (piano)
Composition end date: 1990
Genre: Chamber Music
Instrumentation: clarinet, bass drum, viola, piano
Duration (minutes): 10
Year of publication: 1994
Publisher: Editio Musica Budapest
Publication number: Z. 13809 – ISMN: M-080-13809-0
1 (merkwürdige Pirouetten des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler…) – Vivo
2 (E. – Der begrenzte Kreis…) – Molto semplice, piano e legato
3 (…und wieder zuckt es schmerzlich F. um die Lippen…) – Feroce, agitato
4 (Felhő valék, már süt a nap …) (töredék-töredék) – Calmo, scorrevole
5 In der Nacht – Presto
6 Abschied (Meister Raro entdeckt Guillaume de Machaut) – Adagio, poco andante
The title of the movements in English:
1 (the strange pirouettes of conductor Johannes Kreisler…) – Vivo
2 (E. – The closed circle…) – Molto semplice, piano e legato
3 (…and F.’s lips once again tremble painfully…) – Feroce, agitato
4 (I was a cloud; now the sun is shining…) (fragment-fragment) – Calmo, scorrevole
5 In the Night – Presto
6 Farewell (Meister Raro discovers Guillaume de Machaut) – Adagio, poco andante
It is an instrumental work with no text.
Hommage à R. Sch. (Op. 15d), composed for clarinet, viola, and piano and completed in 1990, is just as closely linked – in terms of its genesis – to the guitar pieces composed in the second half of the 1970s (which were intended for publication under the Op. 15 number but ultimately never published) as the piece entitled A kis csáva (Op. 15b) and Grabstein für Stephan (Op. 15c). Few works illustrate how deeply references to music history permeate György Kurtág’s compositions more clearly than Hommage à R. Sch. The system of references begins with the title and the instrumentation: the title refers to Robert Schumann, whose final works include the trio Märchenerzählungen (Op. 132), written for the same instrumentation. “the strange pirouettes of conductor Johannes Kreisler” – so reads the subtitle of the opening movement, referring to the fictional character created by E.T.A. Hoffmann, a key figure in early Romantic literature. The title of the second movement (E.—The closed circle…) invokes not only another fictional character – one of Robert Schumann’s alter egos, the level-headed Eusebius (indicated by the letter “E”)—but also Franz Kafka, insofar as the music literally quotes the 6th movement from Part III of Kafka-Fragments (Op. 24), whose full text reads: “The closed circle is pure.” Eusebius’s friend and counterpart, the passionate Florestan, is conjured from Schumann’s fantasy world in the third movement: “…and F.’s lips once again tremble painfully…” (The title of the ninth piece from Schumann’s piano cycle Davidsbündlertänze is “Here Florestan ended, and his lips trembled painfully”). The title of the fourth movement is a quote from the Hungarian poet Attila József (“I was a cloud; now the sun is shining”), and it is a transcription of an earlier, unpublished piano piece by Kurtág. The title of the fifth movement, “In der Nacht,” is the same as that of the sixth piece in Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, and in the final movement, Eusebius and Florestan’s superego, Raro Mester, takes the stage. This movement – which is longer than the previous five movements combined – bears the title “Farewell – Raro Mester Discovers Guillaume de Machaut.” In addition to the three instruments, a bass drum remains onstage throughout the piece and, like “Chekhov’s gun,” is finally fired: the last note – like a period at the end of a sentence – is a pianissimo bass drum beat, which, according to the score, is to be played by the clarinetist.
No sheet music files available for this piece.
Reviews of the World Premiere
Marianne Pándi’s Review
(Magyar Nemzet, October 15, 1990)
[…] Kurtág’s piano–viola–clarinet trio, performed by Márta Kurtág, Zoltán Gál, and Gellért Tihanyi, features elements that are both appealing and consistent with the composer’s earlier chamber music. However, I could not reconcile the title and the Schumann references in the individual movements with the musical material itself; some guidance from the composer would have been helpful. […]
(„Zenei jegyzetek: Korunk zenéje”, Magyar Nemzet 53 [1990]/242, 7.)
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Review by Péter Balassa
(Muzsika, December 1990)
[…] I noted that the stile concitato was featured in this year’s contemporary music series in a way that stood out from everything else. This was particularly evident in the concerts on October 5 and 8, in works by Giacinto Scelsi, Zoltán Jeney, and György Kurtág. […] The recurring lesson of this concert series – which the Kurtág composition seems to summarize – is that being moved in a genuine, profound, elemental way, the disciplined experience of life’s intensity, arises precisely from the intensification of technical mastery, precision, cultivation, erudition, and intuition – from the intensification of these qualities, as it were, through the coercion of the material and the compression of its possibilities. The rationality that shapes the material and the intensity that is released – the material’s own unique mystery – do not exclude but instead presuppose one another. The conversational nature of the music is evident even in the movement titles of Kurtág’s instrumental composition: the six movements are, in effect, a compressed biography of Schumann. The tonal disposition and structure, however, do not contain direct references to Schumann, but rather articulate the music as a personality through the relationships between ABEGG and A–Eb–C–Eb. In Kurtág’s oeuvre, the strand that transforms music history, musical temperament, and personality into compositional themes and narratives is part of an even deeper, more comprehensive endeavor: his interest in language, speech, human communication, and systems of relationships. Even in this purely instrumental set of movements, one can hear Kurtág’s distinctive, prolific multilingualism – his history of music, which is at once a unique, musicalized history of rhetoric and, ultimately, an intense, reverent drama (opera) condensed into a chamber work. In the densely interwoven, complex “texture” of Schumann’s musical personality and his quiet anguish (especially in the fourth and sixth movements), one of the dramatic figures of music history steps toward us; through him, Kurtág’s distinctive trait comes to the fore: in a certain sense, he is always writing opera, even if he does not call his works by that name. Here, the listener feels at home – not in an experiential-aesthetic, “intoxicating” sense, but within a clearly articulated, speech-like, dramatic space. This is a world full of expression – familiar, understandable, and worth learning – in which we see the human being as he argues, engages in dialogue, erupts, and falls silent. At the same time, it showcases the finest possibilities of the Music of Our Time series within the aforementioned situation, which offers only scant hope. It presents the possibility of breaking free from the abstraction of purely aesthetic consciousness, allowing us to experience the work of art as a truth of life, as intensity, as a problem of life, and as a reality that addresses us directly. After all, there can be no doubt that those were truly great eras when people, without any aesthetic concept of art, surrounded themselves with a form of expression – works of art – whose vital function was clear to everyone and offered no one mere aesthetic pleasure.
(„Korunk Zenéje és az élet intenzitása”, Muzsika 33 [1990]/12, 39–40.)
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Review by Máté Hollós
(Kritika, January 1991)
[…] This year, György Kurtág completed his clarinet-piano-viola trio titled Hommage à R. Sch., based on sketches he had been working on since 1975. The “cryptic” titles of the six movements encourage listeners to speculate and analyze. With the exception of the last one, the movements are aphoristic in a manner characteristic of the composer (some are five measures long, and some are as short as three measures), suggesting thought patterns such as “if…then…,” “but…,” and “by the way….” This work, which demands the highest level of chamber music performance, was successfully premiered by Gellért Tihanyi, Márta Kurtág, and Zoltán Gál. […]
(„Korunk zenéje ’90”, Kritika 20 [1991]/1, 39–40.)
No sheet music files available for this piece.
