Composed in 1979, Omaggio a Luigi Nono (Op. 16) consists of six short a cappella movements. The Italian title and the dedication to Nono are merely the outer shell of the piece. Created at the urging of the Italian composer, this choral work was set to a Russian text and fits squarely among Kurtág’s Russian-inspired compositions: it is a peculiar sister piece to the Troussova-cycle, which was taking shape at that time. Its conceptual world continues partly in Troussova and in subsequent Russian-language song cycles, deepening the theme toward the individual, the subjective self, and lyrical subjectivity, and partly in the Russian choral works he began composing as early as 1980. These choral works open out toward Songs of Despair and Sorrow (Op. 18) in which the questions raised in Omaggio are ultimately answered in this later major work. The motto of the first movement of Omaggio (“…and life, if you look around with a cool gaze, is such an empty and silly joke…”) is the closing line of the Lermontov poem, which would later become the text of the first movement of Songs of Despair and Sorrow. The second movement of Omaggio is based on a poem by Akhmatova, one that is quite different and more subjective in nature than the Akhmatova poem set to music in the large choral works. The text of its final movement is taken from Rimma Dalos’s cycle titled The Writings of the Apostle Paul Addressed to Me: “And the great, wide door / is open for me. / And I dare not pass through it” (Translation by Geoffrey Norris) Humanity’s hesitation, doubt, fear of the transcendent, and dread of death are expressed in the music of the movement’s middle section, in a single extended measure whose solo voices foreshadow Magdalene’s sobbing in the fifth movement of the later choruses. In the music, at the beginning and end of the final movement of Omaggio, stands the gate that the individual dares not enter, and in the fifth movement of the later choral works, the mother – whom no one dares to look at – also stands there; she stands there in the music. The great question – the question of death – which remains open at the end of Omaggio finds its answer and is resolved in the silence of the ritual concluding the other Russian choral cycle, Songs of Despair and Sorrow.

(Excerpt from Márta Papp’s essay György Kurtág’s “Russian Choirs”; Holmi 18 [2006]/6, 736.)