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György Kurtág
György Kurtág (b. 1926) is widely regarded as one of the foremost composers in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first. Born in Romania, he received crucial training in Paris from Olivier Messiaen and Marianne Stein. He was also shaped by his broadening contact there with the music of Webern and such challenging literary works as the plays of Samuel Beckett. After many years in Hungary, teaching at the Budapest Academy of Music, Kurtág settled near Bordeaux with his wife Márta. The two regularly perform duo-recitals of his music. In 2006, his . . . concertante . . . (2003, for violin, viola and orchestra) won the coveted Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. This unique set of interviews with Kurtág, alone or with his wife, gives a fascinating insight into the composer's personality, which is marked by shyness but also an unquenchable thirst for impressions of every kind (artistic, natural and human). The two speak with disarming openness about their lives -- the background against which masterpieces like Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova (1976-80, for soprano and chamber orchestra) or Stele (1994, for orchestra) were written. The analysis of certain of Kurtág's works, especially of . . . concertante . . ., shows the way that his mind works: no system, no dogma, no formulae -- rather, basic human emotions expressed through means that speak directly to the listener's innermost feelings. The Hungarian music publisher Bálint András Varga has spent nearly forty years working for and with composers. He has published several books, including extensive interviews with Lutoslawski, Berio, and Xenakis.
eBook
György Kurtág
Uniquely revealing interviews with one of the world's greatest living composers.György Kurtág (b. 1926) is widely regarded as one of the foremost composers in the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first. Born in Romania, he received crucial training in Paris from Olivier Messiaen and Marianne Stein. He was also shaped by his broadening contact there with the music of Webern and such challenging literary works as the plays of Samuel Beckett. After many years in Hungary, teaching at the Budapest Academy of Music,Kurtág settled near Bordeaux with his wife Márta. The two regularly perform duo-recitals of his music. In 2006, his . . . concertante . . . (2003, for violin, viola and orchestra) won the coveted Grawemeyer Award for MusicComposition. This unique set of interviews with Kurtág, alone or with his wife, gives a fascinating insight into the composer's personality, which is marked by shyness but also an unquenchable thirst for impressions of every kind [artistic, natural and human]. The two speak with disarming openness about their lives -- the background against which masterpieces like Messages of the Late Miss R. V. Troussova (1976-80, for soprano and chamber orchestra) or Stele (1994, for orchestra) were written. The analysis of certain of Kurtág's works, especially of . . . concertante . . ., shows the way that his mind works: no system, no dogma, no formulae -- rather, basic human emotions expressed through means that speak directly to the listener's innermost feelings. The Hungarian music publisher Bálint András Varga has spent nearly forty years working for and with composers.He has published several books, including extensive interviews with Lutoslawski, Berio, and Xenakis.
eBook
A Brief Biography of György Kurtág
György Kurtág was born on February 19, 1926, at Lugos (Lugoj in Romanian) in the Bánát region of Romania. He has been a Hungarian citizen since 1948 and has held dual Hungarian and French citizenship since 2002.Kurtág started playing the piano at age five with lessons from Klára Vojkicza- Peia. In subsequent years, music-making with his mother was an important source of inspiration: they played arrangements for piano duet of symphonies by Haydn and Beethoven as well as overtures by Mozart. The first genuine pedagogue in his life, the piano teacher Magda Kardos at Temesvár (Timisşoara), exerted a lifelong influence on Kurtág, even in the field of composition. His first teacher of composition (harmony and counterpoint) was Max Eisikovits, also at Temesvár (Timisşoara).In September 1945, Kurtág sat for an entrance examination at the Budapest Academy of Music—it was on that occasion that he made the acquaintance of György Ligeti who was to remain his friend until the latter's death in 2006.Kurtág began his studies at the Budapest Academy of Music in 1946. His professors included Pál Kadosa (piano), Leó Weiner (chamber music), Sándor Veress and subsequently Ferenc Farkas (composition); another important influence was Pál Járdányi. Kurtág received his degree in piano and chamber music in 1951, and in composition in 1955.In 1947, Kurtág married Márta Kinsker who has since been of decisive significance in every area of his life: as wife, as mother of their son, György Kurtág Jr. (b. 1954), as pianist, and also as the first listener and critic of his compositions in gestation.In 1957–58, Kurtág attended the courses of Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud in Paris. It was, however, Hungarian psychologist Marianne Stein, who made the greatest impact. Not only did she help him find the way out of the crisis that had paralyzed his work as a composer for several years, she also opened a new chapter in his career (“Marianne halved my life”); she showed him a new direction. Hence the dedications of the String Quartet, Op. 1 and of the Kafka Fragments, Op. 24, to Marianne Stein.During the months in Paris, Kurtág attended concerts of the Domaine musical under the baton of its founder, Pierre Boulez, and heard several of Boulez's compositions—an experience that was to prove significant for his thinking.
Book Chapter
Introduction: A Portrait Sketch of György Kurtág in Three Sittings
Indeed, this book cannot aspire to be more than a portrait sketch. Experience with work on our interviews, once their texts had been securely saved on the computer, taught me that the guiding principle governing Kurtág's life—penetrating below the surface, penetrating ever deeper—was also true of this genre. There was no subject, no scrap of memory, no experience that, once considered in a new context, did not conjure up further important details that demanded inclusion in the material. The range of associations cajoled from his subconscious was fascinating.That was one aspect of our encounters that rendered them so unique, thrilling, and frustrating: I never knew what other questions I should have posed to bring those hidden treasures to the surface. Every now and again, months after his first perusing the text, the correction of a word or of a particular phrase would produce a fact adding another trait to the outlines of his portrait.For instance, a basic feature of Kurtág's personality has been his need to establish human relationships that last a lifetime—even after the death of a friend. They continue to influence his thinking, his work as a composer, and his private life, even posthumously. (“For me, Ligeti is more alive than ever,” he wrote in the introduction to his homage in memory of the composer.) Felician Brînzeu, Max Eisikovits, Magda Kardos, Stefan Romasşcanu, György Ligeti, Franz Sulyok, Robert Klein, Tamás Blum—and his professors at the Budapest Academy of Music (in addition to those listed in the Introduction), Lajos Bárdos and Pál Járdányi—as well as András Mihály and Albert Simon who taught him a lot even though he was not officially a student of theirs, or László Dobszay who plays an important role in Kurtág's life to this day—all of them are part of the composer's universe, of his private mythology. His loyalty to them is unshakable.And yet, thanks to a chance association in a telephone conversation, the name of András Hajdú (the Israeli composer André Hajdu) came up as an important contact during the year Kurtág spent in Paris in 1957–58. It was Hajdu who suggested that he enroll in Olivier Messiaen's class and Hajdu's piano piece Plasmas (1957) was to exert an influence on the work Kurtág was composing at the time that would become the Eight Piano Pieces, Op. 3.
Book Chapter
Mementos of a Friendship: György Kurtág on György Ligeti
Friendship—the sharing, the opening of one's innermost self; the give-and-take of ideas, experiences, and help; the courage to express criticism and the courage to accept it—is a gift. It is one that has enriched György Kurtág's life and, through his decades-long friendship with György Ligeti, become part of music history.Debussy and Ravel, Britten and Tippett, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Prokofiev: history has witnessed several pairs and peers among great composers working alongside one another without becoming friends— indeed, in some cases, with rivalry and animosity rendering any close contact impossible. Bartók and Kodály offer a counterexample: different as they were in personality and musical idiom, they were bound by genuine friendship and worked together as comrades-in-arms in their mission (and missionary zeal) to explore genuine Hungarian folk music, save it for the future, and incorporate its lessons in art music of the highest level. It was also their shared goal to create art music of a new, pioneering kind in their native country.I believe that the friendship between Kurtág and Ligeti has something in common with that of their immediate predecessors—not least in matters of mutual respect, one tending to assume the role of disciple without losing any of his individuality. (In the case of Bartók and Kodály, it was the former who would turn to his friend, a year younger, for advice).This chapter consists of two speeches by Kurtág, and it was his wish that they be included in this book. They are historical (and historic) documents of unique significance. Apart from his short preface to the piano series Játékok, I know of no other writings by Kurtág.The first speech was read by Kurtág, in the presence of György Ligeti, at a ceremony in the Cuvilliés-Theater in Munich in May 1993 at which Ligeti was being presented with the Siemens Prize. On this festive occasion, Kurtág overcame (must have forced himself to overcome) his inhibition to speak in public. Writing this piece, putting the first words on paper, may well have been a daunting task for Kurtág. His solution was to cast the myriad memories surging in his mind as scenes in a kind of theater on various “stages.”
Book Chapter
Key Words (2007–2008)
The title of this third interview, recorded in November 2007 and April 2008 in the Kurtágs’ Budapest apartment, has been chosen to serve as a hint to the method I used in formulating my questions. We did not have sufficient time at our disposal to discuss every single composition or indeed all the pivotal works. Instead, I decided to concentrate on just a few pieces written over the past years and to examine them through the means of key words, that is, characteristic features that apply to Kurtág's music in general. Also, I thought it best to approach the compositions the way I listen to them: via the emotional impact they make on me rather than analytically (which, not being a musician myself, would have been inappropriate anyway). There is a curious kinship on this count between Kurtág and myself. If you read his tribute to his friend György Ligeti, you will come upon the passage where Kurtág describes, in an amusingly self-ironical manner, the way he responds to beauty in art: like a naive child rather than an adult with the keen analytical mind of Ligeti. I listen to music—certainly the kind of music Kurtág writes—with my guts, my stomach. Please bear this in mind (and please, bear with me) when you read comments like “The beginning of the second movement is quite frightening. It sounds like a headlong flight.” That is how I hear this music— but more important, that is also in a way how Kurtág himself experiences it and expects his listeners to experience it. It follows that you cannot really expect cool objectivity to have informed the interviewer's questions. This portrait sketch of György Kurtág was inspired by the reporter's avowed enthusiasm for the composer's music, rooted in thirty-six years of exposure to new works as they have been emerging. I was grateful to Fate for the opportunity of telling him face to face (whether the tape recorder was running or switched off) just how deeply, on the level of instincts, his music affected me. “You are being very kind,” he replied, “but I cannot really grasp what you are saying. Usually, at the end of a session of teaching a piece of mine, I would say: ‘And now let's listen to some music.’” During the course of the interview, my enthusiasm came up repeatedly against Kurtág's selftormenting modesty, his relentless self-criticism.
Book Chapter