Hungarian composer György Kurtág Photo: Wikimedia commons
The matter of heritage is important when trying to understand the music of Kurtág. Like his friend György Ligeti, he came from a Hungarian-speaking part of Romania, and they both travelled to Budapest hoping to study with Bartók, who was expected to return from America. They arrived in Budapest to find the black flag flying in his honour. Bartók’s legacy was huge. Hungarian composers were almost paralysed. No-one knew what to write after him.
In the 1950s Hungary was quite shut off from the rest of the world, and new music from the West was generally unavailable or actively banned. Besides a few scores of Stravinsky and Webern, and a handful of records in Ligeti’s collection, Kurtág was terribly isolated from new musical and artistic trends.
Kurtág is a composer for whom struggle is synonymous with artistic creation. He writes slowly and painstakingly, and at many times has been unable to write at all. The great effort required to communicate – the impossibility of communication - is captured rather disturbingly in the piece “What is the Word”. It’s a setting of Samuel Beckett’s last text, which is made up of hesitations and fragments of sentences, as if searching for a way to express meaning through words.
Music Details:
BACH Trio Sonata BWV 525 ECM 1619
KURTÁG Movement for Viola and Orchestra ECM 1711
LIGETI Artikulation Teldec 88262
KURTÁG Samuel Beckett - What is the Word? DG 437 840
KURTÁG Játákok: ‘Vírág az ember’ ECM 1619
KURTÁG Perpetuum mobile ECM 1619
KURTÁG Játékok: ‘Elbows’ BMC 123
KURTÁG Játékok: ‘Hommage à Paganini’ BMC 123
KURTÁG Játékok: ‘Little Chorale’ BMC 123
KURTÁG Játékok: ‘Flowers we are...for Miyako’ BMC 123
KURTÁG Signs, Games & Messages: ‘Flowers we are...for Miyako’ ECM 1731
KURTÁG Messages of the late R.V. Trussova HCD 31821
KURTÁG Scenes from a Novel HCD 31821
KURTÁG Kafka-Fragmente ECM 1965
KURTÁG Kafka-Fragmente ECM 1965
KURTÁG Kafka-Fragmente ECM 1965
KURTÁG Kafka-Fragmente ECM 1965
KURTÁG Signs, Games & Messages: ‘János Pilinszky Gérard de Nerval’ Arte Nova 58142
KURTÁG pas à pas - nulle part: ‘de pied Ferme’ ECM 1730
KURTÁG pas à pas - nulle part: ‘Rêve’ ECM 1730
KURTÁG Hölderlin Gesänge: ‘An Zimmern’ ECM 1730
