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György Kurtág

January 26, 2023

"Kurtág" redirects here. For his wife, see Márta Kurtág.

The native form of this personal name is Kurtág György. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

György Kurtág (Hungarian: [ˈɟørɟ ˈkurtaːɡ]; born 19 February 1926) is a Hungarian[1] classical composer and pianist. He was an academic teacher of piano at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music from 1967, later also of chamber music, and taught until 1993.

György Kurtág
Kurtág in 2014
Born (1926-02-19) 19 February 1926 (age 96)
Lugoj, Banat region, Romania
Occupation(s)Classical Composer
Pianist
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1947; died 2019)​

Biography

György Kurtág was born in Lugoj in the Banat region of Romania,[2] to Hungarian parents. He became a Hungarian citizen in 1948, after moving to Budapest in 1946.[3] There, he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, where he met his wife, Márta Kinsker, as well as composer György Ligeti, who became a close friend. His piano teacher at the academy was Pál Kadosa. He studied composition with Sándor Veress and Ferenc Farkas, chamber music with Leó Weiner, and theory with Lajos Bárdos, and graduated in piano and chamber music in 1951 before receiving his degree in composition in 1955.[4] He married Márta in 1947 and their son György was born in 1954.[3]

Following the Hungarian uprising in 1956, Kurtág's time in Paris between 1957 and 1958 was of critical importance for him. Here, he studied with Max Deutsch, Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud. During this time, however, Kurtág was suffering from severe depression, saying "I realized to the point of despair that nothing I had believed to constitute the world was true…".[This quote needs a citation] Kurtág received therapy from art psychologist Marianne Stein, who encouraged him to work from the simplest musical elements, an encounter that revivified the composer and strongly stimulated his artistic development.[2] During this time, he also discovered the works of Anton Webern and the plays of Samuel Beckett. The string quartet he composed in 1959 after his return to Budapest marks this crucial turning point; he refers to this piece as his Opus 1. He dedicated it to his therapist, Stein.[5]

Kurtág worked as a répétiteur at the Bartók Music School (1958–63)[3] and at the National Philharmonia in Budapest (1960–68).[2] In 1967, he was appointed professor of piano and later also of chamber music at the Franz Liszt Academy, where he taught until 1993.[2]

Kurtág's first international opportunity came in 1968 when his largest work to date, The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza, was performed by Erika Sziklay and Lóránt Szűcs at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. The critical response was not positive, and his international recognition began to grow only later with Messages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova for soprano and chamber ensemble, which had its premiere in Paris in 1981.

Since the early 1990s, he has worked abroad with increasing frequency: he was composer in residence at the Berlin Philharmonic (1993–95) and the Vienna Konzerthaus Society (1995).[4] He then lived in the Netherlands (1996–98), again in Berlin (1998–99) and upon invitation by Ensemble InterContemporain, Cité de la Musique, and Festival d'Automne, in Paris (1999–2001). Kurtág and his wife lived near Bordeaux from 2002 to 2015, when they moved back to Budapest. The couple remained married until Márta's death in October 2019 in Budapest.[6]

Music

 
The beginning of the piece "Hommage à Tchaikovsky" from Játékok, parodying the opening of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. Kurtág uses special notation in some of the pieces. In the score above, the large black dots mean "play with both palms laid side by side".

According to scholar Rachel Beckles Willson, "Kurtág composes painstakingly and haltingly: in 1985, when he was 59, his output had reached only Op. 23, and several works remained unfinished or had been withdrawn for revision."[3]

Kurtág's compositions are often made up of many very brief movements. Kafka-Fragments, for instance, is an approximately 55-minute song cycle for soprano and solo violin made up of 40 short movements, setting extracts from Franz Kafka's writings, diaries, and letters. Music journalist Tom Service wrote that Kurtág's music "… involved reducing music to the level of the fragment, the moment, with individual pieces or movements lasting mere seconds, or a minute, perhaps two."[1] Most extreme of all, his piano piece "Flowers We Are, Mere Flowers" from the eighth volume of Játékok ("Games") consists of just seven notes.[1] Because of this interest in miniatures, Kurtág's music is often compared to that of Anton Webern.

Prior to Stele, Op. 33 (written for the Berlin Philharmonic and Claudio Abbado), his compositions consist mainly of vocal solo and choral music as well as instrumental music, ranging from solo pieces to works for chamber ensembles of increasing size. Since Stele, a number of large scale compositions have been premiered, such as Messages Op. 34 and New Messages Op. 34a for orchestra and the double concerto …concertante… Op. 42. Kurtág's first opera, Fin de partie, based on Samuel Beckett's Endgame, was premiered at La Scala on 15 November 2018,[7] eight years after the original commission.[8]

Beginning in the late 1980s, Kurtág wrote several works in which the spatial distribution of instruments plays an important role. His composition, … quasi una fantasia… for piano and ensemble, premiered in 1988, is the first piece in which he explores the idea of music that spatially embraces the audience.

Kurtág often held master classes in chamber music, and appeared in concerts together with his wife Márta. The couple played an always-renewing selection of pieces for two- and four-hand piano from Kurtág's ten-volume collection Játékok as well as transcriptions.

Most of Kurtág's music is published by Editio Musica Budapest, some by Universal Edition, Vienna, and some by Boosey & Hawkes, London.

Recognition

 
Left to right: Sára Gerlóczy, Márta Kurtág (wife), and György Kurtág.

Kurtág is the recipient of numerous awards, including Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1985, the Kossuth Award of the Hungarian government for his life achievement in 1973, the Austrian Ehrenzeichen in 1996, and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1998. In addition, Kurtág is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, and of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (both since 1987), and he was named an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001. In 2006, he received the Grawemeyer Award for his composition …concertante… Op. 42, for violin, viola and orchestra.

He received the 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Contemporary Music for, in the view of the jury, its "rare expressive intensity". "The novel dimension of his music", the citation continues, "lies not in the material he uses but in its spirit, the authenticity of its language, and the way it crosses borders between spontaneity and reflection, between formalism and expression."[9][10][11]

Invited by Walter Fink, he was the 14th composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2004. The Ensemble Modern and soloists performed his works Opp. 19, 31b and 17. On the occasion of his 80th birthday in February 2006, the Budapest Music Centre honoured Kurtág with the celebration of a festival in his hometown. The same year's editions of Musikfest Berlin, Vienna modern, Holland Festival and Festival d'Automne in Paris dedicated special programmes to Kurtág.

Compositions

Main article: List of compositions by György Kurtág

Awards

References

  1. ^ a b c Service, Tom (12 March 2013). "A guide to György Kurtág's music". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  2. ^ a b c d "György Kurtág". info.bmc.hu. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  3. ^ a b c d Willson, Rachel Beckles (2001). "Kurtág, György". Grove Music Online. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  4. ^ a b György Kurtág biography, UE
  5. ^ Griffiths, Paul (1995). Modern Music and After. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-8126-9435-X.
  6. ^ Allen, David (25 October 2019). "Marta Kurtag Dies at 92, Sundering a Profound Musical Partnership". The New York Times.
  7. ^ . www.teatroallascala.org. Archived from the original on 27 October 2017. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  8. ^ Clements, Andrew (19 November 2018). "Fin de Partie review – Kurtág's compelling musical testament". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  9. ^ "The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Contemporary Music category goes in this seventh edition to the Hungarian composer György Kurtág". 10 February 2015. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  10. ^ Leticia, Yustos (10 February 2015). "György Kurtág premio Fundación BBVA Fronteras del Conocimiento en la especialidad de música contemporánea". Doce Notas. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  11. ^ Miguel, Pérez Martín (10 February 2015). "György Kurtág gana el Premio BBVA de Música Contemporánea". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  12. ^ "György Kurtág". Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  13. ^ "Recipients of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts". Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  14. ^ "György Kurtág". Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  15. ^ "2006– György Kurtág". Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  16. ^ "Gyorgy Kurtag". Royal Philharmonic Society. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  17. ^ "Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  18. ^ "The Schock Prizes reward the creation of theories, art and music". The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. 2020. Retrieved 18 March 2021.

Further reading

  • Halász, Péter. 1998. György Kurtág. Magyar zeneszerzok 3. Budapest: Mágus Kiadó. ISBN 963-8278-07-2.
  • Kennedy, Michael (2006). "György Kurtág". The Oxford Dictionary of Music, second edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-861459-4.
  • Varga, Bálint András. 2009. György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages. Eastman studies in Music. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. ISBN 978-1-58046-328-7.
  • Willson, Rachel Beckles. 1998a. "The Fruitful Tension between Inspiration and Design in Kurtág's The Sayings of Péter Bornemisza op.7". Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 11:36–41.
  • Willson, Rachel Beckles. 1998b. "Kurtág's Instrumental Music, 1988–98". Tempo, new series, no. 207:15–21.
  • Willson. Rachel Beckles. 2004. György Kurtág, The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza, op. 7: A "Concerto" for Soprano and Piano. Landmarks in Music Since 1950. Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-0809-7
  • "György Kurtág (biography, works, resources)" (in French and English). IRCAM.

External links

  • György Kurtág biography and works on the Universal Edition website (publisher)
  • György Kurtág works (59) on the Editio Musica Budapest website (publisher)
  • György Kurtág: Biography on the Boosey & Hawkes website
  • György Kurtág: Great Hungarian Jewish Composer, No Monk article by Benjamin Ivry in "The Forward", including a picture of Márta and György Kurtág at the piano, 6 February 2009
  • Gyorgy Kurtag/ Attendere l'imprevedibile: gli 8 pezzi per pianoforte op. 3, by Luca Belloni. ilsussidiario.net, 29 December 2009 (in Italian)
  • Education project on Kurtág`s collection "Játékok" (in German)
  • Video of Kurtág playing a selection of his own Bach transcriptions with his wife Márta on 30 November 2015 on YouTube

January 26, 2023
györgy, kurtág, kurtág, redirects, here, wife, márta, kurtág, native, form, this, personal, name, kurtág, györgy, this, article, uses, western, name, order, when, mentioning, individuals, hungarian, ˈɟørɟ, ˈkurtaːɡ, born, february, 1926, hungarian, classical, . Kurtag redirects here For his wife see Marta Kurtag The native form of this personal name is Kurtag Gyorgy This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals Gyorgy Kurtag Hungarian ˈɟorɟ ˈkurtaːɡ born 19 February 1926 is a Hungarian 1 classical composer and pianist He was an academic teacher of piano at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music from 1967 later also of chamber music and taught until 1993 Gyorgy KurtagKurtag in 2014Born 1926 02 19 19 February 1926 age 96 Lugoj Banat region RomaniaOccupation s Classical ComposerPianistSpouseMarta Kurtag m 1947 died 2019 wbr Contents 1 Biography 2 Music 3 Recognition 4 Compositions 5 Awards 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External linksBiography EditGyorgy Kurtag was born in Lugoj in the Banat region of Romania 2 to Hungarian parents He became a Hungarian citizen in 1948 after moving to Budapest in 1946 3 There he began his studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music where he met his wife Marta Kinsker as well as composer Gyorgy Ligeti who became a close friend His piano teacher at the academy was Pal Kadosa He studied composition with Sandor Veress and Ferenc Farkas chamber music with Leo Weiner and theory with Lajos Bardos and graduated in piano and chamber music in 1951 before receiving his degree in composition in 1955 4 He married Marta in 1947 and their son Gyorgy was born in 1954 3 Following the Hungarian uprising in 1956 Kurtag s time in Paris between 1957 and 1958 was of critical importance for him Here he studied with Max Deutsch Olivier Messiaen and Darius Milhaud During this time however Kurtag was suffering from severe depression saying I realized to the point of despair that nothing I had believed to constitute the world was true This quote needs a citation Kurtag received therapy from art psychologist Marianne Stein who encouraged him to work from the simplest musical elements an encounter that revivified the composer and strongly stimulated his artistic development 2 During this time he also discovered the works of Anton Webern and the plays of Samuel Beckett The string quartet he composed in 1959 after his return to Budapest marks this crucial turning point he refers to this piece as his Opus 1 He dedicated it to his therapist Stein 5 Kurtag worked as a repetiteur at the Bartok Music School 1958 63 3 and at the National Philharmonia in Budapest 1960 68 2 In 1967 he was appointed professor of piano and later also of chamber music at the Franz Liszt Academy where he taught until 1993 2 Kurtag s first international opportunity came in 1968 when his largest work to date The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza was performed by Erika Sziklay and Lorant Szucs at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music The critical response was not positive and his international recognition began to grow only later with Messages of the Late Miss R V Troussova for soprano and chamber ensemble which had its premiere in Paris in 1981 Since the early 1990s he has worked abroad with increasing frequency he was composer in residence at the Berlin Philharmonic 1993 95 and the Vienna Konzerthaus Society 1995 4 He then lived in the Netherlands 1996 98 again in Berlin 1998 99 and upon invitation by Ensemble InterContemporain Cite de la Musique and Festival d Automne in Paris 1999 2001 Kurtag and his wife lived near Bordeaux from 2002 to 2015 when they moved back to Budapest The couple remained married until Marta s death in October 2019 in Budapest 6 Music Edit The beginning of the piece Hommage a Tchaikovsky from Jatekok parodying the opening of Tchaikovsky s First Piano Concerto Kurtag uses special notation in some of the pieces In the score above the large black dots mean play with both palms laid side by side According to scholar Rachel Beckles Willson Kurtag composes painstakingly and haltingly in 1985 when he was 59 his output had reached only Op 23 and several works remained unfinished or had been withdrawn for revision 3 Kurtag s compositions are often made up of many very brief movements Kafka Fragments for instance is an approximately 55 minute song cycle for soprano and solo violin made up of 40 short movements setting extracts from Franz Kafka s writings diaries and letters Music journalist Tom Service wrote that Kurtag s music involved reducing music to the level of the fragment the moment with individual pieces or movements lasting mere seconds or a minute perhaps two 1 Most extreme of all his piano piece Flowers We Are Mere Flowers from the eighth volume of Jatekok Games consists of just seven notes 1 Because of this interest in miniatures Kurtag s music is often compared to that of Anton Webern Prior to Stele Op 33 written for the Berlin Philharmonic and Claudio Abbado his compositions consist mainly of vocal solo and choral music as well as instrumental music ranging from solo pieces to works for chamber ensembles of increasing size Since Stele a number of large scale compositions have been premiered such as Messages Op 34 and New Messages Op 34a for orchestra and the double concerto concertante Op 42 Kurtag s first opera Fin de partie based on Samuel Beckett s Endgame was premiered at La Scala on 15 November 2018 7 eight years after the original commission 8 Beginning in the late 1980s Kurtag wrote several works in which the spatial distribution of instruments plays an important role His composition quasi una fantasia for piano and ensemble premiered in 1988 is the first piece in which he explores the idea of music that spatially embraces the audience Kurtag often held master classes in chamber music and appeared in concerts together with his wife Marta The couple played an always renewing selection of pieces for two and four hand piano from Kurtag s ten volume collection Jatekok as well as transcriptions Most of Kurtag s music is published by Editio Musica Budapest some by Universal Edition Vienna and some by Boosey amp Hawkes London Recognition Edit Left to right Sara Gerloczy Marta Kurtag wife and Gyorgy Kurtag Kurtag is the recipient of numerous awards including Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1985 the Kossuth Award of the Hungarian government for his life achievement in 1973 the Austrian Ehrenzeichen in 1996 and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1998 In addition Kurtag is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Munich and of the Akademie der Kunste Berlin both since 1987 and he was named an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001 In 2006 he received the Grawemeyer Award for his composition concertante Op 42 for violin viola and orchestra He received the 2014 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Contemporary Music for in the view of the jury its rare expressive intensity The novel dimension of his music the citation continues lies not in the material he uses but in its spirit the authenticity of its language and the way it crosses borders between spontaneity and reflection between formalism and expression 9 10 11 Invited by Walter Fink he was the 14th composer featured in the annual Komponistenportrat of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 2004 The Ensemble Modern and soloists performed his works Opp 19 31b and 17 On the occasion of his 80th birthday in February 2006 the Budapest Music Centre honoured Kurtag with the celebration of a festival in his hometown The same year s editions of Musikfest Berlin Vienna modern Holland Festival and Festival d Automne in Paris dedicated special programmes to Kurtag Compositions EditMain article List of compositions by Gyorgy KurtagAwards EditErkel Prize in 1955 and 1969 Kossuth Prize 1973 UNESCO s International Rostrum of Composers 1983 Music Prize of the Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation 1993 International Antonio Feltrinelli Prize 1993 Composers Award of the State of Austria 1994 Denis de Rougemot Prize of the European Festivals Association 1994 Kossuth Prize for Lifetime Achievement 1996 Austrian Decoration for Science and Art 1997 Composers Award Promotion of the European economy 1998 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 1998 12 Honorary Prize for Art and Science of the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin 1999 Pour le Merite for Science and Art 1999 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award 2000 13 Commander with Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary 2001 John Cage Award 2003 Sonning Award 2003 Denmark 14 Grand Cross of Merit of the Republic of Hungary 2006 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition 2006 U S 15 Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale for lifetime achievement 53rd International Festival of Contemporary Music 2009 Zurich Festival Prize 2010 Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal 2013 16 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Contemporary Music 2014 Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2015 17 Rolf Schock Prize 2020 18 References Edit a b c Service Tom 12 March 2013 A guide to Gyorgy Kurtag s music The Guardian Retrieved 27 December 2019 a b c d Gyorgy Kurtag info bmc hu Retrieved 27 December 2019 a b c d Willson Rachel Beckles 2001 Kurtag Gyorgy Grove Music Online Retrieved 27 December 2019 a b Gyorgy Kurtag biography UE Griffiths Paul 1995 Modern Music and After Clarendon Press ISBN 0 8126 9435 X Allen David 25 October 2019 Marta Kurtag Dies at 92 Sundering a Profound Musical Partnership The New York Times Fin de partie Teatro alla Scala www teatroallascala org Archived from the original on 27 October 2017 Retrieved 10 March 2018 Clements Andrew 19 November 2018 Fin de Partie review Kurtag s compelling musical testament The Guardian Retrieved 27 December 2019 The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Contemporary Music category goes in this seventh edition to the Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag 10 February 2015 Retrieved 27 December 2019 Leticia Yustos 10 February 2015 Gyorgy Kurtag premio Fundacion BBVA Fronteras del Conocimiento en la especialidad de musica contemporanea Doce Notas Retrieved 27 December 2019 Miguel Perez Martin 10 February 2015 Gyorgy Kurtag gana el Premio BBVA de Musica Contemporanea El Pais in Spanish Retrieved 27 December 2019 Gyorgy Kurtag Retrieved 27 December 2019 Recipients of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Retrieved 27 December 2019 Gyorgy Kurtag Retrieved 27 December 2019 2006 Gyorgy Kurtag Retrieved 27 December 2019 Gyorgy Kurtag Royal Philharmonic Society Retrieved 27 December 2019 Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences PDF American Academy of Arts and Sciences Retrieved 27 December 2019 The Schock Prizes reward the creation of theories art and music The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2020 Retrieved 18 March 2021 Further reading EditHalasz Peter 1998 Gyorgy Kurtag Magyar zeneszerzok 3 Budapest Magus Kiado ISBN 963 8278 07 2 Kennedy Michael 2006 Gyorgy Kurtag The Oxford Dictionary of Music second edition Oxford and New York Oxford University Press ISBN 0 19 861459 4 Varga Balint Andras 2009 Gyorgy Kurtag Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages Eastman studies in Music Rochester NY University of Rochester Press ISBN 978 1 58046 328 7 Willson Rachel Beckles 1998a The Fruitful Tension between Inspiration and Design in Kurtag s The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza op 7 Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 11 36 41 Willson Rachel Beckles 1998b Kurtag s Instrumental Music 1988 98 Tempo new series no 207 15 21 Willson Rachel Beckles 2004 Gyorgy Kurtag The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza op 7 A Concerto for Soprano and Piano Landmarks in Music Since 1950 Aldershot Hants England Burlington VT Ashgate ISBN 978 0 7546 0809 7 Gyorgy Kurtag biography works resources in French and English IRCAM External links EditGyorgy Kurtag biography and works on the Universal Edition website publisher Gyorgy Kurtag works 59 on the Editio Musica Budapest website publisher Gyorgy Kurtag Biography on the Boosey amp Hawkes website Gyorgy Kurtag Great Hungarian Jewish Composer No Monk article by Benjamin Ivry in The Forward including a picture of Marta and Gyorgy Kurtag at the piano 6 February 2009 Gyorgy Kurtag Attendere l imprevedibile gli 8 pezzi per pianoforte op 3 by Luca Belloni ilsussidiario net 29 December 2009 in Italian Education project on Kurtag s collection Jatekok in German Video of Kurtag playing a selection of his own Bach transcriptions with his wife Marta on 30 November 2015 on YouTube Portals Classical music Opera Biography Music Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Gyorgy Kurtag amp oldid 1133145404, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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