Szervánszky Endre elmaradt forradalma (1959-1977).

Dalos, Anna (2014) Szervánszky Endre elmaradt forradalma (1959-1977). Magyar Zene, 52 (1). pp. 17-27. ISSN 0025-0384

Preview

Text Szervánszky.pdf Download (613kB) | Preview

Abstract

Hungarian music historiography connects traditionally the break with the folkloristic national classicim of the fifties with the name of the composer, Endre Szervánszky (1911-1977). His Six orchestral pieces written in 1959, the world première of which caused an outcry in Hungarian music life, is the first dodecaphonic composition written in Hungary, and at the same time it is the first document of Hungarian compositional reception of Anton von Webern’s music. In this cycle Szervánszky spectacularly disregarded the musical consensus which was built on folk music and Hungarian musical tradition, and this gesture gave him the image of the avantgarde rebel and self-denying revolutionary. It is sure that Szervánszky had experimented with a new music style since 1957, and since 1959 he attended the meetings of the underground neo-avantgarde in Budapest (the circle of László Végh). Despite of this the Six orchestral pieces seem to be a didactic composition for the today’s listener, that means it is much more a historical document than an aesthetically valuable work of art. The compositions written by Szervánszky after 1959 – Dark Heaven – Requiem (1962), Variations for Orchestra (1964-65), Concerto for Clarinet (1965) – bear witness to the fact that the composer himself lost his orientation how to follow the way he had chosen in the Six orchestral pieces. Moreover his compositions – as the serialists of Darmstadt would put it – didn’t reach ’the technical niveau of the time,’ that is Szervánszky’s technical skills were quite limited. So Szervánszky’s avantgarde turn, which followed in reality rather the modernism of the 1910th, and not the avantgarde trends of the same time, proved to be a failure. I try to clarify in my paper on the one hand the interpretations of the concept of the avantgarde in the Hungarian musical discourses of the early sixties, on the other however the connection between the cancellation of the avantgarde turn and Szervánszky’s limited technical skills.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item