Kurtág's Music: The Spectacle of Nature, the Breath of History - from op. 7 to 27

Barazzoni, Beatrice (2002) Kurtág's Music: The Spectacle of Nature, the Breath of History - from op. 7 to 27. Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 43 (3-4). pp. 253-267. ISSN 0039-3266

Preview

Text smus.43.2002.3-4.4.pdf Download (459kB) | Preview

Abstract

Analysis of Kurtágs's compositional techniques centred on ways of generating and developing musical figures, whose immediate perceptibility can be set in a contemporary aestethics of expression. Figures are shaped from basic and elementary cells (mostly second- or third- intervallic cells), a matter still chaotic and formless, which through subsequent harmonic fillings and widenings become little by little animated; this process of musical generation alludes to those of spontaneous generation and transformation of the natural world. Kurtág's formal structures are conceived as brief, almost aphoristic ones, fashioned by the inner characters of figures; their leaps are mainly constituted by ratios of “golden section”, that is nature's inner geometry. Strong, bright- coloured gestures are the musical culmination of these “figural” and living developments. Exemplifications of some figures' articulation, as well as of their generation and development processes from elementary cells follow, through selected passages from op. 7, 17, 24, 27. This charming spectacle of nature in Kurtág's music is further innervated by a deep sense of history: Bach's polyphony, the italian Baroque aria, Beethoven's instrumental recitative, Bartók's harmony, the dodecaphonic techniques, as tutelary deity of such a personal expressive world.

Actions (login required)

Edit Item