Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Interviews
- Preface to the Interviews
- Composers
- Georges Auric
- Alois Hába
- György Kurtág
- György Ligeti
- Karlheinz Stockhausen
- Conductors
- Instrumentalists
- Singers and a Record Producer
- A Teacher
- Music Administrators
- Snippets
- Part Two A Memoir
- Notes in Retrospect
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
György Kurtág
from Composers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Part One Interviews
- Preface to the Interviews
- Composers
- Georges Auric
- Alois Hába
- György Kurtág
- György Ligeti
- Karlheinz Stockhausen
- Conductors
- Instrumentalists
- Singers and a Record Producer
- A Teacher
- Music Administrators
- Snippets
- Part Two A Memoir
- Notes in Retrospect
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
The interview I did with György and Márta Kurtág, in November 2007, was our longest: we talked for some four hours. The text subsequently underwent corrections and additions and we got together again in April 2008, when I read out the text so that they could double- and triple-check every detail. The definitive version was published, together with our interviews of 1982–85 as well as 1996, in György Kurtág: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages (2009) by the University of Rochester Press. It appeared in Hungarian and French in the same year as well as in German in 2010.
In April 2008, we also recorded a short interview on an activity that has been central to György Kurtág's life: teaching. On reading it, he said: “Well, that's all I could think of,” generously taking the blame for what he judged to be not quite up to the mark.
It was consequently not included in the book and has been slumbering in my drawer, waiting to be brought to Kurtág's attention again, in the hope that he might change his mind about its merits. The moment has now arrived, with this collection of interviews waiting to see the light of day.
O
Bálint András Varga (BAV): You have said in the past that one must be able to play dolce even on a piece of wood. That seems to be a basic principle of your teaching: whatever composition one happens to be playing, the approach to it, the musician's Haltung, must be the same—the dolce as well as all other aspects of the music, must come from within.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Boulanger to StockhausenInterviews and a Memoir, pp. 19 - 25Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013