Perspectives on the Music of Gyorgy Kurtag: Performance, Language and Memory

Gyorgy Kurtag, who is still active at the age of 99, is the last representative of a great generation of composers who emerged after World War II. A legendary chamber music coach and source of inspiration for composers and musicians around the world, with a compositional output spanning more than 70 years, Kurtag is widely regarded as one of the most original musical minds of our time. In this volume, scholars from three continents come together to explore Kurtag's music and its shifting contexts. Some of the articles deal with theoretical questions. How can his music be placed within the framework of the 21st century? How does the concept of "lateness" or "Central Europe" define the nature and reception of his works? How can philosophical concepts such as Deuleuze and Guattari's "rhizome", or social theorist Manuel Castells' "space of flows", contribute to our understanding of Kurtag's music? And how can we understand Kurtag's unique relationships with performers and, more generally, with performance? Other articles focus in depth on particular historical periods in Kurtag's life such as the early Romanian years, and communist Hungary in the 1950s. There are also fresh discussions of specific genres, namely unaccompanied solo vocal pieces, and the series of short piano pieces referring to a phrase that is now emblematic in Kurtag's universe, "Virag az ember" (Flowers we are).