Farkas Zoltán

(11 találat)
# Cím Abstract Folyóirat Oldalszám
"Jungfrau, Mutter, Königin...": a Nõ Mozart egyházi zenéjében abs.
"Jungfrau, Mutter, Königin..."
The Depiction of Woman in the Ecclesiastical Music of Mozart
Zoltán Farkas

It is know that Goethe himself meant the 2nd part of Faust to be set to music. According to Eckermann, on 12th February 1829 Goethe declared: "The nature of the music shall be similar to that of Don Juan. Faust should have been composed by Mozart." It was this unfulfilled wish of the poet sovereign of Weimar that raised the question how Mozart's ecclesiastical music depicts Mary. The minor works of the young Mozart dedicated specifically to Mary provide no distinct portrait of her. The Et incarnatus passages of his masses are almost disappointing in this respect. Lesser contemporary composers usually come forward with a lengthy, sophisticated solo or ensemble movement here using obbligato instruments. Mozart, on the other hand, fails to employ exhaustive depictions not only in his brevises but also in the majority of his more ceremonial masses. The formal discipline of the symphonic style of his later masses does not favour lengthy expositions either. The obbligato use of the oboe and of the bassoon in Missa solemnis in C major (K337) from 1780 and the themes of the Et incarnatus movement of his Mass (K262) herald the last and most accomplished of all the Et incarnatus movements, that of Mass in C minor (K427). The paper interprets this movement as the scene of the Immaculate Conception, the Announcement of the Incarnation (Annuntiatio). The figure of the kneeling Mary and the of the Holy Ghost, symbolized by the three obbligato wind instruments, can be identified by almost iconographical precision. The portrayal of Mary in the Et incarnatus of the Mass in C minor has an unparalleled atmosphere and reappears at the end of Mozart's life-work, in the instrumental postlude of Ave verum corpus. In the author's view the image of the worldly source of this body, Mozart's mother also appears at the end of this movement emotionally celebrating the Lord's Body, the Eucharist.
2007., 45. évf. 4. szám 373. - 380.o
A toposztól a stílusig: a 18. századi kismesterek zenéjének elemzése - Tanulságokkal, 1. rész - 2011., 49. évf. 4. szám 396. - 406.o
A toposztól a stílusig: a 18. századi kismesterek zenéjének elemzése - Tanulságokkal, 2. rész - 2012., 50. évf. 1. szám 30. - 54.o
Egy Hölderin-toposz útja : vándormotívumok Kurtág György mûveiben abs.
The Path of a Hölderin Topos
Wandering Ideas in Kurtág’s Compositions
Zoltán Farkas

The recurrence of certain musical ideas from piece can be considered as one of the main characteristic features of Kurtág’s music. These recurring ideas create a web between the different groups of compositions which should span over even more decades in his oeuvre. This essay follows the path of two musical materials which are associated with Hölderlin’s name in Kurtág’s music and at the same time, are closely connected with each other. The members of the first group of compositions examined (‘Hölderlin’ the 3rd out of Four Songs to János Pilinszky’s Poems, op. 11, - Study to ‘Hölderlin”, Játékok IV, - Sketch to Hölderlin, Játékok VII) are homogeneous pieces characterized by the exclusiveness of the Hölderlin-topos. The three compositions can be considered as variants of each other. The members of the other group (The Székely Mangle, Nr. 2 out of Three Old Inscription – Preface to a Bálint Exhibition, Játékok V - Lebenslauf op. 32 and the 1st movement of Stele op. 33) however, are aesthetically autonomous, independent works and the Hölderlin-topos is only one of their formal constituents. The musical form itself develops from the confrontation of the topos with a new material. This essay tries to find an answer to the question how the role of the Hölderlin topos changes in the form and dramaturgy of each individual composition.
2002., 40. évf. 2. szám 213. - 235.o
Haydn és az apo koinou : a Tempora mutantur szimfónia (Hob. I:64) Largo tétele új megvilágításban abs.
The Largo of Haydn’s »Tempora Mutantur« Symphony No. 64 Reconsidered
Zoltán Farkas

The title (or motto) of Haydn's Symphony in A major (Hob. 1:64) „Tempora mu¬tantur" has provoked many explanations so far. Jonathan Foster identifies these words with the first part of an epigram by John Owen (c. 1565-1622): Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis, etc. Foster suggests that the rhythm of the rondo-finale theme corresponds to the poetic meter of the first line of the epigram. James Atkins finds Foster's arguments unconvincing and associates the title with the slow movement of the symphony instead. Elaine Sisman gives a refined analysis of the Largo and argues that the movement is nothing but a musical interpretation of the key couplet in Shakespeare's Hamlet: "The time is out of joint". Sonja Gerlach reveals that the wrapper of the copied parts of the symphony in the Frankfurt source (which is the only source the title is written in) is not the original one so she doubts whether the motto had anything to do with Haydn.
Whether inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet or not, the Largo in D major was written in a highly original and unusual way. Besides its curious, durchcomponiert form, the phrase structure of its main theme deserves special attention. Haydn steadily avoids making a clear cadence in the melody. And when the belated melodic cadence arrives, it proves to be not the ending but rather the opening of the new phrase. This continuous ambiguity creates an "otherworldly" character of the movement. This paper attempts to reveal whether Haydn's process has a literary model. A syntactic ambivalence of Classical poetry called apo koinou shows a grammatical structure very similar to that happens in the musical syntax of this movement. (Some examples taken from Latin, German and Hungarian poetry illustrate this poetic device.) The question arises whether Haydn was familiar with examples of apo koinou to any extent, and if so, he consciously recognised it as such or not. In spite of the composer's remarkably extensive library, rich of Classical readings (e. g. Ovid's Metamorphoses etc.) the probable answer is the latter. In the second half of the article the author finds further phenomena in Haydn’s music which can be paralleled with Hamlet’s monologue.
2009., 47. évf. 4. szám 431. - 444.o
Imitáció és ellenpont Gregor Joseph Werner oratórium-áriáiban - 1994., 35. évf. 2. szám 118. - 160.o
Magyar népzenei hatások Ligeti György és Kurtág György zenéjében abs.
The Influence of Folk Music in the Œuvre of György Ligeti and György Kurtág
Zoltán Farkas

It was Walter Wiora who had put the question to Hungarian musicologists in 1972 at the Kodály conference as follows: “if one avers that both Bartók and Kodály derived their composing styles from Hungarian folk music, why do their styles in their developed form differ so widely from one another?” Similarly to Bartók and Kodály, the musical idioms of both Kurtág and Ligeti took roots into the Eastern European (Hungarian and Romanian) folk music tradition and the difference in their attitudes to folk music is just as obvious as that of their predecessors. This paper tries to define and illustrate this difference in Kurtág’s and Ligeti’s musical thought inspired by folk music. The Hungarian Bartók scholarship offers methodological basis to the analist: e.g. the theories of “hidden folk music program” and “folkish narrative” (László Somfai); “the phenomenon of mistuning” (János Kárpáti), “the absorption of folk song” (László Dobszay) etc. It is also attempted to distinguish the influence of Bartók from the direct influence of folk music based on the two composers’ personal experiences.
2006., 44. évf. 4. szám 361. - 386.o
Nápoly - Kismarton - Győr : Nicolò Conforto áriáinak kontrafaktumai Istvánffy Benedek kézírásában abs.
Neapel - Eisenstadt - Győr (RAAB)
Contrafacta of Arias by Nicoló Conforto in Benedek Istvánffy's Copy
Zoltán Farkas

In the early 1980s the Hungarian musicological research unfolded the life and work of probably the most gifted Hungarian composer of the time, Benedek Istvánffy (1733-1778), Kapellmeister and organist at Győr (Raab) Cathedral. So far, to our present knowledge two masses and ten minor church works survive of his oeuvre, most of them are published in score and also available on recordings. The composer's biography is insufficiently documented, showing the greatest lacunae with respect to his formative years. At the same time a considerable number of indirect evidence supports a hypothesis about his relationship with the Esterházy court in Eisenstadt and its Kapellmeister Gregor Joseph Werner.
Istvánffy copied 144 musical sources fully or in part for the music collection of the Győr Cathedral, seven of them were composed by Nicoló Conforto (1718-1793). As Ágnes Sas convincingly argues, these also refer to the Hungarian composer's relationship with the Esterházy court, given that Conforto's compositions could not be found in such a great number in Central Eastern Europe's music collections. Apart from Győr, his works were known in Eisenstadt, too: as an envoy of the Austrian Empire to Naples, Count Pál Antal Esterházy became personally acquainted with the Italian master, and he even commissioned Conforto to compose a cantata for the birthday of the Empress Maria Theresa. He also aquired some operas and other compositions by Conforto and brought them to Hungary on his return. Katalin Kim-Szacsvay recognized that the seven sources in the Győr collection are contrafacta of Conforto's opera arias. She identified the original of four contrafacta (set on liturgical texts) with arias from Conforto's Antigono, the only opera surviving in the Esterházy music archives. This collection preserves two sources of the opera: a score (without recitatives) and parts of an instrumental transcription of the arias for trios and quartets (flute and strings), as for the prince himself could perform the main 'voice' on flute or violin. The author has scrutinized the Esterházy score and parts and compared them to the parts of the Győr contrafacta, and, respectively, consulted with another Naples source of the opera. As a result, he states that neither the Esterházy score nor the chamber music transcription could serve as a model (Vorlage) of the contrafacta. There is no conclusive evidence that Istvánffy should have been the author of the contrafacta but the modern idiom of Conforto's arias had surely a palpable and beneficial influence on his own music.
2009., 47. évf. 1. szám 85. - 109.o
Népzenei hatások Jeney Zoltán Halotti szertartás címû mûvében - 2011., 49. évf. 1. szám 68. - 88.o
Szent vagy profán? : a kánonszerepe a 18. és a 19. század fordulóján a magyarországi zeneszerzésben abs.
Sacred or Profane?
The Role of the Canon at the Turn of the 18th and 19th Centuries in Hungarian Composition
Zoltán Farkas

From the very beginning of its history, the canon proved to be an ambivalent genre (or technique) since on one hand it manifests itself as the most respectful and demanding form of counterpoint, on the other hand it was used to accompany social entertainment as Gebrauchsmusik of low prestige. This dichotomy reached its extremes during the 18th century. Several theorists of that age considered canonic writing as an out of date antiquity and even its strongest theoretical adherents discuss the canon in a defensive and apologetic way. Nevertheless, canon remained an integral part of compositional studies. At the midst of the century the attitude toward the canons was critical but they have come into fashion in the 1780ies and 90ies, though their function was strikingly heterogeneous. This study tries to define those fields of composition where a considerable amount of canonic works has come into being. Examples taken from the forefront of the European history of music are supplemented by “case studies” chosen from Hungarian compositions. All of these examples illustrate that canons constantly crossed frontiers between genres, between the spheres of “Sacred” and “Profane”.
The chapters of this article are as follows:

  1. Church Music 1 – Canons written in old, contrapuntal style. The tradition of Missa canonica is represented by two Benedictus movements from masses by G. J. Werner.

  2. Canons in Chamber Music. Georg Druschetzky (1745-1819) inserts a “Canon per tonos” by Kirnberger into his Oboe Quartet in C major. He composed a canonic finale on a subject of his own invention for another Oboe Quartet (in B flat major). This material was reused in his latest mass as “Pleni sunt coeli”.

  3. Vocal Secular Canons. As a representative of Scherzkanons or occasional pieces, a canon by János Fusz (1777-1819) is mentioned. Fusz – similarly to Georg Lickl (1769-1843) – studied with Albrechtsberger himself cultivated a modern species of canon: the so-called Liedkanon or “hymn-like” type.

  4. Operatic Canons.
    Canons belonging to the hymn-like type were frequently used in operas composed for the late 18th century Vienna. The most famous examples are the canon in Così fan tutte, and the Quartet in Fidelio. Beethoven’s operatic canon inspired Schubert to use the same technique in Benedictus movements of his early masses. The canon in Fusz’s opera entitled Romulus und Remus (1814) closely follows the Mozartian model. This canon has become an extremely popular piece of Fusz and survives with liturgical texts in several sources as Lauda Sion and Tantum ergo.

  5. Church Music 2 – Hymn-like or Liedkanon in Lickl’s Late Masses.
    Georg Lickl used the hymn-like or operatic canon type for Benedictus movements in two of his late masses (1826, 1833). As for style and dramatic effect, these movements are parallel to Schubert’s canonic Benedictus settings.


2003., 41. évf. 4. szám 437. - 468.o
A magyar népzenekutatás törlesztett adóssága : Sárosi Bálint: A hangszeres magyar népzene - 1998., 37. évf. 1. szám 103. - 108.o