Tanulmány
Ligeti a hídon : a Musica ricercata és a Hat bagatell: az exodus zenéi 361. - 375. o
László Ferenc abstract
Ligeti auf der Brücke
Musica ricercata und die “Sechs Bagatellen”: Musik des Exodus’.
Ferenc László

Im Symbolsysthem von Béla Bartóks Cantata Profana ist die Brücke der Ort der endgültigen Trennung: Die jenseits der Brücke in Hirsche verwandelten Jägerssöhne können nie mehr das Elternhaus betreten, aus Becher trinken und menschliche Kleidung tragen. In Ligetis Lebenslauf war „die Brücke“ die ungarisch-österreichische Grenze, die er im stürmischen Herbst 1956 überschritt. Schöpfersch jedoch hat er die Trennung von seinem musikalischen „Elternhaus“ schon in den Jahren 1951-53, in den im Titel genannten Werken, vorweggenommen.
In der Studie wird die revolutionäre Neuheit des Werkpaares auf Grund einer Analyse eingehend betrachtet. Fallweise werden zudem unterschiedliche Ausformungen derselben musikalischen Substanz miteinander verglichen. Beispiele demonstrieren die souveräne Freiheit, mit welcher der Komponist – der sich nicht „selbst an der Leine führt“ – die „Gesetze“ seiner eigenen neuen Ordnung übertritt. In diesen Jugendwerken ist im Keim der ganze spätere Ligeti enthalten.
„Sokat olvastam, sokat írtam Beethovenrõl…” : Molnár Antal Beethoven-képei 377. - 390. o
Mikusi Balázs abstract
»I have Read and Written a Lot about Beethoven«
Antal Molnár’s Beethoven Images
Balázs Mikusi

This essay is an hommage à Antal Molnár, one of the founders of Hungarian music aesthetics, on the 20th anniversary of his death.
As many other musicians of his generation, Molnár too felt that “it is Beethoven, whom later ages will mention as the most characteristic representative of today’s European culture.” Accordingly, he returned to the German master’s music again and again, in search of “the key that opens the Beethovenian lock”. In his 1917 book, Beethoven, he enthusiastically emphasized the Christian and German elements in the composer’s personality – both for clearly autobiographical reasons, undoubtedly projecting his own desires and personal preferences into the music. The 1927 commemorative article, Beethoven in the Light of Musicology, is much more scholarly, indeed (rejecting the Romantic exaggerations and exalted overall tone of the book); while in Beethoven, the Artist of Form (a paper inspired by the 1929 Hungarian publication of Romain Rolland’s Beethoven monograph) Molnár argues that – notwithstanding all Rolland’s brilliant “psychologising” – an artist’s life cannot give any real clue to his works. Following a thirty-year-long break, Betthoven through Today’s Eyes (1961; originally a chapter of a five-volume history of music) strongly emphasizes the fallibility of musicologists’ interpretations (for “the worthy estimation is almost as rare as the genious itself”), and this suspicion reaches its peak in Beethoven’s Future (probably written on the occasion of the 1970 Beethoven bicentennial), where Molnár suggests that if someone could truly understand the Master at last, all the previous analyses and books, “the huge sheaf of papers should be handed in to the paper-factory for recycling.” Thus these Beethoven writings reflect in nuce the important shift in Molnár’s thinking during his whole life – from enthusiastic Romanticism to ironic scepticism.
„Elõadás, elõadás, elõadás!” : a Haydn billentyûs-szonáták retorikus eljárásainak megkoronázása (Ford. Dalos Anna és Kaczmarczyk Adrienne) 391. - 422. o
Beghin, Tom
Okos orátor vagy merész újító? : gondolatok a zenei retorikáról és Haydn vonósnégyeseinek notációjáról 423. - 435. o
Somfai László abstract
Clever Orator Versus Bold Innovator
Rhetoric Performance and the Notation of Haydn’s String Quartets
László Somfai

Notwithstanding Haydn’s interest in rhetoric and the creative use of the practice of oratory on different levels of the composition, this study takes the case of the string quartets into consideration. In contrast to keyboard music (cf. Tom Beghin’s essays), in this genre not the complete text of the music but only four individual parts were available in the contemporary performance practice, thus a preliminary study of the piece for detecting rhetorical figures and making a plan of the interpretation could not be part of the preparation for the delivery. A disciplined prima vista first reading and rendering, followed by a deeper understanding with chances of a reinterpretation of the same music in the repeated sections, a spontaneous memoria situation, were essential characteristics of the promuntiatio. The master orator was Haydn himself; he included the necessary instruction in the text (i.e. in the notation) of the music. In fact the surprisingly rich variety of special instructions written in Latin, German, or Italian words or expressed with fingering, etc., directly served the intended rendition. Even when Haydn encoded sophisticated messages in string quartet movements (cf. Somfai, “’Learned Style’ in Two Late String Quartet Movements of Haydn,” 1986), he simply produced a careful notation so that its proper execution, without knowing what it actually was, enabled the musicians to deliver the message to the Kenner.
Szent vagy profán? : a kánonszerepe a 18. és a 19. század fordulóján a magyarországi zeneszerzésben 437. - 468. o
Farkas Zoltán abstract
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.


Giulio Caccini: Nuove Musiche - Elõszó : bevezetõ a magyar fordítás elé 469. - 471. o
Lax Éva
Le Nuove Musiche : az olvasókhoz (Ford. Lax Éva) 471. - 486. o
Caccini, Giulio
Henry Purcell II. Mária királynõ halálára írt kompozíciói 487. - 498. o
Kelemen Judit abstract
Music on the Death of Queen Mary II by Henry Purcell
Judit Kelemen

Music pieces composed on the death of Queen Mary II by Purcell are generally mentioned as “funeral ode” in Hungary, meaning especially the Funeral Sentences or any versions of Thou knowest Lord in addition to the Funeral March and the Canzona. Just a few people know the proper genre and the real story of these pieces, and even fewer musicians have heard about the other compositions (two elegies) also made for this occasion by Purcell. This essay makes the origins of these pieces clear, describes the main features of them, and looks at the reasons for so many misunderstandings of them by observing some of CD-s and their reviews. (Illustrated by texts of music pieces both in original version and Hungarian translation.)
Recenzió
Istvánffy Benedek - harmadszor : Benedek Istvánffy: Offertories, Saint Benedict Mass 499. - 502. o
Richter Pál
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