György Kurtág facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
György Kurtág
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Kurtág in 2014 by Lenke Szilágyi
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| Born | 19 February 1926 Lugoj, Romania
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Notable work
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György Kurtág (born 19 February 1926) is a famous Hungarian composer and pianist. He writes modern classical music. His style is known for being short and powerful. His pieces often express feelings very directly. Many people see him as one of the last important composers from after World War II who created new and experimental music.
Kurtág taught piano at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music starting in 1967. He also taught chamber music, which is music for small groups of instruments. He continued teaching there until 1993.
Contents
About György Kurtág
Early Life and Education
György Kurtág was born on 19 February 1926 in Lugoj, Romania. His parents were Jewish Hungarians. When he was 14, he started taking piano lessons. He also studied how to compose music.
In 1946, he moved to Budapest, Hungary. He became a Hungarian citizen in 1948. He began studying at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. There, he met his future wife, Márta Kinsker. He also became close friends with another composer, György Ligeti. Kurtág studied piano, composition, and chamber music. He finished his piano and chamber music studies in 1951. He then got his degree in composition in 1955. He married Márta in 1947, and their son, György, was born in 1954.
A Turning Point in Paris
After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Kurtág spent time in Paris, France, from 1957 to 1958. This time was very important for him. He studied with famous composers like Olivier Messiaen.
During this period, Kurtág felt very sad and depressed. He said he felt like everything he believed was wrong. He got help from a psychologist named Marianne Stein. She encouraged him to create music from very simple ideas. This helped him a lot and greatly improved his artistic work. In Paris, he also discovered the music of Anton Webern and the plays of Samuel Beckett.
When he returned to Budapest in 1959, he wrote a string quartet. This piece was a major turning point for him. He calls it his first important work, or "Opus 1." He dedicated it to Marianne Stein.
Teaching and International Recognition
Kurtág worked as a coach for musicians at the Bartók Music School from 1958 to 1963. He also worked at the National Philharmonia in Budapest. In 1967, he became a professor of piano at the Franz Liszt Academy. Later, he also taught chamber music there. He taught many students until 1993, including famous pianists like Zoltán Kocsis and András Schiff.
Kurtág's music started to become known internationally in 1968. His piece The Sayings of Peter Bornemisza was performed in Germany. However, it took some time for his music to become widely recognized. His piece Messages of the Late Miss R.V. Troussova helped him gain more fame. It was first performed in Paris in 1981.
Since the early 1990s, Kurtág has worked more and more abroad. He was a composer-in-residence with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna Konzerthaus. He also lived in the Netherlands, Berlin, and Paris for several years. From 2002 to 2015, he and his wife lived near Bordeaux, France. They then moved back to Budapest. Márta, his wife, passed away in October 2019.
Kurtág's Unique Music Style
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Kurtág composes music very carefully and slowly. In 1985, when he was 59, he had only written 23 main works. Several pieces were still unfinished or he had taken them back to change them.
Short Pieces and Deep Feelings
Kurtág's compositions often have many very short parts, called movements. For example, his piece Kafka Fragments is about 55 minutes long. It is a collection of 40 short songs for a singer and a solo violin. The words come from the writings of Franz Kafka.
Music writer Tom Service said that Kurtág's music "reduces music to small pieces, to a moment." Individual pieces or movements might last only a few seconds, or maybe a minute or two. One of his piano pieces, "Flowers We Are, Mere Flowers," has only seven notes! Because he focuses on these tiny pieces, Kurtág's music is often compared to that of Anton Webern.
Before his piece Stele (written for the Berlin Philharmonic), Kurtág mainly wrote music for singers, choirs, or small groups of instruments. Since Stele, he has written some larger pieces. These include Messages and New Messages for orchestra.
Kurtág's only opera, Fin de partie, is based on Samuel Beckett's play Endgame. It was first performed in Italy in 2018.
Music for Different Spaces
Starting in the late 1980s, Kurtág wrote several pieces where the way instruments are placed in a space is important. His piece … quasi una fantasia… for piano and ensemble was first performed in 1988. It was the first time he explored the idea of music that surrounds the audience.
Kurtág often gave special classes for chamber music. He also performed concerts with his wife, Márta. They would play a changing selection of pieces for two or four hands on the piano. These pieces came from Kurtág's ten-volume collection called Játékok (which means "Games"). They also played versions of other music arranged for piano.
Most of Kurtág's music is published by Editio Musica Budapest. Some of his works are published by other companies like Universal Edition and Boosey & Hawkes.
Awards and Honors
György Kurtág has received many important awards for his music. Here are some of them:
- He received the Kossuth Award from the Hungarian government in 1973 for his lifetime achievements. He received it again in 1996.
- He was given the Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 1985.
- He received the Austrian Ehrenzeichen in 1996.
- In 1998, he won the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, a very important music award.
- He became an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001.
- In 2006, he won the Grawemeyer Award for his composition …concertante… Op. 42. This is a major international award for music.
- In 2014, he received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award for Contemporary Music. The judges said his music had "rare expressive intensity."
- In 2024, Kurtág received the Wolf Prize, an international award given in Israel. This was for his great contributions to the world's culture.
Many music festivals have celebrated Kurtág's work. In 2004, the Rheingau Musik Festival featured him as their special composer. In 2006, for his 80th birthday, the Budapest Music Centre held a festival in his honor. Other festivals in Berlin, Vienna, Holland, and Paris also dedicated special programs to his music that year.
Awards
- Erkel Prize in 1955 and 1969
- Kossuth Prize (1973)
- UNESCO's International Rostrum of Composers (1983)
- Music Prize of the Prince Pierre of Monaco Foundation (1993)
- International Antonio Feltrinelli Prize (1993)
- Composers Award of the State of Austria (1994)
- Denis de Rougemot Prize of the European Festivals Association (1994)
- Kossuth Prize for Lifetime Achievement (1996)
- Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1997)
- Composers Award "Promotion of the European economy" (1998)
- Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (1998)
- Honorary Prize for Art and Science of the Institute for Advanced Study Berlin (1999)
- Pour le Mérite for Science and Art (1999)
- Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2000)
- Commander with Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (2001)
- John Cage Award (2003)
- Sonning Award (2003; Denmark)
- Grand Cross of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (2006)
- University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition (2006; U.S.)
- Honorary member of the Union of Composers and Musicologists from Romania (2008)
- Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale for lifetime achievement (53rd International Festival of Contemporary Music; 2009)
- Zürich Festival Prize (2010)
- Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal (2013)
- BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Contemporary Music (2014)
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015)
- Rolf Schock Prize (2020)
- The Wolf Prize (2024)
See also
In Spanish: György Kurtág para niños
