Budapest ♥ NY: The New Music Studio 1971-1980

Abstract

Budapest v NY: The New Music Studio 1971-1980 l__trt_ L Alan Williams Between about 1970 and 1980, the most significant activities in Hungarian contemporary music were created by themembers of the New Music Studio (Uj Zenei Studio, hereafterNMS), a loose collection of composers and performers who had met as students of the Franz Liszt Academy ofMusic. Their music is relatively unfamiliar outside Hungary, although the names of individuals associated with theNMS may be better known to a US readership: the pianist and conductor Zolt?n Kocsis, and the composer and conductor P?ter E?tv?s, for example. However, the musicians regarded as the "core" of theNMS were the composers Zolt?n Jeney, L?szl? Vidovszky, and L?szl? S?ry. Other members included Andr?s Wilheim, Barnabas Dukay, Gyula Csap?, Zsolt Serei and Gy?rgy Kurt?g, Jr. (son of the seniorHungarian composer of the same name). An examination of theirmusic isworthwhile because of the radical means they employed to attempt a remaking ofmusic inHungary during Budapest v NY 213 the 1970s. The relative unfamiliarity of theirmusic is partly a result of thesemeans, which often resulted in a "product" which could not easily be distributed in the normal way. The activities of the NMS formed a part of a largermovement across thewhole range ofHungarian culture taking place in the late 1960s and firsthalf of the 1970s. The NMS col laborated with other artists and artistic groups, and inHungary their music isprobably just aswell known invisual arts circles as it is inmusical circles. Finally, theNMS showed a remarkable interest in, and clear famil iarity with, theNew York musical and artistic avant-garde, suggesting a more complex picture than that of simple cultural isolation "behind the Iron Curtain." While there was a degree of isolation, there was more knowledge about ideas and work in "theWest" than is commonly real ized inEnglish-speaking countries. There are some excellent articles inHungarian by the musicologist T?nde Szitha on theNMS. An important discussion of the "US" ten dency in the NMS comes with her 2000 article "Az amerikai min im?lzene hat?sa az Uj Zenei St?di? zeneszerzoire az 1970-es ?s 80-as ?vekben" (The influence ofAmerican minimalist music on the composers of theNew Music Studio in the 1970s and 1980s). Taking as her starting point the performances from about 1975 by the NMS of works by La Monte Young, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Fred Rzewski and Terry Riley, she traces the elements of repetitive composition to be found in the music of theNMS. From 1975-9, among works frequently occurring in their concert programmes were 1+1 andMusic inFifths (Glass); Clapping Music, It's Gonna Rain, Pendulum Music and Piano Phase (Reich); In C and Keyboard Music (Riley); and Coming Together and Les Moutons de Panurge (Rzewski).l The influence ofNew York minimalism is absolutely clear, particularly in theworks of L?szl? S?ry, and to a lesser extent Zolt?n Jeney.There are also some works by Vidovszky which show this influence, although the composer has himself stated that the repetitive phase inhis music was rel atively short lived.2 This tendency became more pronounced in the sec ond half of the 1970s. In this article Iwould like to examine some more ways inwhich the cultural influence of the United States avant-garde, particularly the thought of John Cage, was adapted by the NMS. As Tunde Szitha's 2000 article makes clear, that the types of music which became grouped under the name ofminimalism were very diverse, and so it is important to note that the NMS themselves made no distinction between "Cage-ism" and "minimalism," and that in the performances of pieces by La Monte Young, and in their later collaborations with New York composer Tom Johnson, such a distinction is not helpful. Reich, Cage, Rzewski, and Clarence Barlow all visited Hungary and theNMS 214 PerspectivesofNew Music during thel970s and 1980s, and all left theirmark to a greater or lesser extent on themusic of the group. But it is to Cage I will devote most attention, as itwas he who first liberated the NMS to make their own experimentations in composition. Background and Context Political changes meant that...