Searching for the Composer's Role in Peter Eötvös' First Creative Period (1963–1989)

Abstract

SEARCHING FOR THE COMPOSER’S ROLE IN PETER EÖTVÖS’ FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD (1963–1989)* ANNA DALOS IN DEINER ROLLE LACHT DIE KUNST SICH SELBST AUS.” This quotation is taken from Peter Eötvös’s Radames of 1975.1 It is how the German theater director instructs the singer of the double figure Aida and Radames using long German philosophical and methodological explanations to facilitate interpretation. The sentence has symbolic significance for all who try to understand the first creative period of Eötvös’s life as a composer. One can even say that every word of the quotation can be understood as a key idea of the works written by him before 1990. His compositions aim at interpreting the concept of art —“Kunst” as the Germans would emphatically call it—playing with such means as humor and self-irony, and querying constantly the artist’s role in the creation of works of art. Eötvös’s chamber opera demonstrates almost didactically the impossibility of the development of artists and arts. Such development is not only hindered by the double gender of the title role (Aida and Radames in one person), but made unviable by the despotism of other “ 94 Perspectives of New Music artists involved in the production of a performance. Theatrical functioning kills the chance of the consummation of art. The same parable manifests itself in Harakiri. There is always something that disturbs the reception and the performance of the ritual: the translator of the Japanese text deprives the ritual of its artistic character and desecrates it at the same time. Peter Eötvös emphasized in an interview that Harakiri represents the artist and the imitating dilettante.2 Dilettantism undoubtedly plays a significant role in destroying art; Eötvös’s statement is, however, misleading. Eötvös rather questions the possibility of art today. Adorno’s oft cited and misinterpreted statement—after Auschwitz poetry could no longer be written—shouldn’t be brought into conjunction with Eötvös’s self-related question. It rather refers to his own music and probes into the question whether he is able to create works of art at all, and if so, what does a work of art mean in reality. Eötvös’s compositions represent the search for ways and means after the loss of artistic innocence, and are in this sense exceptionally reflective works. As a composer, he followed an absolutely different path from his Hungarian colleagues. In his case the period of searching for the proper way, for finding himself—moreover, for the composer’s role in this new artistic era—lasted long. My study aims at pointing out the context and the background of this very personal experience. Little is known about Eötvös’s composition studies at the Budapest Academy of Music. He started studying at the Academy aged fourteen, first as a student of János Viski, later of Ferenc Szabó.3 Though Eötvös is willing to give interviews, he is reticent about his lessons with the two noted professors. The Kodály pupil Szabó, who was a convinced communist and a leading figure of Hungarian musical life between 1947 and 1956,4 retired from public life after the uprising in October 1956 and only kept his post of teacher of composition. Unfortunately he was not really successful in his capacity as a teacher, particularly when compared with his fellow professor, Ferenc Farkas. Szabó’s music is characterized by the light neo-classicism of the thirties. It seems that Eötvös cannot have learned anything from him. This is the reason why the young composer turned to other sources of inspiration: film music and incidental music for the stage.5 His first known composition, Solitude, was written in 1956 for children’s choir and reflects the young boy’s proficiency in the traditional Kodályian way of thinking. Composed five years later, the composition Kozmosz shows a change in the direction of his interests. The work of the seventeen-year-old composer is a naive, almost unreflective piece in which he documents Gagarin’s space flight and Searching for the Composer’s Role in...