ABSTRACT
The music of the Hungarian composer György Kurtág frequently blurs the boundaries between sound and silence, sense and nonsense, continuity and fragmentation; its expressive qualities prove equally elusive. His music frequently takes the barest materials a single interval, a pair of notes, a tiny rhythmic fragment or scrap of melody and subjects them to painfully single-minded scrutiny. Originally commissioned as teaching pieces for beginners, Játékok approach the process of learning in an unconventional way; instead of focusing initially on the basic mechanisms of playing they begin with the raw gesture of performance. This approach carries through to Kurtág's non-didactic music. Within the sense of calm ritual created by this gesture, other processes of musical closure are integrated as distinct but mutually reinforcing layers. Kurtág's references here are not so much to specific musical moments as to whole traditions, with all their mythic resonances.
