“The beginning is simple, almost comic – just a pulse … like a rusty squeeze box – and then suddenly, high above it … a single note hanging there, unwavering … sweetened … into a phrase of such delight…” 

Although this quote is taken from the film Amadeus and is uttered by Salieri in reference to Mozart’s ‘Gran Partita’ Serenade for winds K 361, it is an equally fitting description of the beginning of Kurtág’s Kafka fragmente (‘Kafka fragments’), for soprano (Juliane Banse) and violin (András Keller). The violin begins with a folk-like opening as if to set the beat or lull the listener. The soprano comes in, singing lyrics of marching, of steps, of dancing.

Thus begins Kurtág’s cycle of phrases and sentences – snatched and strung together randomly – courtesy of the writer Franz Kafka’s diaries and letters. Kurtág’s music, with the aid of these fragments will take the listener to opposite ends of the human psyche and not always with a smooth transition between the extremes.

Briefly, György Kurtág was born in 1926. He was born in an area of eastern Europe that belonged to Rumania, and studied in Budapest and Paris under masters such as Milhaud and Messiaen. He heard Webern’s work for the first time and returned to Budapest, declaring that his own string quartet (opus 1, 1959) marked his severance from the past. In 2006, the year of his eightieth birthday, recording label ECM decided to release this work as a new recording in honour of this event.

Numerous prestigious appointments and positions have come his way as a composer and as a performance tutor. Kurtág has also received many music awards. In February 2006 the Budapest Music Centre held a festival in honour of their beloved citizen’s achievements.

For many years throughout his life Kurtág recorded small quotes from Kafka’s writings that struck his fancy in regards to their potential to be set to music. Eventually the chance came to him and he began to work on compositional sketches for the fragments, and his enduring fascination with the work led him to work on it seriously, rather than for his own enjoyment.

The fragments are not ordered according to its thematic content, or to construct some sort of narrative. The primary concern is musical, and the order of the pieces has changed many times – even after its 1987 premiere performance.

Because of the ‘pulse’ mentioned at the beginning, the music has a hypnotic quality when listened to. The melodies echo folk tunes of Kurtág’s native land at certain points, as well as continue the trends established in Western art music at the beginning of the twentieth century. It also hints at the Jewish ancestry that both he and Kafka share.