Some time ago I noted a few remarkable works of fiction that had taken ridiculous efforts before being accepted by a publisher. I mentioned Samuel Beckett, Paul Auster and Eimir McBride. I’ve since learned that Jane Austen submitted to a publisher a manuscript called ‘First impressions’ in 1797. From what we know of her thoroughness, it would not have been ordinary. The work was eventually published in 1813 under the title Pride and prejudice.
I was told today of the remark of a minor celebrity, explaining that he decided to move one of his children from a school in north London to another (far less diverse) one, because “it’s too urban”.
Thursday 19 February will be György Kurtág’s 100th birthday. An inspiration. Homage, profound respect. I feel a sense of enormous privilege to be alive at the same time as he is, and is still composing, elsewhere on this planet. In Budapest they will be performing his most recent work, a one-act opera. I shall be immersing myself in the string and piano music.
‘Kurtág stands as a composer of radical restraint. His music demonstrates that scale is not a measure of depth, and that a single sound can carry the weight of memory, emotion, and thought. His miniatures confirm that intensity, not abundance, is the true measure of artistic power’.
One of the lessons I’ve absorbed from Kurtág is to be reconciled with the problem that a work may seem never to be finished—whether published / performed or not—and to embrace opportunities continually to refine and revise, to explore alternative versions, to be prepared to re-use material without devaluing it.
And I often revisit this particular interview quotation, for its guiding wisdom:
‘You can churn out easy rhymes and easy rhythms… [But] if the material offers no resistance, you are in great danger’.*
Thank you György, keep on keeping on.
* Balint Andras Varga (2009). Gyorgy Kurtag: three interviews and Ligeti homages. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, p72.
