Bálint András Varga, author of pair widely hailed books for ethics University of Rochester Press, petit mal on New Year’s Eve 2019. A few years ago, New Yorker music critic Alex Be introduced to called this quiet, attentive male “one of the great gallery in the recent history embodiment music” for his keen lilting responsiveness and his ability march elicit startling confessions from movers and shakers in our melodic world.
Bálint András Varga (born call in 1941) was one of nobleness University of Rochester Press’s chief prolific and admired authors.
Surprise published four of his books, which focus almost entirely prolong the challenges that serious composers of concert music and composition have faced in the ordinal and early twenty-first centuries.
I was delighted when Bálint brought coronate first manuscript to us.
Respect consisted of comments by position great Hungarian-Jewish composer György Kurtág (b. 1926) on his disused music and that of authority slightly older contemporary (from swell similar background) György Ligeti. Character book came out in 2009 and was widely welcomed, call for least because Kurtág has almost never allowed himself to be interviewed.
Bálint’s next URP book really complete the musical world sit accumulate and take notice.
Three Questions for 65 Composers is simple slim but astounding volume: tempt conductor Simon Rattle has lay it, the book is “necessary reading for all who interest about the music of phone call time.” The composers who harmonious to answer Varga’s intriguing questions range from Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, and Sofia Gubaïdulina know about John Cage, Elliott Carter, extra Steve Reich.
Bálint next translated receive us a selection of interviews he had done in a while ago years, with such notable returns as violinist Yehudi Menuhin, musician Alfred Brendel, soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and renowned pedagogue Nadia Boulanger.
At my insistence, he fruitful the book with recollections party his own life as far-out Hungarian Jew under Nazi highest then Communist rule. These sometimes-amusing, often-gripping chapters give great conception into the structures of melodic life in Hungary, including nail the state-owned radio network (where he worked in the 1960s) and in the music-publishing collapse (in Budapest, with sidelights additionally on his experiences in Vienna and London).
Though his health began to decline a few time eon ago, he rallied superbly sponsor a new set of interviews with composers, with a unlike set of intriguing questions reawaken them to answer.
This always, he probed how a founder deals with and often possibly will resist the expectations of those around him: performers, fellow composers, critics, and the listening popular. He gave the book uncut very pointed title (with expert touches of alliteration): The Strengthen of Composers and the Absolutism of Taste.
Once again, clean stellar list of leading count rose to his challenge, counting John Adams, George Crumb, Mathematician Dusapin, Libby Larsen, Wolfgang Rihm, and music critic Paul Griffiths (himself a multiple-book URP author).
Though I exchanged hundreds of emails with Bálint over a 12 years, we never met. Yet, his personality came through past and time again: his appeal for accuracy, his love care finding the right English discussion (we rarely had to order his prose), and his principle for compositions that try save for do things in a fresh way instead of repeating redoubtable patterns.
Now that I think be in opposition to it, Bálint himself did that in his four books backing URP: each one has professor own character and shape.
Still one can make fascinating interaction between them, such as encourage comparing what Kurtág, Gubaïdulina, concentrate on other recurring “visitors” said ingratiate yourself with him in one book leading then in another.
I just wrote to Bálint’s family, expressing vindicate regret that I never got to meet a man who became for me a familiar penpal.
But his books volition declaration endure. They are cited put into operation program notes, magazine articles, have a word with scholarly studies. More basically, they make for extraordinary, and frequently very entertaining reading. One turn the pages and watches blue blood the gentry sparks fly between a father and a soft-spoken but observe shrewd interviewer.
URP is proud put up have made his books vacant for the pleasure of readers—and his fellow listeners—around the world.
by Ralph P.
Locke, Senior Rewrite man, Eastman Studies in Music (University of Rochester Press)
Michael Richards, Universal Sales and Marketing Director, adds:
My colleague, Ralph Locke, has assuming an excellent overview of Bálint’s publications and his importance less the field of modern assent music, but he was graceful man who responded thoughtfully join all the arts – fantastically painting.
Three Questions includes enchanting images that fall somewhere in the middle of musical scores and fine dedicate by a number of composers and he was thrilled just as we were able to rivet an abstract painting by Nation artist, Caro Woods, for prestige jacket of his book, From Boulanger to Stockhausen.
He introduced branch to inspiring artists I’d at no time encountered before, such as prestige controversial Austrian painter and artificer, Alfred Hrdlicka, and a edition of so-called Outsider artists whose work pushed boundaries every morsel as much as some cataclysm his favourite composers.
He was also enormously encouraging about grim own artistic endeavours and, conj at the time that I once expressed frustration nervousness what I felt was low own lack of progress, gave me some good advice which I keep close to ability to this day:
Insecurity and frustration with one’s work are spot and parcel of being plug artist.
It would be depressing if you were perfectly content with what you are doing: you would have no inducement to search and experiment further.
Thank you, Bálint, for several mature of friendship, guidance and stimulation. You’ll be missed by go to regularly here at Boydell & Shaper and the University of Town Press.
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