REVIEWS
Daily News – 02/2021 Revolutionary new Bach-edition released by Hungarian professors The new publication edited by violinist Márta Ábrahám and composer Barnabás Dukay is a real world premiere. The authors are… Read more at https://dailynewshungary.com/revolutionary-new-bach-edition-released-by-hungarian-professors/
It is worth knowing in advance that Dukay as composer feels attached to the creative attitude of Leoninus, and fully acknowledges Ockeghem’s art. Besides its ways of expression, it seeks to belong also in its worldview to a one-time approach in which music was one of the ‘septem artes liberales’, and individual compositions did by no means give vent to authorial self-expression. Relying on this thought-through worldview Dukay as performer (in the case of this book: as author) does not profess didactic forms of communication; due to his persuasion his statements often sound like enunciations. The musician–reader approaching from ‘elsewhere’ can more than once have objections (also simply by referring to the acoustic control) – for instance, in his symbolic interpretation of the intervals, where he does not differentiate between the major and minor forms of the same interval while defining the symbolic content of the range of meanings. Slow, attentive and thoughtful reading is a prerequisite for getting attuned to the train of thought of the authors.
The Introduction provides basic information for the non-musician readers – since the book was hardly written for interested professionals alone. Although later on it turns out that, no matter in how many ways the ever more detailed analysis is illustrated, it is worth following the text with a score – preferably an Urtext edition – in hand. The majority of the analyses are of the structural type, concentrating on the form, the temporal articulation of the lesser and greater musical units. Special attention is paid to the golden section, which can be observed in different dimensions. At this point it should be noted that, just as in the case of numerology and other mystical connections, the question to what extent these are applied consciously in Bach’s art is evaded. No detailed analysis can uncover the essence that makes posterity evaluate Bach’s music as being of matchless significance. As a rule works that can exquisitely be analyzed by no means always prove to be masterpieces in practice, no matter what intention–consideration their author had in mind. Geniality (which we may view as God’s gift) is immeasurable! Let the impressive ‘ability to account for every note’ motivate both practising and theorizing musicians not to content themselves with playing the notes, giving the written music a sounding life, but search for the deeper, more hidden messages encoded in the notes. It is worth doing so even when the composition in question has not been historically canonized as a masterwork.
The sound recording of the Partita by Márta Ábrahám provides excellent raw material also for those not reading music, making them realize that it is worthwhile and possible to read the streams of notes ‘in multiple dimensions’. And for the violinists it provides inspiration to seek to express through one’s playing how one reads the composer’s message. In other words, to convey what one understood of the work. 07/20017· GRAMOFON-Katalin Fittler
It is worth knowing in advance that Dukay as composer feels attached to the creative attitude of Leoninus, and fully acknowledges Ockeghem’s art. Besides its ways of expression, it seeks to belong also in its worldview to a one-time approach in which music was one of the ‘septem artes liberales’, and individual compositions did by no means give vent to authorial self-expression. Relying on this thought-through worldview Dukay as performer (in the case of this book: as author) does not profess didactic forms of communication; due to his persuasion his statements often sound like enunciations. The musician–reader approaching from ‘elsewhere’ can more than once have objections (also simply by referring to the acoustic control) – for instance, in his symbolic interpretation of the intervals, where he does not differentiate between the major and minor forms of the same interval while defining the symbolic content of the range of meanings. Slow, attentive and thoughtful reading is a prerequisite for getting attuned to the train of thought of the authors.
The Introduction provides basic information for the non-musician readers – since the book was hardly written for interested professionals alone. Although later on it turns out that, no matter in how many ways the ever more detailed analysis is illustrated, it is worth following the text with a score – preferably an Urtext edition – in hand. The majority of the analyses are of the structural type, concentrating on the form, the temporal articulation of the lesser and greater musical units. Special attention is paid to the golden section, which can be observed in different dimensions. At this point it should be noted that, just as in the case of numerology and other mystical connections, the question to what extent these are applied consciously in Bach’s art is evaded. No detailed analysis can uncover the essence that makes posterity evaluate Bach’s music as being of matchless significance. As a rule works that can exquisitely be analyzed by no means always prove to be masterpieces in practice, no matter what intention–consideration their author had in mind. Geniality (which we may view as God’s gift) is immeasurable! Let the impressive ‘ability to account for every note’ motivate both practising and theorizing musicians not to content themselves with playing the notes, giving the written music a sounding life, but search for the deeper, more hidden messages encoded in the notes. It is worth doing so even when the composition in question has not been historically canonized as a masterwork.
The sound recording of the Partita by Márta Ábrahám provides excellent raw material also for those not reading music, making them realize that it is worthwhile and possible to read the streams of notes ‘in multiple dimensions’. And for the violinists it provides inspiration to seek to express through one’s playing how one reads the composer’s message. In other words, to convey what one understood of the work. 07/20017· GRAMOFON-Katalin Fittler