SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal
SMT-V is the open-access, peer-reviewed video journal of the Society for Music Theory. Founded in 2014, SMT-V publishes video essays that showcase research in music theory in a dynamic, audiovisual format, presented so as to have the potential to engage both specialists within the field as well as interested viewers outside the music theory community. The journal features a supportive and collaborative production process, and publishes three to four videos per year. Read more about SMT-V here.
Latest Issue: 6.1 (January 2020)
Sensitivity, Intimacy, and Bodily Interaction in Kurtág’s Four-Handed Piano Works
Cecilia Oinas (Sibelius Academy)
György Kurtág’s four-handed piano works often demonstrate a highly unorthodox distribution of the primo and second parts in which the embodied, physical interactions between the two pianists play a central role in the composition. A sense of the variety of ways in which this interaction can be realized may be witnessed in two movement’s from Kurtág’s Games (Játékok) VII: “Flowers we are . . .” (Virág az ember…”) and “Beating Quarreling” (“ Verés - veszekedés”).
Piano Duos: (1) György Kurtág (1926– ) and Márta Kurtág (1927–2019); (2) Maija Parko and Cecilia Oinas. Permission to use Kurtág’s compositions in this article generously granted by © Universal Music Publishing Editio Musica Budapest.
Keywords: Kurtág, four-hand piano music, post-war music, musical embodiment.
DOI: http://doi.org/10.30535/smtv.6.1