ZOLTAN PONGRACZ - ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC IN HUNGARY
Two composers of extraordinary abilities, Bartok and Kodaly, lived and pursued activities in Hungary in the first half of the 20th century. Kodaly ranked rather as a national figure, whereas Bartok was an artist of universal significance. Both estabilished schools in Hungarian composing, and the generation that came after them, was only able to free itself from their tremendous influence gradually and with difficulties. A contributing factor was, that as a consequence of the Second World War, only with relative difficuilties we succeeded in establishing contacts with the new trends. For example: dodecaphony and serialism became familiar in our country only in the middle of the 1950's, and electronic music even later, despite of the fact - and this is known by only a few persons, not only abroad, but even in Hungary - that in the world's radio broadcasting history, the Budapest Hungarian Radio was the first to create its first interval signal motive out of sine tones in the 1920's. It was the starting motive o
Between 1960 and 1970 we could realize electronic music only abroad, for example I realized my first electronic piece called Phonothese in the Netherlands, in the Studio of the University in Utrecht, where I was a student of Professor Gottfried Michael Koenig. Then I made two other pieces in my private studio. In 1972, Electroacoustic Studio Bratislava of the Czechoslovak Broadcasting Company commissioned me to compose a piece of electronic music. I have completed my Mariphonia there, an acoustic portrait of my wife Maria. The title of the composition comes from her name and the Greek word phonos = sound. Acoustic portraits are well-known in musical literature, as Don Giovanni by Mozart, or by Richard Strauss, or Tasso by Liszt, but these composers did not know their models personally. In my composition however the model is constantly addressing us, all acoustic material originates from her: talk, crying, laughing, clapping hands, etc; the rhytmical movement can be deducted from the ratio of her bodily dimens
1975 brought a significant change in the development of Hungarian electroacoustic music: in February, the National Philharmonic Concert Bureau organized the first public concert, where six electronic pieces by Hungarian composers could be heard. This is a historical day for us.
In the same year the Electroacoustic Music Studio of the Hungarian Radio was established, headed by Janos Decsenyi, and with Istvan Horvath, as leading acoustic engineer. From this time on, an electronic music programme of one hour has been broadcasted every month on the stereo FM station (now Bartok station) of the Hungarian Radio, made up of Hungarian compositions prepared in its own studio, and the compositions of foreign composers, as well.
Also in the autumn of 1975 the Ferenc Liszt Musical Academy attained the status of a university, on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, and electroacoustic music composition was included into the syllabus of the Faculty of composing, myself being its professor since then. At the beginning the subject of electronic music was facultative. Everybody, who wanted, could sign in at the beginning of his studies, and could continue through his five years study, or drop it, if he wanted. The first two years were experimental and ended with very good results. After that, from 1977 the electronic music was - in a funny way - "obligatory facultative", which means, that the electronic music was not obligatory, but if the student took it, he had to finish. But from 1981 on, the electroacoustic music is obligatory for everybody in the third year of composition; without this one-year study nobody can get the diploma of composition, because it is not possible to be a well educated up-to-date composer without any
We can esteem the results encouraging and quite good, and over this: some composers, who were my students, had their works performed in the festival of Bourges, or in the Budapest Radio Programme, and they made recordings of their compositions in Hungary. However, the students have to take up 2 lessons in theory, and 4 lessons in practice every week. Lessons in theory are held at the Academy; for the practical lessons the Hungarian Radio is kind enough to let us use its electronic studio 8 hours a week, as the Academy has no own studio at present.
As we all know, the realization of electroacoustic music is impossible without suitable equipment. On the other hand, we are aware, that the electroacoustic music does not depend on either the European temperated scale, or the known instruments, or traditional melody models: it has not much in common with the well-known rhythm form; its conception is in close relation to mathematics, electronics, acoustics and information-theory. Hearing all this, it would only be proper to ask, whether electronic music is an art, or a science? My answer is: in its conception it belongs to art, but in its realization to the science! The composer of electroacoustic music is an artist, and the finished work can be evaluated only from a musical point of view, and not from a scientific or technological one. Just like in vocal and instrumental music, everything depends on the composer's talent; mathematics and acoustics alone cannot help the untalented!
Electroacoustic music must be composed in the same way, as the traditional one. The work must begin to come alive in the hearth, the soul and the brain of the composer, then he can sit down and write the diagramm-score or recipe and transform it into parameters to be fed into the machines according to the selected realization technique, most suitable for the semantic content. Here suddently arises the problem of sound resources. Let me use here analogies from poetry: the oscillator does not posses a hearth, and the computer has no brains; the composer has both of them. A Computer Studio is very usefull not only for the composers, but also for the researchers in the musicology. The fact is, that the computer was not invented for composing music, yet it is capable of performing certain musical processes faster and more exactly, although this refers only to the mechanical treatments of the intellectual work.
Speaking of myself, I prefer to apply sound sources, which have basically some emotional content. These are: all emotional manifestations of the human body (talk, crying, singing, laughing, sighing etc.), the sounds from the animal kingdom, and all noises of nature and civilisation, which can be associated with some kind of emotion. On the other hand: I endeavour bringing emotionless oscillator-sound through certain modulations closer to emotional sounds, at least via simulations to fill the music movement process with some approximate agogics. In the 20th century music, the charming melodies are more and more pushed into the background. Do not misunderstand me: I am not thinking of Tshaikowski, of the mushy Italian melodies, and the less of banalities and sob stuff. After all, electroacoustic music also has a melody sphere of its own, but it is different from traditional melodies, and it can also be made well and not well, nicely or not nicely. It can be made nicely, if we consider, that here the melody is m
In my Concert for cimbalom and tape (you heard yesterday evening) the synthetic sound range lies between 100 and 1200 cycles. At the lowest edge of the projected figure you can see 100 cycles. From here on the right side along the straight lines 1.33 is the constant ratio, while on the left side, along the dotted lines, it is 1.24. The sum of the figures in numbers of both ratios is 7. This is their simility. However, they differ in that, while 1.33 is almost a perfect fourth, 1.24 is somewhat bigger than a major third. Moving from the starting point in both directions, 5 more frequencies can be found, and at the middle line the straight and dotted lines with their ratios are interchanged, and reach 1220 cycles at the peak in a similar way.
The whole figure resembles a large ellipse. Starting from each of the outside frequencies, 2 polygons resembling circles are formed in the usual way, then 4 dodecahedrons, and 8 octahedrons, and 16 tetrahedrons. Through the points of contact any neighbouring figure can be reached. This net contains totally 31 frequencies (Fig. 1), but they can be rearranged in two different ways, downwards with a ratio of 1.5, and upwards with a ratio of 1.68179, so the original net is extended to a range of 67 - 2052 cycles together with the two transpositions. Then I have formed 6-, 5-, 4-, and 3-parts with various wawe forms and evenlopes. (Fig. 2)
As it is about a concerto, the synthetic material is not temperated; the instrumental material is however moving in a temperated medium, which undoubtely causes a special tension, vibration in its tone. If we examine the frequency sequence, we can easily observe 6 frequencies, which are already present in the instrumental material, and this number is tripled by the double transposition, so in the two materials 18 common sounds can be found, id est: contacts and passages are possible between the two materials. (Fig. 3)
As regards the time proportions of the composition, 13 or 14 years ago I stuck rigidly to various time intervals and scales, but after 28 years of work I think, that I have developed a sense of time and proportions, that I can trust my instincts rather, than the mystic of numbers. If I can walk alone, why should I use a crutch?! If the composers of the tonal era could comply with the symmetric structure without counting, why could not we also attain this ability for asymmetric music, too?
In all concertos a cadenza is required. Well: in my piece I wrote in notes only the beginning and the ending of this, but for the middle I have written only a verbal text-programm: what are compulsories, admissibles or prohibited things to do and on the basis of these instructions the soloist must (as in the Baroque age) improvize this part.
I must also say a few words about realization. I believe, that the message and the atmosphere of a composition determine the sound sources as well as the method of realization. Nowadays three kinds of technology are useful and familiar for realization in electroacoustic studios: a) the so-called classic method (with cutting, sticking, etc.), b) the working with voltage controlled devices, and c) the computer technique. As I have applied instrumental, analogue an digital sources in my Concert for cimbalom and tape, so I applied the classic technique, voltage control and computer techniques in realization, according to the nature of the material.
If we survey the production of the last 10 or 12 years, we shall be surprised observing a great change in the style of the composition technique of electroacoustic music. Instead of interesting effects and montages we can hear real musical processes. Isolated tones, separated by long periods, play minor part, and melodies with large lines come into prominence - naturally not in the traditional sense. The "ugly" tones are disappearing; they could not be very criticized, as their composers were ready to announce: that was just what I wanted to put there. The compositions of today endeavour to have euphony. Noises are beginning to stay in the background, and in the service of timbre. The self-centered and empty juggling with space-movements ceased, space movements are also in the service of musical concept. The form shows some kind of approach to symphonic structure and has a musical conception opposed to the mathematical one up to now. If we add the urge for grandiosity, we have the stylistical charac
I believe, that music indeed has eternal laws, but they are not identical with the laws of individual eras, and not even of individual styles. They are probably laws of nature in the inner self existence, which we cannot recognize with our present knowledge. Here also a human speaks to another human, but the content of the metaphysical and transcendental message has changed, and we regard this content from the point of view of Einstein and Planck. And we are right to see the new musical art of the Atomic Age in this effort.
 (Fig. 1)
 (Fig. 2) Table of frequencies
 (Fig. 3) Common frequencies for the ellipse and the temperated scale (marked in the table)
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