Imre Sulyok's talent as a composer came to light as a child, when he surprised his parents with little piano pieces and Goethe settings for his piano lessons. However, typical of his refined personality, it was only after studying at the music academy under Kodály that he decided to pursue a career as a composer. Kodály's main concern was to ensure that his candidate composers had a thorough mastery of the craft. To this end, he encouraged them to study the styles of earlier musical periods and masters. For many of them, years of stylistic training had the dual benefit of providing a solid foundation for independent composition and of encouraging them to look to the musical styles of the past as a source of inspiration. Sulyok's oeuvre shows that he drew his inspiration above all from the music of the 16th and 18th centuries, both in Hungary and abroad.
Imre Sulyok belonged to a generation of Hungarian composers for whom history did not allow them to broaden their musical horizons by exploring contemporary European works. Since their higher education was in the 1930s, as young graduates they had no intensive contact with Western European and American trends to fertilise their style, neither on the eve of the Second World War nor afterwards, following the socialist establishment. Even before 1956, only fragments of Bartók's oeuvre were available to them on recordings or in sheet music. They were thus able to draw professionally authentic contemporary inspiration above all from Kodály's oeuvre and from the guidance of his teachers. Sulyok's personality was close to his master's classical music, which radiated harmony and classicism, and it was no coincidence that this had a lasting influence on his individual compositional style. Another vital influence came from European and Hungarian Lutheran church music. He learned its literature and style partly through his religious practice and partly through Aladár Zalánfy's organ and Protestant church music lessons. Thanks to his broad education, the young musician showed the promise of an ideal church musician. Having put his talents at the service of Lutheran church music in 1936, Sulyok would in time become a truly outstanding exponent of it. The melodiousness and modal harmonies of the Protestant folk of the 16th and 17th centuries appear in his religious compositions.
The defining feature of Sulyok's artistic portrait is its versatility. He has responded to the wide range of professional challenges he has faced by constantly expanding his musical knowledge, and has thus performed to a high standard in a wide variety of tasks. Despite his long life, his compositional style is consistent.
The two most important and most extensive groups of his compositions are the works for choir and organ. Text settings and melodic arrangements of biblical or liturgical origin have accompanied his career throughout. This genre of choral works is represented by his earliest surviving adult work, the first published composition of Psalm 148, dated November 1932, the Holy Lamb of Innocence of 1937, and one of his last choral works, the God to us strength and protection (46. With few exceptions, these choruses have Lutheran and Reformed roots, which Sulyok emphasises in the spirit of the millennia-old church music tradition and his liturgical use of melody. The Lutheran chorale or the Psalter of Geneva, of Hungarian or Central European origin, occasionally from other sources, are mostly performed in their entirety, lending his composition a distinctive, old-fashioned flavour with their modal tone and their melodic beat. The metre and form are also adapted to the liturgical borrowings, their prosody and line structure. Despite the polyphonic weave, the citata is always easy to pick out. Typical examples of this group of works are the four-part settings of the hymns beginning with Nothing to Mourn (1937) and Come, Lord, Holy Spirit (1959), among others. In both works, the 16th-century church chant determines the range, internal articulation and tone. The borrowed material is voiced without melodic alteration in the soprano, and is represented by melodic and rhythmic imitations in the lower voices. The original melody is faithfully preserved in the 1977 two-voice setting of the 16th Geneva Psalm, "Keep me, O my God". The interesting feature of the piece is the lower part which, in Renaissance musical terms, paraphrases the psalm melody, following it in a freely interpreted canon.
Religious and secular choirs, based on their own thematic material, are more modern in sound thanks to a tonality that often extends to 12 degrees, but also make higher demands on the performers. In these works, the expression of the text is aided by a number of illustrative elements in addition to the always perfect prosody, typical of Kodály's pupils. One of them is the Three Songs of God, written in 1936-1937, whose quality was acknowledged by Kodály in his own terse way: 'They are all right.' The Hills, a five-part choral cycle composed in 1957, also won the Master's approval. Inspired by Áprily poems, the textures of the Winter Morning and movements 1-2, Spring, reveal the roots of Sulyok's vocal style, which go back to the Flemish Renaissance. In Áprily's 3rd setting, Mountains, the so-called cross motif of Baroque figuration is illuminated in a 20th century light. The special effect of the last two movements, to poems by Sándor Reményik, is based on the stylistic contrast between the calm vocalisation, which provides the harmonic background, and the declamation in the foreground. Again, a different idea, the melodic drawing and imitation of the solo, painting a succession of waves splashing down and up, animates the final movement, Vizek, ha találkoznak (Waters, if they meet). In the mountains, the topos of admiration for nature and of man finding a home in nature appear, as in the other cycle of four Áprily settings, March, written in 1961.
In addition to the relationship between God and man, the relationship between man and nature, a theme exemplified by the cycles mentioned above, proved to be another constant source of inspiration for his vocal oeuvre. In 1973, for example, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Petőfi's birth, he contributed to the multi-authored collection Petőfi Choirs by setting to music a selection of the poet's poems, The Twilight and the Evening. One particularly inspired example of a rare choral work reflecting on the problems of the present is Még nem elég (Not Enough Yet) from 1966, written to a poem by Mihály Váci. Sulyok expresses the sense of lack expressed in the poem by omitting the terchang of triads. In this way, he does not specify whether it is a major or minor key. The idea was certainly inspired by the opening of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, which had already found an echo in contemporary music, inspiring many works with a predominantly deliberately similar beginning. That Sulyok also deliberately alludes to the locus classicus is revealed by the identity of the key (D tonality) and the other striking coincidence, the V degree of the opening. In addition to the opening, the accumulation of quartets and further dissonances contributes to the extraordinary drama of the choral work. In this respect, the 1961 dramatic scene, The Pharisee and the Tax Collector, is not yet enough. The choral work belongs to the category of religiously conceived but not borrowed choruses. Behind the tense scene that unfolds from the dialogue between the title characters, one can sense the influence of Baroque Passion Turks and Kodály's dramatic choruses. In professional circles, the work has deservedly attracted attention and won first prize in the Buda Diocese Choir Competition. Among the most powerful and modern works of his vocal oeuvre are the Three Bible Pictures / Tres compositiones ex Evangeliis, together with the setting of Mihály Váci and The Pharisee and the Publican. The style of the three motets, composed between 1970 and 1985, is essentially twelve-tone, but the endings dissolve into diatonicism in all three cases. Their main character is the teacher Jesus, rarely represented in music literature. The Coena magna (Lk 14,15-24) is about a host who, instead of refusing to give a dinner party, ends up hosting strangers. The Sedatio (Mt 8,23-27) tells the story of the calming of a storm at the Sea of Galilee. The Expulsio (Lk 4,31-37), which concludes the trilogy, recalls the scene at Capernaum when Jesus cast out the unclean spirit from a possessed man.
After a lifelong devotion to the evangelical music of the past, Imre Sulyok himself has now found a place among the canonized composers: three of his songs have been included in the hymnal compiled for the Hungarian faithful of the denomination. One of the hymns, from the Shadows of China, written to a poem by Sándor Weöres, was first performed in 1992 at the 3rd Congress of the World Federation of Hungarians in Budapest.
The thematic and stylistic characteristics of the choruses, composed on their own themes, are shared by the songs. The Three Godly Songs (1936-1937), inspired by Reményik's poems, and the Four Songs (1952, 1962), written to poems by various poets and later selected in a single volume, are particularly fine examples of the group; the former deserves attention for its archaic melodicism, the latter for its delicate pastel colours. In the case of both the choruses and the songs, it is noticeable that Sulyok set almost exclusively Hungarian-language poems to music, although he read and spoke foreign languages such as German with excellence. His decision was obviously motivated partly by practical considerations, a sober analysis of performance chances, and partly by the need for perfect prosody.
Although his mentality was characterised by a kind of serene seriousness, Sulyok occasionally struck a lighter note. He showed his playful side mainly in vocal or instrumental works for children. For these pieces, he often chose a fast tempo, a starting or dance rhythm. In the Forest Ball, for example, he uses a voltaic rhythm to evoke the swirling of birdsong. In The Hunting Songs of the Old Days, he evokes the momentum of the chase and the rush of the hunted game. Sulyok avoids intonation problems in his children's choirs, but he has not abandoned polymodality in them. In the old-age hunter's songs, he reproduces the unpredictability of the sparks of fire bouncing back and forth by alternating the minor and major thirds of the triad.
From a functional and stylistic point of view, there are many similarities between the choirs and the organ works, the other major group of works in the oeuvre. Most of the latter are compositions by the church musician: chorale preludes for worship. Sulyok drew inspiration for his varied treatment of liturgical chant from the tradition, but combined the usually baroque weaving with 20th-century harmonic idiom. The wealth of ideas reveals that the composer was inspired by the task. In the short pieces, the two hands usually share three or four parts, the pedal adding an extra part. The way in which the piece is arranged is usually dictated by the compositional features of the chorale chosen or by the textual content. Sulyok prefers the imitative style and usually includes all the melody lines in the imitation. At other times, he provides the chorale melody with a more or less continuous chordal accompaniment (Lord God Almighty) or introduces and interrupts it with fanciful passages (Earth and Great Sky; Lord God of Mercy; Jesus, Christ, my beloved). At other times, he exploits the possibilities of unusual metre, as in an old Hungarian (Mely igen jó az Úristent dicsérni II, 3/4, 2/4, 4/4) or a Finnish hymn (Kegyelemnek szép rózsája, 5/8); occasionally he rearranges the original time signature himself (Almighty God Almighty, from 2/4 to 5/8).
The music of the present and the past also meet in works that have no liturgical purpose. It was in these compositions, based on Sulyok's own organ knowledge and free of liturgical constraints, that he unleashed his imagination as a composer. He never ran out of ideas in his arrangements of themes, which resembled improvisation, were preludentially free and based on variation or on a strictly structured wind technique. In his first large-scale organ work, the Te Deum, he arranges the free arrangement of the traditional melody in a tripartite form. His organ work, composed while he was still a music academy student, was published in 1941 by the most important church music journal of the time, the Magyar Kórus, edited by Lajos Bárdos. His talent was also recognised with a competition prize: in 1948, he won first prize in the prelude competition of the Bethlen Gábor Association with his composition "Thanksgiving". He has never been attracted by technical brilliance, but his organ works have often been challenging, as exemplified by the Organ Concerto dedicated to Kodály in 1956 and the Partita to the song of Mátyás Nagybánkai, who lived in the 16th century. The variation work, written in 1975, can be seen as a summary of Sulyok's organ music.
The song of Nagybánkai is sung twelve times in the course of the Partita, each time with a different character. In Part 1 it is introduced with a complementary rhythmic accompaniment. The idea of complementarity comes from the song itself and appears in parts 4 and 8, the former in scherzando, the latter in grave. Other ideas recur throughout the piece to ensure the unity of the composition. For example, the strong chromatic colouring of parts 2, 10 and 11, which, however, always leaves the original melody with its Dorian tonality intact. The prelude-like marches in part 2, enriched with chromatic steps, are played under the melody. As a special feature of Part 10, a pedal soloist is required to perform the allegro tempo chord resolutions. The idea of a virtuoso pedal soloist might have been planted in the organist-composer's mind by Paganini's bravura playing on a single violin string or Liszt's left-hand solos. In part 11 (Andante sostenuto), the song is also richly chromaticised, surrounded by chordal accompaniment - this time re-rhythmised. The rhythmic-metrical transformation also gives Nagybánkai's song a new character in parts 3 and 6. In the former, it is arranged in stretched rhythms, in the latter (Meno mosso, poco rubato) it is remetrized and sung in 7/8 instead of 6/8. The pithy rhythms are offset by steady 16th-note runs in parts 5 (Più mosso) and 7 (Animato). In the former, harp chords and in the latter, 16-od triols conceal the melody. While in parts 1-7 the pedal is silent, from 8 onwards it takes on an increasingly important role. In part 8 he alternates between the two hands, in 10 he is solo, and finally in the final part (12 Maestoso, animato) he sings the song of Nagybánkai alone. The emotional centre of the work is the aria in part 9 (Andante moderato e poco rubato), in which the instrumental style of the borrowed material is replaced by a baroque vocal melody. Although this is one of his most important organ works, the composer makes a special offer to players of pedal-less keyboard instruments: they can perform the Partita on their own instruments, omitting parts 9-11 and following the pedal-less composer's version of parts 8 and 12. Sulyok's permissiveness is explained by the instrumental language of the work: the Baroque elements were shared by all keyboard instruments of the 18th century, while the Classical, Romantic and Modern stylistic elements were developed on the piano.
Compared to his choral and organ works, Imre Sulyok's oeuvre was much less concerned with other groups of works. He composed little for orchestra, and when he did, he preferred chamber orchestra. That the reason for this should be sought in practical considerations rather than a lack of creative imagination is illustrated by his Five Orchestral Miniatures. The composition was awarded a prize in a competition for composers organised by the city of Miskolc in 1965, but it has never been performed in public either then or since. The fate of Ciacona, which revived the Baroque variation genre, was more favourable, and it was performed by the State Concert Orchestra under Tamás Breitner in 1973, five years after it was composed. The orchestral and chamber works are characterised by an instrumental conception, characterful themes, a 12-step extension, but essentially diatonic harmonic idiom and ingenious elaboration. The cyclic chamber works follow the classical movement character. Although Sulyok was attracted to stringed instruments, his wind arrangements show a particular sensitivity to timbre (Clarinet Quintet, Concertino da camera, Musica arcaica). His most successful chamber work is a mixed composition: the Trio per flauto, violino e violoncello won third prize at the 1956 Vercelli Composition Competition in Italy.
Vocal and instrumental folk song arrangements further colour the compositional palette. When it comes to instrumentation, Sulyok typically uses the instruments of a folk orchestra. Despite the fact that the arrangements, with few exceptions, were written in response to the ideology of the time, which propagated folk culture, and fall into the category of Gebrauchsmusik, they are compositions written with imagination and sophistication. They were predominantly commissioned by the Hungarian Radio, similar to the soundtracks of radio plays. According to Sulyok, many of the manuscript scores and recordings made available to the Radio have been lost over time.
Mention should also be made of Sulyok's revisions, which were made in connection with his work as an editor at the Music Publishing House. In these cases, Sulyok was not guided by the intention of a free arrangement, but by the desire to create a transcription which, although using a different apparatus, would largely reflect the original composer's vision.
[2017]