The Kassák Requiem
In the 1960s, Hungarian composers embraced and eagerly began to study dodecaphony and its various branches: serialism and aleatoricism. Balassa’s interest also turned toward these new-sounding musical approaches, but he rejected the strict use of the series. Coping with this new material, he sought sonorities acceptable to the ear, trying to play music naturally in a language that was foreign to him. The leading theorists of the time, who were proponents of serialism, aleatorism and other tonal experiments by the Darmstadt School, supported the composer, and as a result, the publisher Zeneműkiadó (Editio Musica Budapest) released his scores immediately. He received commissions both in Hungary and abroad.
His most striking success came with the Kassák Requiem. It won first place on the 1972 Tribune and was broadcast by thirty-two radio stations that year. This opened up the world for Balassa. For example, he wrote Tabulae at the request of ORF. His orchestral work Glarusi ének (The Song of Glarus) was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation; Hívások és kiáltások (Calls and Cries) by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Egy álmodozó naplója (Diary of a Dreamer) by the E. S. Coolidge Foundation; and Three Fantasies for orchestra by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra (Manchester). His composition Iris was premiered in London by Pierre Boulez.
Balassa said the following about the Requiem: "The Requiem is the work of a young man composing instinctively, who, in the course of creating it, absorbed all the compositional techniques of his time without allowing the stylistic differences to tear apart the work’s spiritual unity.” Elsewhere, recalling his early years, he remarked:
"Listening again to my early works — such as the Kassák Requiem or my opera Outside the Door — I was surprised to find the musical process arranging itself into tonal surfaces. What once sounded dissonant and inorganic has now mellowed and transformed into color, into external layers surrounding the essential pillars. The vocal lines are everywhere singable and melodic; one may well ask whether we are really dealing with twelve-tone atonality here, or with something else—something evolving, struggling to be born amid labor pains."
In the interests of creative independence, he became the music director of Hungarian Radio. During his years of directing, he led the recording of several contemporary works, which provided valuable lessons. It was in this job that he met Ede Terényi, a Transylvanian composer and one of his sincere friends, who became an expert and the most competent analyst of his life and works. In his works, Hajta virágai (Flowers of Hajta) and his recently completed volume of studies, Nap fiai (Sons of the Sun). Terényi authentically reveals the spirit and the mysteries of the structure of much of Balassa’s oeuvre. Terényi's work is an indispensable document of the era.
Lights and shadows
The desire for renewal brought change, the joy of spiritual homecoming. Szőlőcske and Halacska (Grapey, Fishy), commissioned by the city of Szeged, and the opera-cantata Third Planet, composed for the Hungarian Radio, show a significant broadening of his musical horizon. "My music escaped the pull of atonality, and new tonalities and possible intonations have opened up to me. In this way, the European musical past became something I could continue. Instead of music production techniques and ideologies, I put musical beauty and human expression at the centre of my works. I was saved."
The need to write poetry has surfaced again as an underground stream. At the end of the nineties, he wrote two choral works to his own text, a women's chorus entitled Bánatomtól szabadulnék (May my sorrow pass), and a mixed chorus entitled Oldott kéve (Loosened Sheaf). He worked on the libretto of The Third Planet for three years before he reached the stage of setting it to music. The opera-cantata already carries the liberated sound of renewal. During this decade of change, he married Marianne Orosz, with whom he has lived happily ever after.
By the 1990s, the Hungarian cultural scene has become dramatically fractured. The composer, Attila Bozay, Zsolt Durkó and Sándor Szokolay came under politically motivated attacks disguised as professional criticism from four other composers belonging to the opposition.
The idea of national music - Ars poetica
By the time of the regime change in ’89, the atonal principle of composition had hardened into an ideology. Balassa found it unacceptable that its proponents considered themselves the sole legitimate custodians of composition, and demanded a complete break with the past, a clean slate in order to create a new, world-embracing style. It was in this period that, at the request of Sándor Csoóri, Balassa wrote his essay "1989 - Reflections on National Music", which was published in the magazine Hitel (1989/2). At the heart of his message is that the world of science and money can be international, but culture can only be national. The sum of our finest national cultures constitutes universal art. This statement, of course, is equally true for music.
The composer called this declaration a major turning point in his life, because for the first time he managed to formulate the purpose, direction and values of his work. "No one will create, build, recite and sing instead of us the epic, that is solely our task to create here and now. We are part of the great chorus of humanity. In this chorus we have a special voice that cannot be replaced by others."
This powerful critique of the era and national creed was followed by an even more determined statement in a 1990 interview for St. James Press. " I reject the catchphrase, popularized for commercial reasons, that regards modernity and contemporaneity as the supreme and sole values... The saving of life on Earth is possible only through the conscious activity of people ennobled into a community.
Art cannot serve politics and science, because these two spheres will divert it from its original course and rob it of its cathartic power... The future, the continuation, depends on us, the composers living today. It is untenable that a small elite proclaims omnipotently how one must compose today or tomorrow...
Multiple roads, multiple national roots promise a rich harvest in all the colors of the rainbow. In the vast chorus of humanity, every original voice is needed. Today's artists weave together the magnificent tapestry that is the voice of the Earth today, and I am honoured to be part of this creative work."
Both declarations were followed by quiet enthusiasm on the one hand, and noisy rejection on the other. The composer was left in a vacuum, and years of silence and loneliness followed. The only exception was the premiere of his opera Karl és Anna (Karl and Anna) in 1992.
Letters from the reserve
The isolation imposed on him did not curtail Balassa’s creative activity. To prove that he had returned home, he no longer dedicated his works to London and Boston, but to Hungarian settlements like Bölcske, Szeged, Pécs and Gödöllő. He composed works for those living in Hungarian regions— entitled Bells of Nyírbátor, Travels in Bihar, City of the Cívis. He was the first to write about the 1956 War of Independence (Parcel 301, 1997; Flowers of October, 2003), he also published a book on the Trianon peace treaty (Trianon, 2010), and composed musical portraits of prominent Hungarian intellectuals (Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, István Sinka, Endre Szervánszky and Dezső Szabó) entitled Four Portraits. Several of his symphonic works from this period connect to Hungarian history (Tündér Ilona (Fairy Ilona), 1992; Csaba Herceg (Prince Csaba, 1993); A Nap fiai (Sons of the Sun), 1995; Magyar koronázási zene (Hungarian Coronation Music), 1998; Hunok völgye (Valley of the Huns, 1999)). In the 1990s, he also composed a number of pieces (Trumpet Concerto, Cimbalom Concerto, Double Concerto for Oboe and Horn, Excursion to the Mountains of the Sun, Summer Music). During these years, he wrote several choral works connected to the theme of intellectual self-defense (e.g. The People of the East, To the Stork, The Beautiful Border of My Homeland, On the Decline of Hungary, December Cry).
In 1991, at the time of Karl and Anna's creation, he founded the Hungarian Academy of Arts as a civil society organisation, together with Imre Makovecz, József Somogyi, Imre Schrammel, Tibor Gyurkovics and many other artists. He became vice-president of the Academy and took on many organizational tasks. He personally approached the most outstanding Hungarian composers and invited them to join the Academy. Despite many difficulties, he fought the fight throughout the founding period together with Imre Makovecz.
The four operas
Although there is no formal hierarchy among musical genres, opera holds a prominent place in a composer’s plans. Balassa also believed that quality defines the hierarchy. "A good trio is worth more than a bad opera. The question is, however, how much a good opera is worth. Let’s try to write a good opera, and then we’ll see how many trios it is worth."
The composer's first opera was Outside the Door (op. 27). The libretto was a translation of Wolfgang Borchert's tragedy by Géza Fodor. The texts for the choral parts were written by the composer himself. The opera follows the final, vision-like journey of Sergeant Beckmann, returning home from the hell of the Second World War. His son is dead, his wife has taken another man, and in searching for those responsible for the war, he realises that he too bears responsibility. For him, the door to life closes: "I am a murderer who has been killed."
The next work, The Third Planet (op. 39) is set on Earth in the 20th and 21st centuries. The libretto is written by the composer and took several years to complete. In the first part, the living and inanimate beings of the Earth accuse humanity before an imaginary tribunal of destructive activities. After the oratorical formal structure of the first part, in the second part humans take the stage and the operatic character unfolds in dramatic confrontations; the struggle to defend Life. The Pure-hearted Man stands against the Empire of Death, which cares only for self-interest. The conflict is not decided, the question remains open, because this war is real and is being waged at this moment. We can only hope for the victory of Life, our fate is in our hands.
The third opera, Karl and Anna (op. 41), is set during the First World War and tells the story of the fate and love of four people. Like Szokolay, Balassa followed the traditional path of the Hungarian operatic language, revealing the intimate world of the human soul with sensitive lyricism.
Finally, in his last major music drama, Földindulás (Earthquake, op. 70)—completed in 2001 but premiered in concert form only in 2015—Balassa definitively demonstrated the strength, richness, and viability of the Hungarian operatic language. The poignant drama of János Kodolányi is deepened by the music which then elevates itt o the heights of the triumphant apotheosis of Life.
"Small pencil and big eraser" [1]
We have not yet spoken of his songs, piano pieces, string duos and trios, the four string quartets, works for woodwinds, cimbalom and harp, the choruses, cantatas and concertos, from whose bulk the most characteristic stand out. There is no distinction in rank between the works, a “little brother–uncle kinship” connects them all.
Balassa was not a follower of any of the great masters. He always strove for simplicity, purity and the discovery of an individual voice. His musical worldview is linked to European classical music and Hungarian folk music. His work constantly addresses the Hungarian task of organically linking Eastern culture and Western European civilization, creating a synthesis of this unique duality. This task is becoming increasingly difficult to fulfil, as he is convinced that the decline of the West has reached such proportions that the question arises as to whether it is still possible to speak of unity. If the presentation of beauty and addressing the soul become superfluous, if the form becomes empty, then there is no possibility of realizing synthesis.
Balassa concluded his oeuvre in 2016 with the chamber work Lavender, Rosemary - Duet for Violin and Viola, Op. 144. In 1966, he established a public foundation under the name of the Liszt Academy Foundation to support the Liszt Academy of Music.
The map was compiled by Ákos Windhager [2015]
[1] The quote is from Rezső Sugár.