László Dubrovay is one of the most prolific Hungarian composers of the 20th–21st century generation, an innovator in electronic music who also created enduring works in every traditional musical genre – his catalogue includes vocal and orchestral pieces, chamber works, operas, ballets, and solo instrumental compositions. On the one hand, his compositional approach is characterized by the exploration of electronic music and the possibilities of the sounding world; on the other, by an embrace of roots and a respect for tradition. It is his artistic conviction that all the inspirations and knowledge he absorbed over the decades ultimately found their place within his oeuvre.
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According to the composer’s own judgment, the early composing period can be regarded as post-Webernian in terms of style development. In the first years he composed mainly for chamber ensembles. His work Sei duo from 1967 is a characteristic, summarizing piece of that early period (see the 1st score). From Webern’s stylistic toolkit – which intensely engaged all of his contemporaries – three elements appear in Dubrovay’s music in particular: great expressive power, heightened colour culture, and aphoristic brevity. These micro-movements are dynamic and complex forms; condensed sonata-like memories; or pieces of other kinds, but in any case, containing multiple musical elements, lacking simple symmetry. Dubrovay refines and condenses musical material in such a manner that melody, harmony, and rhythm become inseparable. The timbre element here becomes immediately as important as the melodic element (the play of timbres becomes fully realized in later works), indeed in certain circumstances timbre has primary significance. Sometimes it seems the composer works only with tiny fragments, mottos, cells, not with full themes. Yet in Sei duo one can observe a peculiarly pierced mode of construction in which motif-fragments sounding on different instruments are united by the cohesive strength of a single large melody. Silence is an important element of this style. In the works, the pauses make the structures plastic. The uniqueness of the instrumentation in the six movements is that the ensemble consists of one violin and three percussion instruments: a tubular bell set, vibraphone, and xylophone. In the movements he uses the twelve-tone system in a free manner, since, according to his own admission, he always avoided strict dodecaphony. If a particular pitch in his estimation did not fit into his music, he replaced it, because in his compositional work it was not the primacy of construction but compositional authenticity that guided him. The essence of the pieces is the generation of tension, then the resolution of tension. Important are the special combinations of timbre; one can sense clearly that every sound has a role, every onset has meaning. Amid extreme concision, melody has also its place: in it great energies are strained; the musical kernels consisting of a few notes are perceptible as themes, just as a few bars might be considered standalone formal units. After the ABA structure of the 1st movement, movements 2-4 have four parts (ABCA or ABAvA), the 5th movement (merely 17 bars) is a single musical sentence which is mirrored in the violin part. The 6th movement is the freest, a kind of summary of the colours and instrumental techniques utilized in the earlier movements. The chorale-like, upward-looking ending is a frequently recurring closing element, almost a stylistic hallmark in his works.
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At the beginning of the 1970s, Interkoncert (the socialist state’s organization for planning the journeys of musicians abroad) main activity was to send artists to the West. Since professional piano teaching was in demand in many places, and as this seemed the only way to go abroad, Dubrovay applied for répétiteur positions at German theaters, hoping also to find an opportunity for further study. After two successful auditions he joined the Hamburg State Opera as a repetiteur. At that time, under the direction of Rolf Liebermann, the theater was one of the best opera houses in Europe, and the young composer gained experiences here that would last a lifetime. He was able to work with the ballet company, where he came to know all of the Stravinsky ballets in the repertoire, and the exceptionally high-quality opera performances also left him with unforgettable impressions. His earlier plan was fulfilled in 1971: that year the Hungarian Scholarship Council granted him permission to take up the DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) scholarship, which he had already been awarded on the German side. After careful consideration, he chose Cologne.
For Dubrovay, electronic music in the 1970s opened up a whole new way of musical thinking. In his acoustics classes, Professor Hans-Ulrich Humpert introduced his students to the latest results of sound research, expanded their knowledge of electronic music, and transformed their understanding of sound as the smallest building block of music:
“The new results of sound research revolutionized our conception of sound just as acoustical research did in physics at the beginning of the century. Here, too, with the help of various technical devices it became possible to explore the micro-world of sound. One could map the inner life of a sound – its structure, and the changes in frequency, amplitude, and waveform (timbre). Sound analyses revealed many correlations among musical parameters. The decomposition and filtering of a sound in different ways yielded new sound qualities. Since sine-wave generators could also produce the simplest vibrations, we could create, according to our own ideas, mixtures of sounds and spectra that exist neither in the realm of musical tones nor in the stock of noises in our environment. The aim was always, everywhere, to generate new, hitherto unheard sound qualities with which we could enrich our means of expression for the communication of new ideas. The next important step in technical development was that, as the existing devices operated on the basis of changes in electrical current and voltage, they could be linked together, and thus the idea of voltage control was born. As many as 256 generators of different waveforms could control one another, the sounding result of which could be many millions of sound processes. The next step was the building of synthesizers. The so-called ‘live’ electronics were able, during performance, to intervene in the spectrum of an instrument’s sound, and through its new sound qualities create an entirely new sonic world. Then came digital technology. With the digitization of sound – the use of the computer’s capacities in the field of sound – the musical toolkit was fantastically enriched with the aid of the most varied software. Today everything can be realized without limitation through technology. Most important is that every acoustic sound event can serve as the raw material of music, if the composer knows how to humanize it, that is, to embed it into an aesthetic system that is an integrated, living part of our world.”
Although, as a pupil of Stockhausen, the young Hungarian composer would have been welcomed with open arms and bright career prospects in any of Germany’s electronic studios, he wanted instead to create something new and bold at home. His chief aim was to bring a vivid new color to contemporary musical life, above all by introducing and popularizing the “Western” electronic music he had studied so thoroughly but which was still unfamiliar in Hungary. A special opportunity and challenge opened to him when, after the conclusion of his scholarship in Germany – in addition to the invaluable personal experiences – he brought back with him the most modern and practical electronic technology of the time (among the assembled equipment were an EMS AKS synthesizer, still state-of-the-art in analog technology, Yamaha speakers, amplifiers, an electric organ, etc.). With the help of these devices he was able single-handedly to realize live electronic music concerts.
With the modulation capabilities of the synthesizer, Dubrovay was able to alter the sounds of the most diverse instruments in various ways, and the infinity of possibilities inspired him to compose many later live electronic works. His pioneering venture seemed successful: in 1979 his album Live Electronic was released by Hungaroton, and for several years it topped sales within the field of contemporary music. This was the first Hungarian electronic music album.
The first examples of “computer music” in Hungary were also the result of his activity. In 1985 he was awarded the highly prestigious DAAD Künstler-program scholarship to West Berlin (in the same year as the elderly Luigi Nono). Prior to receiving the scholarship, he had already spent a month or two at the electronic studio of the Technische Universität in West Berlin, where he composed further works. In the meantime, a piece was also completed at the EMS Studio in Stockholm. A Hungaroton record presented a selection of these compositions.
After 1972, he repeatedly returned to various electronic studios in Europe. Until the early 1990s, he travelled extensively with live electronic works as a pianist and synthesizer player to various cities and festivals in Europe. In the meantime, he has given courses in Reykjavik, Taegu, South Korea, Tel Aviv and the United States. He has also performed electronic music in Cologne, Freiburg, Bourges, West Berlin, Lüneburg, Stockholm.
He was in very cordial contact with colleagues abroad, and personally cultivated these contacts. As a member of the International Electronic Music Association, based in Bourges, he founded the Hungarian Electroacoustic Music Association in Hungary, of which he became president. The organisations had a dual purpose: on the one hand, they met every year in one of the member countries, where professionals could share their experiences at conferences and concerts. On the other hand, it was only natural for the members to organise concerts in their own countries to promote electronic music.
László Dubrovay continues to see electronic music as one of the most promising fields, where new pieces can be created at any time without traditional constraints, which is why he has not stopped composing electronic music. In fact, in 1997 he won 1st prize at the International Electroacoustic Music Competition in Budapest with his piece Cry into the night. Two important electronic music compositions of the 2000s are Sound-landscape Hungary and Sound-shades.
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A significant source of inspiration in the development of his style was that, after returning from Germany, he established contact with outstanding Hungarian performers. These artists were able to realize new sonic phenomena on their instruments through special playing techniques, even producing effects that had previously been created in electronic studios. From the composer’s perspective, it seemed an exciting challenge to learn everything from the performers’ latest discoveries and to create works together that would present, with a claim to completeness, both the acoustic possibilities of late-20th-century instruments and the often world-record-level individual virtuosity of their players – thereby ensuring the success and joy of the artist.
This compositional period began with his collaboration with István Matuz. At that time, Matuz was developing flute techniques that were considered unique achievements. Drawing on his capabilities, the series Matuziádák (Matuziadas, five pieces) was created, in which the composer employed such new playing possibilities as timbre modulation, whistling overtones, the interference of the fundamental tone with its octave, building a chord of overtones on a single note, and various applications of circular breathing. The virtuoso artistry of outstanding performers also inspired his Solo series, which comprises around fifteen solo works for different instruments.
The new instrumental playing techniques immediately appeared in Dubrovay’s chamber music compositions as well. His String Quartet No. 3, written in 1983 and subtitled Hommage à Bartók, is one of the composer’s most original and most successful works. It is an astonishingly powerful and extremely difficult piece. So far only three string quartets have managed to master the complex work, in which the composer’s usually important considerations of practicality are, in this case, set aside. On every instrument the lowest string is retuned, thereby producing special, deep tones and opening the acoustic possibilities toward new dimensions. However, the composer also had to reckon with the fact that retuning the strings upsets the dynamic balance of the instruments: if no specially prepared instrument is available – and given that these are traveling ensembles, this cannot reasonably be expected – then the other strings will also fall out of tune during performance. Perhaps this is why the work is seldom played.
The string quartet begins with a slow introduction on the violin, played on the highest possible notes, as if a message were arriving from another sphere. Although the movement remains in D tonality throughout, the key is difficult to determine at the beginning. The introduction is built on 3–4 glissando elements, small fragments that gradually take shape into a theme. The essence of the dramaturgy is the confrontation of depth and height, followed by drawing together the two poles. This formative principle also characterizes the harmonic thinking. The main theme of the first movement is a segment of the Tristan chord, which the composer gradually breaks apart, then compresses into a cluster of seconds. The movement’s material is vibrant: colors (col legno battuto, pizzicato, flageolet techniques), graphic motions downward and upward, kaleidoscopic harmonizations of a single element, rearrangements, varied returns, and reactions follow one another. The second movement is music of nature: overtone glissandi are accompanied by sul ponticello tremolos. The movement grows out of the G–D fifth, and the system once again expands as the instrumental techniques become ever richer. At one point, the performer must reach the level of pure improvisation on the elements.
The third movement is also built on an acoustic theme: its main idea is nothing other than the rhythmization of an overtone glissando. The texture is dense, and the listener is captivated by the rapid, at times almost untraceable sonic events (see Example 2). According to Dubrovay himself, in this work he took Bartók’s late string quartets as his model. He was particularly inspired by the polar principle of Bartók’s sound world: on the one hand, the acoustic 12-step system, and on the other, the chromatic axis system. Dubrovay saw their continuation in the expansion of the overtone system and in microchromatics.
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In the 1980s, the decline in audience demand for electronic and chamber concerts prompted the composer to express his ideas for a different audience and in other musical genres. After the earlier developments, it was a natural consequence that the many new sounds and instrumental playing techniques should then be integrated into the sound world of the orchestra. It was at this time that the various concertos were written: for flute, trumpet, violin, cimbalom, piano, and later the Triple Concerto for trumpet, trombone, and tuba.
Wind instruments played a prominent role in Dubrovay’s oeuvre: in the 1990s he discovered the wind band and the unjustly underexplored sonic possibilities it offered. For wind ensembles, mostly amateur groups accustomed to “triadic music,” the orchestrations that showcased the latest techniques and sonorities at first seemed an unusually great challenge. However, the new works were ultimately performed in an excellent way, and according to the composer, the main credit for this belonged to the conductors who directed the ensembles. Dubrovay’s 14 works for wind band are counted among his most frequently performed pieces – they enjoy great popularity even among foreign ensembles. He also composed for smaller brass chamber groups, including brass quintets.
In the 1990s, alongside wind band and chamber music, the composer also turned his attention toward stage music. Based on a synopsis by József Gáli, he composed the one-act dance play A képfaragó (The Image Carver), a theme that had already occupied him in his youth: at that time, he had also completed a one-act work inspired by the same story. The text came back into his hands 25 years later, resulting in a ballet which, apart from the theme, has no musical connection to the earlier composition. The tale that inspired him once again examines the problem of creation – the agonies and sufferings through which a masterpiece comes into being.
After the ballet came another stage work: a comic opera in Italian for a Swiss competition. In the music of Il ricatto (The Ransom), the composer employed a melodic style reminiscent of traditional Italian bel canto. The conscious aim was to embrace the great values of classic operas: the invention of melody is abundant, and the opera is filled with arias, recitatives, and other numbers that demand genuine vocal qualities. After completing the work, Dubrovay offered it to the Opera House, but at that time they were seeking a large-scale work for a full evening. At first he considered Shakespeare’s The Tempest, but eventually the tale of Faust rose his interest the most. At the request of the Opera House, he composed the dance play Faust, the Damned. The Faust legend carried the composer’s imagination into new, uncharted territories. The work embodies many facets of the drama of human relationships. At its center stand three female archetypes, three distinct possibilities: an ideal woman portrayed only in the mirror, Margit – the young and untouched girl – and Aphrodite, the mature woman, the mother.
Of the three completed stage works, two – The Ransom and Faust – were staged in the past decade. Faust has had the richest afterlife. From it the composer assembled four orchestral suites, amounting to 90 minutes of music. In addition, he wrote a Paraphrase for piano entitled Faust és Margit szerelme (The Love of Faust and Margit). From the five separate scenes of The Ransom he compiled a wind band suite, but there was also a symphonic orchestra version, presented as an opera selection, and later the entire work was performed at the Miskolc Opera Festival in 2014. The Image Carver was brought to the stage in a concert performance by the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
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Folk-inspired works hold an important place in the oeuvre, although their distribution across the various creative periods is not even. In the 1960s, the still very young composer did not feel ready to write individual folk song arrangements or pieces built around folk motifs. At that time, he believed that after Bartók and Kodály, works in this vein could only be epigonal. Forty years later, however, the millennium celebrations of 2000 inspired him to compose works using folk elements – this time with the experience of his entire career behind him – and since then this pursuit has resulted in a diverse series of compositions.
In fact, László Dubrovay's incorporation of folk music elements into his music can be seen already in his 1985 piece Symphony. The first movement of this computer-written work was constructed from polypentaton cells, and although the composer used all twelve notes of the chromatic tonal system, there is undoubtedly a Hungarian element in the background. The Magyar szimfónia (Hungarian Symphony), the Cantata Aquilarum, the Concerto for Hungarian Folk Instruments and Orchestra and the Ünnepi Zene (Festive Music) are all the composer's moving tributes to Hungarian roots and culture.
In these works, Dubrovay combined the motifs of folk music, the naturalistic, "earthy" sound of the original folk instruments, with the harmony system he developed. The result is a unified, modern and personal sound. The composer was deeply interested in the playing techniques and special timbres of folk instruments, and it seemed to him an unusual task to integrate them into the orchestra, even to use them as soloists.
At the time of composing the Concerto, he encountered many folk instrumentalists. His desire to become familiar with the instruments drove him to explore every detail of their playing techniques. A challenge for him was that the primitive folk instruments could produce only a few notes, and this limitation made it difficult to integrate them into the complex orchestral fabric of the 21st century and to place them in solo positions.
According to the composer himself, he exhausted the possibilities of folk instruments to the utmost when, after their orchestral use, he incorporated their sound world into electronic music (Sound-Shades) and later into chamber music as well. In his piece Dudaszó hallatszik (Bagpipe Sounds are Heard), Dubrovay employed the simplest folk instruments, from the chained stick to the swineherd’s horn and the water jug. The solo work for tárogató, as well as the Tárogató Quintet with string quartet, are remarkable in this group already by virtue of their choice of instrumentation. Among the folk-inspired compositions of recent years, 1956, Magyar rapszódia (Hungarian Rhapsody), A Duna folyása (The Flow of the Danube) and the setting of Szózat stand out. (Szózat, “Appeal”, is a poem by Mihály Vörösmarty, regarded as "the second national anthem" of Hungary, beside the Himnusz).
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After the years as a young composer experimenting with bold solutions and open to every inspiration and modern impulse, and after the exceptionally fertile mature creative period in which he discovered thousands of shades of sounds and timbres and integrated them into his works with remarkable imagination, the most recent phase of his oeuvre reveals a strong compositional drive toward synthesis – toward culmination.
Large-scale orchestral works continue to stand at the center of László Dubrovay’s art: the concertos (Trumpet Concertos II–III, Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, After Mozart, Piano Concerto III, Concerto for Two Tubas, Violin Concerto II, Cello Concerto, Double Concerto for Violin and Cello) as well as grand programmatic pieces inspired by his deep commitment to Hungarian culture (Tündérszép Ilona és Árgyélus királyfi (The Beautiful Fairy Ilona and Prince Árgyélus), Csontváry, 1956, Szózat).
In Dubrovay’s oeuvre, the aspiration to create a compositional language that grants equal importance to every element and parameter constituting music within the inner fabric of a composition has long been perceptible, but in recent times it has become entirely evident. Compared with one of the dominant musical trends of the 20th century – dodecaphony and the serialism that unfolded from it – which, with its rigorously consistent and artificially constructed system, allows relatively little space for invention either horizontally or vertically, Dubrovay builds his musical language on musical and physical laws. In shaping his tonal system, he strives to unite and further develop the artistic achievements and accomplishments of the greatest predecessors in European music history.
By integrating higher and higher notes of the overtone series into harmony, the composer expands the possibilities of harmony both in terms of the number of pitches and of the overall sound, while in the composed musical process he still subjects the system of tension and release (the old–new musical functionality) to the traditional physical laws. Even in his most recent compositions Dubrovay considers it important that the spatially refined arrangement of harmonies convey the listener an ideal, beautiful sound. Alongside the rich vertical musical texture, the horizontal structure – that is, melody creation – also plays a significant role in his latest works. This is a homage to the classical, traditional concept of melody and form, while through the innovative development the melody becomes an easily recognizable compositional hallmark: the composer interprets the traditional kind of melody-building, enriched with novel elements, as a channel of communication with which he can reach a broader audience, its effectiveness guaranteed by the careful choice of varied nuances of rhythm, timbre, and dynamics.
The musical texture of Dubrovay’s most recent works is even more inclusive than before: he integrates everything from noise-like elements and electronic sounds to acoustic sonorities, and with this exciting mixture he also achieves a balance between dissonance and consonance in his music. He believes that every old–new tendency can find a place in his melodic system: diatonicism, pentatonicism, modal scales, twelve-tone technique – but among these he consciously highlights the pentatonicism rooted in Hungarian folk music. As the building blocks of melody he primarily chooses the polypentatonic system, which combines pentatonic cells.
The culmination of the oeuvre in its latest phase is also evident in the sense that the composer is largely thinking in terms of works for massive ensembles, creations that formulate an intensely vibrating synthesis of the possibilities of the musical parameters on the broadest scale. At the same time, his most recent compositions for smaller performing groups are also of great importance – for example, the Gyöngykoszorú (Pearl Garland) song cycle, the Duo for violin and cello, the Duo for violin and viola, and A Duna folyása (The Flow of the Danube) for tárogató and string quartet. With their quieter, simpler tone, saturated with gestures, these compositions bring out a different side of the composer’s imagination.
In recent years the composer has also been inspired by outstanding instrumental achievements, dedicating several concertos to his virtuoso artist friends László Gy. Kiss, Gábor Boldoczki, Kristóf Baráti, István Várdai, Sándor Jávorkai, and Ádám Jávorkai. In the past decade he has frequently and with great enthusiasm collaborated with talented young musicians, among them pianist János Balázs, who has been an excellent interpreter of all the composer’s piano works – most recently of the Melankolikus darabok (Melancholic Pieces) and the work Hommage à Fellini.
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Besides the seemingly traditional forms, László Dubrovay's fascination for technical innovation and his innovative approach have also allowed him to find new ways of artistic expression: in 2014 he composed computer music again, using the software Logic pro 9 to compose the 12-movement Computer Mikrokosmos.
[2016]