Sándor Veress – Aufsätze, Vorträge, Briefe

Sándor Veress (1907-1992), a pupil of Bartók and Kodály, teacher of Ligeti and Kurtág, later of Holliger and Moser, has become little known as a composer, although he can be counted among the most important Hungarian composers of the 20th century. Until his emigration from Hungary in 1949, he stood - not uncritically - in the tradition of his teachers, but then he reoriented himself in a confrontation with twelve-tone composition. Veress did not belong to any "direction". His work was not avant-garde, but certainly modern. This modernity is not rooted in the phase of emphatic awakening at the beginning of this century, but in the phase of establishing and consolidating the new approach to tonal material in the 1920s and 1930s.
In this book, Veress the researcher and thinker should become clear alongside the composer. The remarks and comments on Bartók are particularly authentic in that Veress studied with Bartók and was his assistant at the Academy in Budapest for a long time. The comments on Anton Webern also deserve attention. While Veress had not found a relationship with Schönberg, he felt largely challenged by Webern's music and thinking.
All the texts date from the period after his emigration. Illustrations from sketches and scores as well as letters complete the picture.

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