Breaking: Major composer dies
RIPWe hear from Budapest that the eminent composer Peter Eötvös died today. He was 80 and had endured a long illness.
After an apprenticeship with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Eötvös emerged in the 1980s as a leading voice in late and post-modernism.
Four of his operas were internationally premiered – Three Sisters at Lyon, Love and Other Demons at Glyndebourne, The Tragedy of the Devil at Munich and Sleepless (2021) in Berlin. His final opera Valuska, was premiered in Budapest on 2 December last year.
Eötvös was director of the Ensemble InterContemporain in 1980s Paris and a driving force in the global modernist agenda. Around the same time he was principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Pictured with the Kurtags and Kaija Saariaho.
Don’t forget Angels in America, which had its premiere in Paris in 2004. A revised version was staged at the Barbican in 2008. There were also productions in the US, Germany and Hungary.
Or Lady Sarashina in Lyon 2008
Good lord! Another great music personality that leaves us. Pollini just died yesterday and now Eötvös. I will always remember his performance of Zimmermann’s “Requiem for a young poet” with the Berlin Phil, which can be seen on their Digital Concert Hall. Rest in Peace.
I think “….. a driving force in the global modernist agenda” is the right description.
The piece in the video shows the attempt to leave ‘sonic art’ behind and write real music, so: musical gestures abound, trying to create a coherent narrative.
So, one puzzles why first there had to be an agenda that tried to destroy the remnants of musical tradition, to create a blank slate, to begin from scratch, liberated from the past, and in the end trying to recapture all of that.
There is a terrible tragedy in the whole trajectory of the modernist ideology, throwing-out the child with the bath water.
In case there still will be a serious music life in the future, I’m certain it will look back to 20th century modernism as a suicidal disaster.
John, we love your dedication to writing out detailed yet insane takes, but at some point you’re gonna have to sit back and accept that nobody cares.
Exactly. One good advice for you, though…Don´t feed the troll. Just ignore it..
Once again, all you leftist liberals think people that disagree are trolls and should be cancelled out or ignored. :::smh:::
Once again, Mr. Borstlap’s autism leads him to use a death notice as an excuse to pontificate about music he doesn’t like. Meanwhile, normal people understand that this is a place for condolences, and all the arts debate can wait for some more appropriate time.
If read correctly, one would to one’s surprise discover that the comment is about music, not people.
If read correctly, the answer says “about music he doesn’t like”.
Time and place mate…time and place! This isn’t it! I know the Dutch pride themselves on being direct, but still…a little dignity wouldn’t go amiss.
That pride is often a convenient excuse for hurting people with impunity.
Snores
So no “R.I.P.” from you, then?
Of course…. R.I.P., for both people and modernism, in equal measure and with sadness equally distributed. Hope you are happy now.
Good grief, JB, this seems unnecessarily mean.
There always has to be someone who leaves a comment like this, doesn’t there?
Perhaps, John, if you had a larger view of history, you wouldn’t fret so much. Music has survived its various detours for thousands of years. It’s already managed to assimilate “modernism” (decades and decades ago).
Let the rest of us grieve the loss of a great artist without having to defend ourselves. It’s a small gesture for those of us who will dearly miss what Eötvös brought to music. And what are greater “traditions” to hold onto if not ritual grief and compassion?
This collection of (redacted) comments merely shows that many self-appointed music lovers here, cannot read, have no ears, don’t listen to the presented video and what it conveys, cannot make any distinctions between components that happen in music, merely indulge in subjective prattle, in short: have no idea where they are talking about….. so, perfectly suited to the democratic platforms of the internet, so that we can finally get to know the kind of thoughts that are otherwise filtered-out in media about classical music. (Sigh)
Huh?
Anthony Burgess once said ‘I just write the books. I leave the experts to decide what I meant by them.’ Agendas, ideologies….you should leave that baggage to the experts. In my experience most good composers don’t pay a great deal of attention to it.
I worked many times with Peter on his chamber music pieces. He wrote complex music that worked for the instruments. Craftsmanship will never go out of fashion with players.
Maybe… but music is not about craftmanship. There is lots of music well-crafted but saying nothing. It’s merely a means to an end.
Merely a means to an end? That you rate the craft so low explains a lot.
It’s 2024, we move forward without you (100 years ago)
Spot on….But let him fight against windmills.
Everything’s great, now though – we have Max Sphincter and Arvo Fart.
Oh no! This hurts. Eotvos was an amazing musician and conductor. I always felt he was like Boulez with a heart. And what an amazing variety of composition he produced.
Such a nice man, he always had a smile. RIP Peter.
Terribly sad news…
Another international world premiere: Lady Sarashina in Lyon
80….he was a kid 🙁
So sad. Yesterday Pollini and today Eötvos.
I had the joy of briefly studying with Peter in ’96, working on Birtwistle’s “Earth Dances”. He had amazing ears and eyes (hearing and seeing everything with such clarity!) and impeccable techniques as composer and conductor. As a teacher, he was critical, always with warmth and the best of intensions. Toward the end of the course, Birtwistle showed up and since I was the only composer in the group, I had the luck of discussing my own work with these two giants.
What a sad week for music….Janis,Pollini,Eötvös…..Fascinating composer, and unbelievable conductor. He made the most difficult things easy for us players, not the other way round, like some do. And he had the best ears i ever encountered…Even better than Boulez´, and this means quite something!
I’m greatly offended by that remark about Boulez. Nobody was better than him
Sally
in the mid 1980s he conducted a BBC Promenade Concert of a type which would be unthinkable today:
1) Stravinsky : Agon
2) Xenakis : Keqrops (Roger Woodward. piano solo)
3) Birtwistle : Triumph of Time
There are beautiful bits in Agon.
Hopefully there were stretchers ready for audience members after the concert.
So sad to hear this news – without Peter’s brilliant collaboration our BBC Symphony Orchestra festival of Karlheinz Stockhausen (“Music and Machines”) at Barbican Centre would have been completely unthinkable.
That was an amazing series. Eötvös also conducted Donnerstag at Covent Garden with total authority, majesty and charm. A remarkable musician.
To add that his contributions to contemporary music education – of conductors, composers, and performers – will prove to be a lasting legacy alongside his compositional output. Maestro Eőtvős is likely to be one of those (few) conductors for whom all who worked under his direction will remember fondly for his warmth, generosity, and deepest commitment to our mutual art form.
As a student (many, many years ago), I remember Eőtvős conducting an excellent BBC Symphony Orchestra concert at the Warwick Arts Centre. So good was it that I can still recall two pieces on the programme – Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and the same composer’s Four Orchestral Pieces. I knew the former, which was brilliantly performed, while the latter was given such an engaging performance that it convinced me to get to know it properly. It’s still one of my favourite pieces of Bartok. Thank you Mr Eőtvős.
Peter was my brother-in-law.
I was very young when l was first introduced to his fascinating world of tone. He introduced me to the endless nature of the harmonics, the uncountable nature of time, the immense potentials of silence. And he introduced me to the fundamentals of meditation.
He taught me much about conducting,
about ‘Wahrnehmen’, and unexpectedly, he introduced me to Stockhausen the man, who gave me a stern word, on the night of my sister’s wedding: to live and to experience, that’s everything. It was life changing for the young me.
In our last meeting in NYC he introduced me yet to another: the parallel universe!
A man with great wisdom and generosity, not in material, but in sharing of seeds of life. May he continue his wonderous journey in beauty and love.