Issued by Leo Fegin's visionary record label in 1993, this refreshed and revised reissue collection of Hungarian composer Tibor Szemző's chamber pieces with spoken text – composed at 1980s for the legendary GROUP 180 – is unlike anything else of its kind.
No one has survived life. Everyone has died from it so far. Man must realize that He is responsible for His own life and fate and must insist upon this responsibility beyond all limits. And since Man has dissociated Himself from the sphere of irrationality, He has no way of getting in touch with death, or of establishing control over it. How we achieve the final result is merely of secondary importance. If the vision is clear to everyone, there is no need at all to look back. In a time of complete mental disturbance, only one chance remains to us: crystal-clear thinking. This leads us back to total mental disturbance, which everyone has died from so far.
(Pavel Havliček – Miklós Erdély – Tibor Hajas)
Text and Music | Language and Speech | Sound and Music
The common basis of the three works by Tibor Szemző heard on this album is the inalienable relationship to text – as an a priori principle. Text and music: the formal attributes of significance, intentions, and levels of meaning inherent in verbal communication as it is transformed into audible code. Language and speech: the structural level of communication, where it becomes purposeful expression, acoustic statements of variable modality. Vocalization as sublimation. Sound and music: By becoming an auditory signal, communication is deprived of its sense and reduced to musical articulation and abstraction.
Skullbase Fracture: Shards of reality – senseless, disconnected fragments of recorded “living speech” – simultaneously disintegrate and merge to create meaning through the musical process, while it is degraded and stylized to represent a single layer of the ambient noise one would hear in a hospitality setting.
Optimistic Lecture: The theses – like a practical, everyday user’s manual to cognitive tendencies and aims as they apply to the entirety of existence – convey their meaning through simplified rhythmic speech, galvanized into commands. As a counterpoint to recited prayers, they comprise a uniform soundscape.
The Sex Appeal of Death: The head-on simplicity of communication creates such extremely reductive musical interrelations that they cannibalize themselves in a necessary and inevitable fashion. And, in this manner, the text as well.
Marcell Dargay – September 11, 2022
released October 15, 2022
The Mixed Ensemble
Pavel G. Havliček – narrator (A)
Tibor Szemző – conductor (A), narrator (B1)
László Szegedi – piano (A)
Kinga Székely – piano (A), celesta (B1)
Gergely Ittzés – flute (A, B1)
Gellért Tihanyi – clarinet (A), bass clarinet (B1)
Balázs Arnóth – bassoon (A)
Zoltán Holb – horn (A)
Tamás Tóth – electric bass (A, B1)
Balázs Papp – vibraphone, glockenspiel (B1)
Zsolt Romos – flute and piccolo (B1)
Mihály Borbély – clarinet (B1)
Mihály Farkas – piano (B1)
Sándor Rigó – alto sax (B1)
Ferenc Kovács – trumpet (B1)
Gyula Tóth – electric guitar (B1)
Kornél Fekete Kovács – flugelhorn (B1)
László Göőz – trombone (B1)
Pál Kalmusz – baritone sax (B1)
Péter Magyar – drums (B1)
Lajos Gyenge – cymbals (B1)
Ágnes Apró – viola (B2)
Vilmos Búza – doublebass (B2)
László Fazekas – drums (B2)
Tarina Szemző – narrator (B2)
Danubius String Quartet (A,
B2) Mária Zs. Szabó – 1st violin
Adél Miklós – 2nd vioilin
Enikő Nagy – viola
Ilona Ribli – cello
Jenő Oláh Gipsyband (A)
Jenő Oláh – violin
Gábor Váradi – viola
Gyula Maka – bass
Ferenc Birkás – clarinet
János Rigó – cimbalom
Trio Lóránd – from recording (B1)
Marcel Lóránd – vocal solo
Sándor Kovács – voice
Jenő Kohn – voice
Recorded at HR Studios, Budapest (H), September 1992 by Péter Kerpel, Duo Sound Studio, Perbál Village (H), July 1992 by Gábor Szurmai (B2)
Recording producer: András Soós
Mixed by András Soós, Péter Kerpel and the author HR Studios, Budapest, September 1992
Remastered by the author at the Fodderbasis 2021-22
Mastering: István Szelényi 2022
Sources
A
Skullbase Fracture (1972, 1984) – an essay by Pavel G. Havliček
The folk-like Hungarian song Hullámzó Balaton tetején [On top of the Waving Lake Balaton] 1877 by Ferenc Sárközi
B1
The Hebrew Prayer Avinu Malkeinu [Our Father, Our King] by Rabbi Akiva
Optimista előadás [Optimistic Lecture] 1981 – a lecture by Miklós Erdély, English translation by Eszter Molnár
B2
A lecture by Tibor Hajas, 1977, English translation by Oliver Botar
music composed by Tibor Szemző
© & ℗ all rights reserved
BIEM-ARTISJUS 2022
www.szemzo.org
tiborszemzo.bandcamp.com
The Conscience - oil painting by Gábor Roskó on the front cover with the kind permission of the artist
Artwork: György Pálfi
