Jeno Takacs, 103; composer & pianist
Hyfler/Rosner
Centenarian composer and pianist
19 January 2006
Jenö Takács, composer, pianist, teacher and
ethnomusicologist: born Siegendorf, Hungary 25 September
1902; married 1927 Gertrude Christy (marriage dissolved
1937), 1943 Eva Pasteiner; died Eisenstadt, Austria 14
November 2005.
Jenö Takács was one of those composers who produce music the
way trees produce apples, as a natural process - although
the fluency of his completed works disguised the
perfectionism that went into creating them.
Takács was both Hungarian and Austrian, the duality of his
place of birth later reflected in the political vicissitudes
which affected his life. He was born in the little village
of Siegendorf, south of Vienna, in the rolling wine country
of Burgenland (near Haydn's erstwhile stomping ground of
Eisenstadt), which was Hungarian until 1921. From 1921 to
1926, he studied at the Academy of Music and the Dramatic
Arts in Vienna - composition with Joseph Marx and piano with
Paul Weingarten - and at the University of Vienna -
counterpoint with Hans Gál (later, as a refugee from Nazism,
to be a stalwart of music in Edinburgh) and musicology with
the revered Guido Adler, founder of the discipline.
His first concert tours - in his late teens and early
twenties - took him around Germany, Hungary and Yugoslavia.
And he was already composing, initially in a style which
blended his Hungarian roots with the colours of French
impressionism; his Viennese teachers added a respect for
contrapuntal and thematic clarity.
But it was his first meeting with Béla Bartók in 1926 (they
were to stay friends until 1940, when Bartók fled to the
United States) that was decisive, reinforcing Takács'
awareness of the Hungarian folk idiom, expanding his use of
tonality and the resourcefulness of his rhythms and his
phrase-construction. In 1982 he published a book of his
memories of Bartók, Erinnerungen an Bela Bartók. Alban Berg
and Paul Hindemith were other early friends.
In 1927, Takács took up a professorship of piano at the
Conservatory in Cairo, using his five years there to
investigate Arabic music. His next appointment took him even
further afield, to a professorship in piano and composition
at the University of the Philippines in Manila. Here, too,
he collected folk music, some of it from tribes that had
been head-hunters not long before; and he concertised,
playing in China, Japan and Hong Kong. In 1934-37 he
returned to the Cairo Conservatory, and in 1938, based back
in Austria, he undertook his first tour of the US, playing
the solo part in his own Tarantella for piano and orchestra.
That was the year of the Anschluss and so, in 1939, to avoid
becoming a pawn of Nazi cultural politics, he moved to
Hungary, to Sopron, where his parents had taken up
residence; Takács renounced what had been Austrian
citizenship (it now made him officially a German) and became
Hungarian again. In 1942 he was nominated director of the
Music School in Pécs in southern Hungary (earning it
elevation into a conservatory during his tenure), and in
this phase of relative professional stability - although in
a world turned upside down - he composed his most ambitious
work, the cantata The Song of Creation (1946).
But here, too, politics was to rear its warty snout, and in
1948 Takács left to avoid the Communist dictatorship,
spending some months travelling through Austria, Switzerland
and Italy before settling - with Eva, his second wife - in
Grundlsee in the Austrian province of Styria.
For the three years from 1949 Takács toured Europe and the
US as a pianist; he also held guest professorships at the
conservatories of Geneva and Lausanne. His longest-held
appointment came in 1952, when he took up a professorship in
piano and composition at the College-Conservatory at the
University of Cincinnati in Ohio, where he won the loyalty
of his students for his matter-of-fact directness.
On retirement in 1970, Takács moved back to Siegendorf,
where he stayed for the rest of his life, composing
assiduously and harvesting a sheaf of prizes and honours. He
published his memoirs in 1990, Erinnerungen, Erlebnisse,
Begegnungen ("Memories, Experiences, Encounters").
As Takács grew ever older, he added a certain veneration to
the affection in which he was universally held. When he
reached 100, some 300 concerts featured his music in tribute
to his birthday; a Festschrift was published and an
exhibition mounted in Eisenstadt; CDs and new editions of
his music appeared - cheering up the composer who in his
mid-nineties had begun to worry that, like so many others,
he might see his music disappear down the plughole of
history. And he retained his sharpness to the end. Planning
a trip to go and see him in 2004, I was warned that his
increasing deafness might make the interview difficult -
"Aber reden kann er noch": he can still talk!
Takács' sizeable output has had mixed success in finding a
wider audience, although his teaching pieces - often bearing
come-hitherish titles such as For Me, When the Frog
Wandering Goes, Very Easy (and Not So Easy) Pieces,
Something New For You and Postcard Greetings - are used
across the globe to introduce young people to music.
His "adult" music evolved through a variety of styles. After
his early impressionist and Hungarian periods, his
ethnomusicological research into Arabic and Philippine
sources left its mark, as in Goumbri, an Oriental rhapsody
for violin and piano (1931), the Suite Philippine for
orchestra (1935) and the ballet Nile Legend (1935-37).
A classicising phase around the 1950s gave ground to an
interest in the approach of Schoenberg's Second Viennese
School, doubtless under the influence of the American
academic environment in which he then found himself:
although there's only one strictly 12-tone piece, a Partita
for piano (1954), composed for Paul Badura-Skoda, and a
Passacaglia for strings (1960) which experiments with
serialism (the strict avoidance of key and rhythmic
repetition), Takács also examined indeterminacy and other
more radical methods.
But he never lost sight of the fact that music must engage
its audience and, even during his most adventurous periods,
he was writing music with a very direct appeal, such as the
Serenade on Old Graz Contredanses (1966), scored for a
variety of forces to assure a maximum of performances. He
nodded his head also to earlier colleagues, writing a
Sinfonia breve (1981) in tribute to Haydn, rather as
Prokofiev had in his Classical Symphony. Purcell, too, was
acknowledged in the suite for strings Purcelliana (1993-94)
and the Hommage ŕ Henry Purcell for brass quintet (1994).
For Herbert Vogg, former director of Doblinger, his Viennese
publisher,
Takács is in his music what he is also as a human being:
noble, sensitive, sure, not always accommodating, but also
never hurtful. [He] is free of the ambition and vanity of
many of his colleagues.
In a visit to Vogg's office in 1959, Takács showed both
sides of his character, walking up and down as he volubly
insisted the cash-strapped Doblinger take on his Concerto
for Piano, Strings and Percussion. Eventually, Vogg gave way
before the onslaught and agreed. Takács stopped his
peripateia, leant over Vogg's desk and said, slowly, with an
ironic twinkle, "You know, the first movement - is not
good."
Martin Anderson
Jenö Takács, composer, pianist, teacher and
ethnomusicologist: born Siegendorf, Hungary 25 September
1902; married 1927 Gertrude Christy (marriage dissolved
1937), 1943 Eva Pasteiner; died Eisenstadt, Austria 14
November 2005.
Jenö Takács was one of those composers who produce music the
way trees produce apples, as a natural process - although
the fluency of his completed works disguised the
perfectionism that went into creating them.
Takács was both Hungarian and Austrian, the duality of his
place of birth later reflected in the political vicissitudes
which affected his life. He was born in the little village
of Siegendorf, south of Vienna, in the rolling wine country
of Burgenland (near Haydn's erstwhile stomping ground of
Eisenstadt), which was Hungarian until 1921. From 1921 to
1926, he studied at the Academy of Music and the Dramatic
Arts in Vienna - composition with Joseph Marx and piano with
Paul Weingarten - and at the University of Vienna -
counterpoint with Hans Gál (later, as a refugee from Nazism,
to be a stalwart of music in Edinburgh) and musicology with
the revered Guido Adler, founder of the discipline.
His first concert tours - in his late teens and early
twenties - took him around Germany, Hungary and Yugoslavia.
And he was already composing, initially in a style which
blended his Hungarian roots with the colours of French
impressionism; his Viennese teachers added a respect for
contrapuntal and thematic clarity.
But it was his first meeting with Béla Bartók in 1926 (they
were to stay friends until 1940, when Bartók fled to the
United States) that was decisive, reinforcing Takács'
awareness of the Hungarian folk idiom, expanding his use of
tonality and the resourcefulness of his rhythms and his
phrase-construction. In 1982 he published a book of his
memories of Bartók, Erinnerungen an Bela Bartók. Alban Berg
and Paul Hindemith were other early friends.
In 1927, Takács took up a professorship of piano at the
Conservatory in Cairo, using his five years there to
investigate Arabic music. His next appointment took him even
further afield, to a professorship in piano and composition
at the University of the Philippines in Manila. Here, too,
he collected folk music, some of it from tribes that had
been head-hunters not long before; and he concertised,
playing in China, Japan and Hong Kong. In 1934-37 he
returned to the Cairo Conservatory, and in 1938, based back
in Austria, he undertook his first tour of the US, playing
the solo part in his own Tarantella for piano and orchestra.
That was the year of the Anschluss and so, in 1939, to avoid
becoming a pawn of Nazi cultural politics, he moved to
Hungary, to Sopron, where his parents had taken up
residence; Takács renounced what had been Austrian
citizenship (it now made him officially a German) and became
Hungarian again. In 1942 he was nominated director of the
Music School in Pécs in southern Hungary (earning it
elevation into a conservatory during his tenure), and in
this phase of relative professional stability - although in
a world turned upside down - he composed his most ambitious
work, the cantata The Song of Creation (1946).
But here, too, politics was to rear its warty snout, and in
1948 Takács left to avoid the Communist dictatorship,
spending some months travelling through Austria, Switzerland
and Italy before settling - with Eva, his second wife - in
Grundlsee in the Austrian province of Styria.
For the three years from 1949 Takács toured Europe and the
US as a pianist; he also held guest professorships at the
conservatories of Geneva and Lausanne. His longest-held
appointment came in 1952, when he took up a professorship in
piano and composition at the College-Conservatory at the
University of Cincinnati in Ohio, where he won the loyalty
of his students for his matter-of-fact directness.
On retirement in 1970, Takács moved back to Siegendorf,
where he stayed for the rest of his life, composing
assiduously and harvesting a sheaf of prizes and honours. He
published his memoirs in 1990, Erinnerungen, Erlebnisse,
Begegnungen ("Memories, Experiences, Encounters").
As Takács grew ever older, he added a certain veneration to
the affection in which he was universally held. When he
reached 100, some 300 concerts featured his music in tribute
to his birthday; a Festschrift was published and an
exhibition mounted in Eisenstadt; CDs and new editions of
his music appeared - cheering up the composer who in his
mid-nineties had begun to worry that, like so many others,
he might see his music disappear down the plughole of
history. And he retained his sharpness to the end. Planning
a trip to go and see him in 2004, I was warned that his
increasing deafness might make the interview difficult -
"Aber reden kann er noch": he can still talk!
Takács' sizeable output has had mixed success in finding a
wider audience, although his teaching pieces - often bearing
come-hitherish titles such as For Me, When the Frog
Wandering Goes, Very Easy (and Not So Easy) Pieces,
Something New For You and Postcard Greetings - are used
across the globe to introduce young people to music.
His "adult" music evolved through a variety of styles. After
his early impressionist and Hungarian periods, his
ethnomusicological research into Arabic and Philippine
sources left its mark, as in Goumbri, an Oriental rhapsody
for violin and piano (1931), the Suite Philippine for
orchestra (1935) and the ballet Nile Legend (1935-37).
A classicising phase around the 1950s gave ground to an
interest in the approach of Schoenberg's Second Viennese
School, doubtless under the influence of the American
academic environment in which he then found himself:
although there's only one strictly 12-tone piece, a Partita
for piano (1954), composed for Paul Badura-Skoda, and a
Passacaglia for strings (1960) which experiments with
serialism (the strict avoidance of key and rhythmic
repetition), Takács also examined indeterminacy and other
more radical methods.
But he never lost sight of the fact that music must engage
its audience and, even during his most adventurous periods,
he was writing music with a very direct appeal, such as the
Serenade on Old Graz Contredanses (1966), scored for a
variety of forces to assure a maximum of performances. He
nodded his head also to earlier colleagues, writing a
Sinfonia breve (1981) in tribute to Haydn, rather as
Prokofiev had in his Classical Symphony. Purcell, too, was
acknowledged in the suite for strings Purcelliana (1993-94)
and the Hommage ŕ Henry Purcell for brass quintet (1994).
For Herbert Vogg, former director of Doblinger, his Viennese
publisher,
Takács is in his music what he is also as a human being:
noble, sensitive, sure, not always accommodating, but also
never hurtful. [He] is free of the ambition and vanity of
many of his colleagues.
In a visit to Vogg's office in 1959, Takács showed both
sides of his character, walking up and down as he volubly
insisted the cash-strapped Doblinger take on his Concerto
for Piano, Strings and Percussion. Eventually, Vogg gave way
before the onslaught and agreed. Takács stopped his
peripateia, leant over Vogg's desk and said, slowly, with an
ironic twinkle, "You know, the first movement - is not
good."
Martin Anderson