Empathetic teacher, creator and observer
This anthology of 15 essays on the life, work, teaching and mediation activities of Sándor Veress opens up new perspectives.
Sándor Veress was of great importance for Swiss music history. He actually had his sights set on a career in the United States. But when the teaching position in Pittsburgh fell through due to his former membership of the Hungarian Communist Party, Veress ended up in Bern. He remained there from 1949 until the end of his life in 1992, teaching renowned Swiss composers and musicologists as a respected university lecturer. His students included Theo Hirsbrunner, Heinz Holliger, Urs Peter Schneider, Jürg Wyttenbach and Roland Moser.
The anthology Sándor Veress provides lively insights. Roland Moser reports positive things about his teacher, who - probably in a mixture of modesty, pedagogical flair and interest in others - never "mentioned or showed his own works" in class (p. 72). Heinz Holliger's comments and analyses of Veress's works on the Passacaglia concertante for oboe and string orchestra (1961) and the musicologist Bodo Bischoff's reflections on the late work Glass cantilever game for mixed choir and chamber orchestra (1978).
Veress, a pupil of none other than Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, was not an avant-gardist. Although he had words of praise for the sound-surface composition of his former pupil György Ligeti (p. 43), he was skeptical or even hostile towards the serialism of the 1950s. The praise for Ligeti can be found in his wonderful text printed in English New Trends in European Music since World War II. Here Sándor Veress shows himself to be not only an empathetic observer, but also an immensely educated, interdisciplinary thinking art and cultural scholar in his sincere efforts to anchor 20th century music in society. This very readable anthology of 15 essays is therefore not only informative for Veress researchers; it provides all interested parties with a wealth of information far from the beaten track of a 20th century musical ideology of progress.
Sándor Veress, edited by Ulrich Tadday, Musik-Konzepte issue 192/193, 197 p., € 38.00, Edition Text und Kritik, Munich 2021, ISBN 978-3-96707-389-8
