Zoltán Jeney (4 March 1943 – 28 October 2019) was a Hungarian
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and def ...
.
Jeney was born in
Szolnok
Szolnok (; also known by #Name and etymology, alternative names) is the county seat of Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok county in central Hungary. A city with county rights, it is located on the banks of the Tisza river, in the heart of the Great Hungarian ...
,
Hungary
Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
. He first studied piano and attended Pongrácz's composition classes at the Debrecen Secondary Music School, later continuing composition studies with
Ferenc Farkas
Ferenc Farkas (; 15 December 1905 – 10 October 2000) was a Hungary, Hungarian composer.
Biography
Born into a musical family (his father, Aladár Farkas, was an Olympian and soldier who played the cimbalom and his mother played the piano) i ...
at the
Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in
Budapest
Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...
(1961–66), and pursuing postgraduate studies with
Goffredo Petrassi at the
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in
Rome
Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...
(1967–68). In 1970, as part of
a group of leading Hungarian composers, he cofounded the
Budapest New Music Studio.
Jeney's earliest compositions exhibit the influences of
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hunga ...
,
Luigi Dallapiccola,
Anton Webern
Anton Webern (; 3 December 1883 – 15 September 1945) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and musicologist. His music was among the most radical of its milieu in its lyric poetry, lyrical, poetic concision and use of then novel atonality, aton ...
,
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( ; ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
, the new Polish school,
György Kurtág, and
Zsolt Durkó. In the late 1960s, he began to take an interest in
Pierre Boulez
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 19255 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music.
Born in Montb ...
's theories,
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...
's compositions, and oriental philosophy—a direction intensified as a result of his contact with
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and Extended technique, non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one ...
's philosophy. In the 1970s Jeney began composing music in the
minimal style, and his works are often characterized by an extremely spare and static quality.
From 1986 on Jeney was a professor at the
Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, Hungary where, since 1995, he served as Head of the Department of Composition. He was a research professor at
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
in
New York, and held a one-year visiting professorship on the music faculty of
Northwestern University
Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...
in Chicago. Several of his compositions have been released on the
Hungaroton label.
Classics Online website
See also
* Music of Hungary
Notes
References
Discography
at Classics Online.
*
External links
Zoltán Jeney page at Budapest Music Center pageOnline biography
of Jeney at website of the Bozzini Quartet.
1943 births
2019 deaths
20th-century Hungarian classical composers
21st-century Hungarian classical composers
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia alumni
Franz Liszt Academy of Music alumni
Hungarian male classical composers
People from Szolnok
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