The Hungarian composer talks about his new work da capo for chamber orchestra before the world premiere on May 6 in Porto.

The expression ‘da capo’ has been in use for centuries, meaning a return to the beginning and back to the start. Does the title refer to the structure of the work or does it suggest some kind of poetic notion?
The title relates to the structure of the work, to the constant starting afresh. The music begins and reaches a certain point, but before it is completed it starts again, but in a different way, and so on – altogether nine times.

Each individual section starts with a theme deriving from Mozart. Why precisely Mozart?
As a composer, this is not my first treatment of with Mozart. In 1979 for the opening event of IRCAM in Paris I composed a piece called Leopold and Wolfgang, which was based on the correspondence of the two Mozarts from 1778. These were the famous letters in which the son, who at the time was living in Paris, did not dare acknowledge to his father that his mother was dying, and for a time he concealed her death. The dramatic tension in the letters had a great effect on me such that I formulated this emotional charge in music, when I associated Leopold’s recorded second part with the violin solo representing Wolfgang. The public could see the movement and changes of direction of the violin bow enlarged on a 3’x3’ meter screen. Later I withdrew this work.

The second work was Korrespondenz – Scenes for String Quartet, composed in 1992, and was based on the same letters. The music came into existence from the phonetic transcription of chosen parts of the text. Certain predetermined intervals correspond to the vowels (thus every instrument plays double-stopping and in reality the work has eight parts). I used sounds and timbres (pizzicato, tremolo, sul ponticello) that can be produced by various string instruments for the consonants. The texts themselves are not performed – the audience only hears the resulting sound created from them. Mozart himself and his music, especially his operas, were very important to me during that period. At the time when I was composing my first opera, Three Sisters, I learned a great deal about opera dramaturgy while conducting Don Giovanni at the Lyon Opera House. 

In your works composed in the past ten years echoes from earlier stylistic periods or the music of old masters often appear. The quotation techniques you use always appear for some dramaturgical aim and can often be heard only by competent ears. This is your first work in which you quote tunes from Mozart.
In 2013 the Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum in Salzburg put at my disposal a large catalogue containing fragments of notes, ideas for tunes penned by Mozart. By then I had the form in my head and knew that I would write a piece with a similar structure to ZeroPoint, whose basic idea involves start-progress-leaving it open-modified restart. Seeing Mozart’s Fragments I decided to start the individual sections with his themes and, when continuing, transform them for my own music. The selection lasted a long time. I wanted to find themes which were suitable for transformation. It was surprising that the chosen themes were originally made for Kyrie movements as drafts. But there are parts which he drew up for opera arias.

Is it important for you that the listener would recognize Mozart’s themes?
My aim was not specifically to bring a theme or fragment of a theme to mind. They are played by a chamber orchestra consisting of  instruments  which were still unknown in the 18th century, and when they are first played it is often an “interpretation” of the themes or the fragments of the themes. These themes are initial ideas, which immediately launch a creative process whereby each element becomes my own music. So the point is not that Mozart themes are integrated in this piece, but how they become transformed. The subtitle could perhaps be "Reading Mozart".

The crotales always indicate the “new” Mozart tunes.
Yes, it is like a small bell saying: “Now listen, wake up!”

Is irony involved?
Rather experience. Many people do not recognize references removed from their original context. My opera Love and Other Demons has an aria which comes from Domenico Scarlatti’s music. But it is not recognized in that context. Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

The score image, the movement of themes, the rhythmic forms and the virtuoso figurations of the solo instrument remind one of Mozart’s orchestral scores. But then on closer examination this music still has different tones and different features, especially due to the composition of the orchestra and the solo instruments.
The composition of the orchestra was given, since the work was commissioned by the Casa da Musica in Porto for the Remix Ensemble, which was asked to premiere it. Some of the wind instruments were still not in use during Mozart’s time, therefore the timbre is significantly different from that of old orchestras. However, the really essential difference is presented by the variety of percussion instruments and the solo. I originally imagined the latter for cimbalom, and it largely reflects the virtuoso playing of the extremely talented cimbalom player, Miklós Lukács, but in the end I wrote it so that it can also be played on the marimba. Whether a cimbalom or a marimba plays the solo, I have found it interesting to associate these instruments with Mozart’s tunes.

Interview: Tünde Szitha


The work has been co-commissioned and thanks to that, following its premiere in Porto on May 6 this year, it will be performed by musikFabrik in Salzburg on December 3 and later by New World Symphony in Miami on April 4 next year. 

More about Eötvös's da capo