{"id":884,"date":"2015-12-18T16:39:08","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T21:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=884"},"modified":"2015-12-18T16:39:08","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T21:39:08","slug":"kati-agocs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2015\/12\/kati-agocs.html","title":{"rendered":"Kati Agocs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/AgocsB183pxsq.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-885\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-885 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/AgocsB183pxsq.jpg\" alt=\"AgocsB183pxsq\" width=\"183\" height=\"183\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/AgocsB183pxsq.jpg 183w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/AgocsB183pxsq-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/AgocsB183pxsq-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 183px) 100vw, 183px\" \/><\/a>Our Composition Department spent the last few weeks immersing ourselves in music by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.katiagocs.com\"><strong>Kati Agocs<\/strong><\/a>, a wonderful Hungarian-by-way-of-American-by-way-of-Canadian composer.\u00a0 We focused our energies on three works, at her suggestion:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>St. Elizabeth Bells<\/em> for cello and cimbalom<\/li>\n<li><em>The Debrecen Passion<\/em> for 12 female voices and orchestra<\/li>\n<li><em>Vessel<\/em> for 3 female voices and 10 musicians<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After digging into these works from every conceivable angle, students gave detailed presentations, sparking great discussion, insights and questions.\u00a0 Then we got the composer herself on Skype to answer questions and share her experience and advice.<\/p>\n<p>Like a number of composers from her generation, Agocs has consistently shown a fascination with cross-cultural connections, especially with various types of sacred music from throughout the ages.\u00a0 <em>The Debrecen Passion <\/em>(2015), in particular, surrounds texts by Hungarian poet Szil\u00e1rd Borb\u00e9ly with other texts of Hungarian origin, as well as Medieval Latin and Kabalistic prayer, resulting in a multi-faceted meditation on love and loss.\u00a0 The work is tinged with a sense of sorrow, partly precipitated by Borb\u00e9ly\u2019s suicide last year.<\/p>\n<p><em>Vessel<\/em> also scans across cultural boundaries.\u00a0 Like an ars nova motet, it threads together three texts in three different languages in support of a single message.\u00a0 The centerpiece, or cantus firmus, if you will, is a setting of e e cummings\u2019 <em>i carry your heart with me (i carry it in),<\/em> using a fairly straightforward, melodic approach.\u00a0 Woven around that setting is Jehuda Halevi\u2019s <em>The Garden of His Delight<\/em>, a medieval love song, and Catullus\u2019 <em>His Boat<\/em>, which is mostly in Latin with some ancient Greek.\u00a0 The three occupy largely distinct, though simultaneous, sound worlds, coming together at the climax, in a spot where they align both musically and in uncanny phonemic coincidences.<\/p>\n<p><em>St. Elizabeth\u2019s Bells<\/em> was the one purely instrumental composition.\u00a0 The subject is one that has always been with us, but is pressing in new ways: the adult observing a parent\u2019s final days.\u00a0 The composer\u2019s father, having returned to his native Hungary, ended up in a hospital across from St. Elizabeth\u2019s Cathedral in Budapest.\u00a0 She imagines his experience of the cathedral bells in his final hours, capturing the sound through her own distorted memory.\u00a0 Although she says the piece is not mournful in quality, a somber mood prevails, and lamentation is never far away.<\/p>\n<p>Our session with Kati was excellent.\u00a0 She joined us from her office at the New England Conservatory, and fielded questions all over the map with grace and alacrity.\u00a0 Her advice for the students was always on the mark, from getting performances of their work to proper binding of scores to the inescapability of initial impressions.\u00a0 She let us know that a string quartet \u2013 her first \u2013 is in the works: something to look forward to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our Composition Department spent the last few weeks immersing ourselves in music by Kati Agocs, a wonderful Hungarian-by-way-of-American-by-way-of-Canadian composer.\u00a0 We focused our energies on three works, at her suggestion: St. Elizabeth Bells for cello and cimbalom The Debrecen Passion for 12 female voices and orchestra Vessel for 3 female voices and 10 musicians After digging [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":886,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884\/revisions\/886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}