Artist database

25 February 1944 Békéscsaba

He started to play the piano at the age of five and studied composing from 1959 in the Szeged Secondary School for Music with Géza Szatmári. Between 1962 and 1967 he was pupil of Ferenc Farkas at the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy, and after graduation he became scholarship holder of the Fund of Art for three years. Thanks to a half-year UNESCO scholarship, he studied in Paris (1970), where he visited the courses of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales of the French Radio and the composing classes of Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire.

Encouraged by Albert Simon, he founded the New Music Studio with Péter Eötvös, Zoltán Kocsis, László Sáry and Zoltán Jeney in 1970. The studio soon became an internationally renowned workshop for composers and performers, and introduced more than 600 contemporary music works between 1972 and 1990. As composer and performer he contributed to the concerts the orchestra. Since 1972 he’s been teaching permanently: first he started to work at the Teacher Training Institute of the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy, and since 1984 he’s been teaching at the University of Pécs and since 1999 at the Ferenc Liszt Music Academy of Budapest, too.

His major works are: ASCH (2007), Duet (2003-2007), The Death in my Viola (2005), Etudes for MIDI piano I-IV. (1990-2003), Twelve String quartets (2000), Silly Old Muzak (1997), Movie (1993), Music to the Hungarian Pavilion of the Sevilla World Expo (1992), Twelve duos (1987-1989), Romantic readings (1983), Narcissus and Echo (1980-1981), Voice-Color-Space (1980), The death of Schroeder (1974-1975), Autoconcert (1972), instrumental and electro acoustic compositions, voice installations. Between 1973 and 1989 he composed a number of soundtracks, for example to the movies of Gábor Bódy (Narcissus and Psyche, Night song of the dog), Ildikó Enyedi (My twentieth century), Ágnes Háy and János Tóth.

He was awarded with the Erkel Prize (1983), the Bartók-Pásztory Award (1992), the title Merited Artist (1996), the Artist Prize of the Soros Foundation (2001), the Knight’s Cross of Merit of Order of the Hungarian Republic (2004), and the Kossuth Prize (2010). He is ordinary member of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts.