Glass Bead Games

30 November 2024. 6:00
Budapest Music Center - Library
1093 Budapest, Mátyás u. 8

Glass Bead Play, or the "game of games", is a mysterious, universal, high art and science game, which at the same time, besides its intellectual virtuosity, also involves contemplation and reflection. It is a kind of universal language across the disciplines, a kind of universal language of intellectuals, "whose meaningful signs enabled the players to express values and to relate them to each other. In all ages, the game was closely linked to music and was usually played according to musical or mathematical rules."
Hermann Hesse's novel The Glass Bead Game, published in 1943, tells the story of Josef Knecht, a master glass bead player (Magister Ludi), and the scholarly state of Castalia, which focuses on the art of glass bead playing. Although there is no creative art in Hesse's Castalia, only performing arts and (music) science, the novel reveals that Knecht himself was a creative artist. Encouraged by this, I asked three Hungarian composers to write a composition reflecting on The Glass Bead Game. (Ferenc János Szabó)

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