For his piano pieces for children, Kurtág aptly chose the title Játékok, a term that connotes game playing and playing of more serious kinds. Like many composers before him, he began these frolicsome works when his own child, György Jr., began piano lessons in 1960. The young boy’s teacher was not impressed, however, and the composer produced only five pieces (later included in the first volume of Játékok). More than a decade later, Hungarian music educator Marianne Teöke asked Kurtág to contribute to a book of children’s pieces she was editing; between 1973 and 1974, he duly produced 19 such works.
Having done so, Kurtág found himself unable to stop. Between 1975 and 1979 he wrote dozens more pieces—enough to make four volumes of his own. He surely drew some inspiration from Bartók, who designed Mikrokosmos as a complete teaching program, its six volumes taking pianists from simple tunes to virtuoso studies. Kurtág’s first four Játékok volumes are also progressive, the last for two players at one or two pianos, though all four books remain within the ambit of childhood.
Even so, the volumes considerably extend the scope of children’s music. Within the initial few pages of the first volume, the beginner is introduced to playing with palm and fist. The remainder of this book proves that technical limitation is no barrier to the exploration of sound (overtones, glissandos), of old forms (chorale, sarabande, hocket), of classical composers seen in glimpsed homages (Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Paganini, Ligeti), and of Schumannesque musical poetry (“Falling Asleep,” “The Young Boxer’s Lighter Moments”).
So rich and varied is Játékok, and so fresh, that even professional pianists wanted to play it upon its publication. The later volumes, of which three have been published and another is imminent, have outgrown the original pedagogical intention—or rather, that intention is in their background. They are children’s pieces grown up, no longer needing to justify themselves as teaching material. Kurtág, now armed with so much experience writing piano miniatures, has created his own form, his own tradition.
The newer Játékok books carry the subtitle “Diary Entries, Personal Messages,” giving the content a new justification as jottings and memos. Many are, indeed, addressed to particular individuals as birthday or wedding greetings, or memorials (there are many poignant studies in bell sounds, lament, or elegy.) Others relate to the composer’s observation of the world, his reading, and his creative preoccupations. They are intimate moments made even more intimate when presented in public, especially when performed by the composer and his wife.
Játékok has also become Kurtág’s sketchbook, on which he has drawn for such larger works as his Six Moments musicaux for string quartet. In many of the Játékok items can be heard the resounding a little melody he wrote almost half a century ago, to words that could stand as the collection’s second title: “Virág az ember”—“We are all flowers.”