György Orbán: Engraved Lines
Five songs for soprano and piano
Published in 2023
Available at Rózsavölgyi Zeneműbolt & Webshop: HERE
The popularity of the musical genres connected to the text is not a coincidence, György Orbán claims, through the mediation of the text and the language, the eternal human themes (faith, love, death, or all of this in an exaggerated form: mythology) exert an immediate attraction on the listener. "Something that we already know well and that we can easily give space to in this way..." The author's choice of often archaic texts reveals his special affinity for the ideas of older ages and the cultural diversity of his homeland.
In his song cycle, the "engraved lines" really mean words carved in stone, and in four of the pieces in the volume, he composes the words of 18th-century epitaphs that can be read in the historical cemeteries of Transylvania – the Házsongárd cemetery in Cluj, the Reformed Cemetery in Marosvásárhely, and the Siculicidium monument in Mádéfalva. The fifth song is a paraphrase of the Advent hymn Veni, Jesu published by János Kájoni Cantionale Catholicum in 1676.
The songs are dedicated to two dedicated performers of Orbán songs, Bernadette Wiedemann and Emese Virág.
1. The gentle
2. The exalted
3. Silabize
4. Mondd a 'Soltárt (Pray the Psalm)
5. Veni, Sol! (Kájoni: Veni Jesu – Cantionale Catholicum, in Latin)
The popularity of the musical genres connected to the text is not a coincidence, György Orbán claims, through the mediation of the text and the language, the eternal human themes (faith, love, death, or all of this in an exaggerated form: mythology) exert an immediate attraction on the listener. "Something that we already know well and that we can easily give space to in this way..." The author's choice of often archaic texts reveals his special affinity for the ideas of older ages and the cultural diversity of his homeland.
In his song cycle, the "engraved lines" really mean words carved in stone, and in four of the pieces in the volume, he composes the words of 18th-century epitaphs that can be read in the historical cemeteries of Transylvania – the Házsongárd cemetery in Cluj, the Reformed Cemetery in Marosvásárhely, and the Siculicidium monument in Mádéfalva. The fifth song is a paraphrase of the Advent hymn Veni, Jesu published by János Kájoni Cantionale Catholicum in 1676.
The songs are dedicated to two dedicated performers of Orbán songs, Bernadette Wiedemann and Emese Virág.
1. The gentle
2. The exalted
3. Silabize
4. Mondd a 'Soltárt (Pray the Psalm)
5. Veni, Sol! (Kájoni: Veni Jesu – Cantionale Catholicum, in Latin)