With a Lock on the Door

This volume presents the compositions written in Hungary in the period between 1956 and 1989 and examines the entire repertoire of the composers of the period. In just over three decades of the so-called "Kádár era"—a period characterized by historians with the terms "goulash communism" or "the happiest barracks" due to the liberal nature of the system compared to the other countries behind the Iron Curtain—all generations of Hungarian composers had the opportunity to get acquainted with the current trends of modern music. This made it possible to modify their compositional perspective significantly influenced hitherto by Bartók’s and Kodály’s model. The book mainly follows the discourses about new music hidden in the background of the stylistic changes, and the careers of the four generations that were active during this period. The work takes a look at the reception of the most important compositional techniques or forms of thinking, like dodecaphony, serialism, electronic music, post-serialism, experimentalism, minimalism, neo-styles, neo-conservatism, and points out the individual features of Hungarian composition, such as, for example, the changes of the concept of national music. The book does not only analyse the works written in this period, but also interprets them in the context of contemporary criticism, using in the interpretation the contemporary statements or later recollections of the composers as well.