Attila Bozay
From Unearthing The Music
Attila Bozay (1939–1999) was a Hungarian composer and musician who played the zither and the flute. Between 1957 and 1962 he studied at the Liszt Ferenc Music Academy as a student of Ferenc Farkas. In 1963–1964 he was a teacher at the Music Vocational School in Szeged, then he worked as an editor of chamber music at the Hungarian Radio until 1966. In 1967 he learned modern music at the Conservatoire in Paris as a student of André Joliet thanks to a UNESCO scholarship. From 1979 until his death he was a teacher at the Liszt Ferenc Music Academy. He was a director of the National Philharmonic (1990–1993).
Bozay created his first compositions as a child. His early works inspired by the folklore and neoclassicism. In his first creative period (before 1958) he wrote the ballet ’Séta meseországban’ (A Walk in Fairyland) and the piano cycles ’Medáliák’ (Medalions), a work in which he was trying dodecaphony. In his second creative period (1958–1968) he made the compositions ’Vonóstrió’ (StringTrio), ’I. vonósnégyes’ (String Quartet No. I.), ’Variációk zongorára’ (Piano Variations), ’Pezzo concertato No. 1.’ and ’Pezzo sinfonico No. 1.’ In this period he used dodecaphony too. In his third creative period (1968–1978) he tried to develop dodecaphony. He was drawn to electronic music, but he never wrote music generated by computers. In this period he created ’Sorozat’ (Series), ’II. vonósnégyes’ (String Quartet No. II.), Pezzo sinfonico No. 2. and ’Improvizációk I–II–III.’ (Improvisations I–II–III.). He wrote an opera about the Hungarian poet Mihály Vörösmarty’s ’Csongor és Tünde’ (Csongor and Tünde), which presented in 1985. He also made opera after ’Az ember tragédiája’ (The Tragedy of Man) by Imre Madách, cantatas for János Pilinszky’s poems and song cycles of the poems of Miklós Radnóti, Attila József, András Fodor, István Kormos.