Harmincasok (Hungarian Generation of Composers)

In Hungarian music history, the “Harmincasok” (“The Thirties”) is the term used to refer to the generation of composers born in the 1930s. Their goal was to renew the post-Kodolányi musical thinking. Among others, its members were Attila Bozóky, Zsolt Durkó, Miklós Kocsár, György Kurtág, Kamilló Lendvíy, Emil Petrovics, József Sorponi, and Sándor Szokolay. They, as the generation coming after the Kodály school, firstly turned toward Western music after 1957/58. They had the opportunity to access the music of Schönberg’s disciples, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg. The "Harmincasok" were interested in the modern method of composition: some of them tried to experiment with aleatoric and improvisational elements, but the conventional way of musical thinking rooted in Hungarian traditions limited them. This approach defined the boundaries of modern music as composing electronic and experimental music. That political vision of culture, which was based on the relation to the heritage of Bartók's music, strongly limited the “Harmincasok” approach towards avant-garde music and their willingness to experiment. Their attitude was rooted in a feeling of being marginal, and an inferiority complex arising from being behind the Iron Curtain. The solution would have been a new Hungarian music tendency which could involve itself in the European circulation of music.

We can describe their musical ideology as a synthesis of national tradition and European musical values. Compared to the radical musicality of the neo-avant-garde New Music Studio, the “Harmincasok” approach was seen as conservative and made the group’s activity a local phenomenon. They were isolated from the results of studio practices in Darmstadt. As a result, they weren’t able to join these experiments and achieve international successes.

These composers belonged to the post-serial age of Hungarian music in the late ’60s. The most significant pieces of the generation were born at this time. Nevertheless, the establishment of the New Music studio showed their boundaries. Nobody among the composers of this generation – except Attila Bozay – adopted the experimentalist approach. Their questions related to composition connected to different topics than the ones tackled in the New Music Studio. Their ambitions included different methods in the split from traditional composition. The most impressive among these practices was the reformation of music notation. The noises and beating effects generated on traditional music instruments also demonstrate the move away from tradition. Their technical innovations questioned traditional compositions. However, their inner struggles and doubts stood in the background of these external features.

The story of the “Harmincasok” is about all the rethinking of music, the contact between the Western and Eastern European composers, the complex relation of form and content, the problem of self-determination and the excitement of experimentation. They were active from the late 50s to the early 70s. Their age was ended by the start of the New Music Studio. Because of this event, the “Harmincasok” lost the most important elements of their self-presentation, the image of innovation. The emergence of young radical musicians rocked the credibility of the older generations’ modernity. However, this modernity and pathfinding were already pretty modest in the 60s. The researchers in the group emphasized that the modern and fashionable techniques only touched the surface of the new way of thinking about music. Their improvisations stayed between the framework of the so-called “tied freedom”.