Faculty Colloquium Series: "Requiem for a Requiem" (Peter Laki)
Friday, November 10, 2017 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm EST/GMT-5Bard College Berlin Cafeteria
On November 10, 2017, in the frame of the Faculty Colloquium Series, guest faculty Dr. Peter Laki will give a presentation entitled "Requiem for a Requiem: A Hungarian Composer's Aborted Homage to John F. Kennedy."
Sándor Veress, one of the most important Hungarian composers of his generation (1907-1992) emigrated to Switzerland in 1947. Following John F. Kennedy's assassination, he planned a large-scale choral work to honor the memory of the American President. The work was never completed, but extensive sketches exist, which give us some idea about what this work would have been like. An examination of the extant material and a review of the aborted composition's history will reveal some aspects of the unlikely encounter between a composer steeped in the Hungarian national school on one hand, and American culture and politics on the other.
Peter Laki, a native of Budapest, studied at the Franz Liszt Conservatory (now University) in his hometown, at the Sorbonne in Paris, and at the University of Pennsylvania where he earned his PhD. Formerly program annotator and lecturer for the Cleveland Orchestra, he is currently Visiting Associate Professor at Bard College Annandale. He is the editor of Bartók and His World (Princeton University Press, 1995). He has published numerous articles in musicological journals and lectured widely at international conferences.
Email: [email protected]