Music within Frontiers Regional Characteristics in the European Contemporary Music

Abstract

The present study is foundation of a large-scale research, which examines and compares the contemporary concert hall music cultures of different regions with particular emphasis on those features that make these cultures distinctive within the global scene.  In the first phase of my study, I asked a group of composers from Hungary and Romania for participation. Each of the eighteen participants received the same questionnaire consisting of six questions, and was asked to share three scores of their works written within the past ten years that they found representative to their art. The questions were intended to lead to the composer’s personal evaluation of their past (personal background, studies, views on history of music), and present (social aspects, affiliations, integration). By selecting a group of composers born between 1975 and 1990, I was able to gauge how they reflect to the generations of the established and internationally acclaimed composers in their countries, and also to the emerging composers in their twenties from the more-or-less the same distance and angle.