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péter bornemisza
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Sospeso performs Gyorgy Kurtag's musical setting of the sixteenth century Hungarian writer Péter Bornemisza's poems on September 25, 2002. Sixteenth century Hungary was divided into three geographical and cultural areas. The Turkish portion was influenced by the Ottoman Empire; the Hapsburg portion was ruled by Austria and was culturally Roman Catholic; and the third portion was closely in touch with Protestant intellectual movements emanating from England and the Netherlands. Péter Bornemisza was the earliest celebrated Protestant writer in Hungary. Among his most widely read works include the 1578 moral treatise On the Temptations of the Devil, which provides a fascinating perspective on the philosophies of the Reformation. A Poem of Farewell is a book of poetry; and the Tragedy in Hungarian is based on Sophocles' Elektra. Born February 22, 1535 in Pest, Bornemisza died sometime before June 24, 1584 in Rárbok. A prose writer, he was also a Lutheran minister and a superintendent. He was a descendant of a stable, middle-class family whose prosperity was reduced by Turkish invasions. Orphaned in 1541, he was brought up in Felso-Vidék. He studied in Kassa from 1548 to 1553, and he later attended universities in Italy, France, and Germany; he was a student of Melanchthon in Wittenberg. Upon his return to Hungary, Bornemisza worked in a printing press in Kassa and Debrecen. He became a Lutheran clergyman in 1564 and, with certain interruptions, served the Balassi family and tutored Bálint Balassi in Zólyom. He was charged with celebrating Mass with bread in 1564. Many biographical details of his life are unknown, but he spent part of 1565 in Ungvár on a diplomatic mission to the army of Menyhért Balassi and Lázár Schwendi; and he was known to be in Zólyom in 1567. Bornemisza was appointed superintendent of Mátyusföld in 1570, and in two years he was a minister in Galgócz; the following year, records show he was a preacher in Sempte. His literary activity began with Tragedy in Hungarian, a Hungarian reworking of Sophocles' Elektra (1558). His most productive years began in 1570 with publications issued regularly from his own press at Sempte. He was arrested for concepts expressed in his work Ördögi kísértetek and imprisoned in Vienna. After three weeks he escaped and returned to Sempte. Driven from Sempte in January 1579, he went to Beczkóvár and from there to Detrekovár, where he again came under protection of the Balassi family. Bornemisza completed Énekek három rendbe in 1582 and Prédikációk, a collection of his new sermons, in 1584. Generally considered to be the most cultured, humanist, and erudite Protestant thinker in 16th-century Hungary, Bornemisza united contemporary Italian-German culture and knowledge of Greek and Latin classics with Hungarian learning. Some of his poems have been translated into English and Russian. With thanks to A magyar irodalom arcképcsarnoka.
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| Sospeso Ltd. © 2002 Joshua Cody | |