György Kurtág and the House of His Childhood
Inheriting the love for music from his mother, with whom he played various arrangements for piano four hands ever since he was only five, and later studying at the Lugoj Conservatory with Klára Vojkicza-Peia (piano) and Filaret Barbu (theory of music), great Jewish Hungarian composer György Kurtág was born and raised in a house on 17, Smârdan Street.
Located in the new part of town, in south Lugoj, outside the densely developed urban nucleus of the downtown area, it is part of a built tissue composed mainly of individual, ground floor habitations of generally continuous fronts. Most of the neighbouring constructions are of the sub-urban types, specific to the turn of the 20th century, grouped by two or more – L-shaped, the short side turned towards the street and the long one advancing deep in the lot.
The Kurtágs lived in a simple, rural house, part of the surrounding continuous front. The façade is pierced by three window openings featuring double, four-leaf woodwork. Access is exclusively pedestrian via a walkway and through a single-leaf wooden entry door positioned at one extremity of the façade and under a small-sized transom. Windows are disposed in relation to two small rooms of which the main one, turned towards the street, has two.
The façade is covered in grey spotted cement which covers the original lime plaster and which, because of the incompatibility between the two, starts flaking. It unevenly covers the simple ornaments, some frameworks that punctuate windows keystones and three plaster of Paris garlands just underneath the gutter marking the axis of each window. Over the window there is a decorative pane of plaster featuring a Baroque undulating outline defined by convex and concave curves and into which an archaic solar symbol is engraved. The initial coat originated in a rural façade dating probably from the end of the 19th century decorated with engraved archaic symbols over which, with the renewing of the exterior trim, new elements were added.
Sadly, the building isn’t valorised, and no plaque or other type of commemorative marking indicates that great György Kurtág lived here.
References:
Szűcs Blănaru, Amalia. Max Eisikovits, György Kurtág, György Ligeti – trei compozitori din România [Max Eisikovits, György Kurtág, György Ligeti – Three Composers from Romania]. Symbolon Volume XIX. Special Number. Music