On Kurtág's Dodecaphony

After a short description of general attitude toward serialism in Hungary in the 1960s a detailed analysis of serial procedures in movements II and V of György Kurtág's StringQuartet, op. 1 is given. Differences between handling 12-tone aggregates and rows, motivic connections between adjacent and non-adjacent tones, and symmetrical and non-symmetrical partitions of the row are examined. Through these means, serial parts prove to harmonise with the overall narrative context of a generally non-serial, atonal work