Emancipáció, passió, kórtörténet (A brácsa mint a klasszikus európai zene hõsi halottja)
Emancipation, Passion, Pathogenesis (The Viola as a tragicomical hero of the music history)

Summary/Abstract: Following the development, the unfolding, the ruptures and the ramifications of the modern viola repertoire, this paper ponders over the possibilities of an alternative (pseudo)narrative of the twentieth century music. Confronting with the seemingly insolvable challenge to fill a leading part in works of music, the history of this often neglected instrument - which in fact always played a substantive role in the core of the symphonic and chamber literature - witnesses a telling correspondence between the viola's innate fault (or handicap) and the historical perspectives of aesthetic stances worked out by notable late-twentieth century and contemporary composers (Shostakovich, Schnittke, Gubaidulina, Kancheli, Vidovszky). In a broader context, this story of the viola is only an example of the historical paradigm of the aesthetic idea of the almost-nothing (presque-rien) discussed by such philosophers as Vladimir Jankélévitch and Hannes Boehringer.

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