Completing the circle : the flute music of Gergely Ittzes

Hungarian flutist Gergely Ittzes (b. 1969) has enjoyed a flourishing career as a recording and performing artist and has also developed a reputation as a composer of avant-garde flute music. His works are some of the most difficult and fascinating in the repertoire, emerging out of Ittzes's desire to fully explore, in a systematic way, the technical, acoustic and musical possibilities of the flute. A commission by the prestigious National Flute Association in the United States in 2011 has brought his music to a wider international audience. His reputation as a composer has only blossomed fairly recently and combined with his relative youth, this has meant that there is very little scholarly literature focussing directly on Ittzes and his work. To date, there have been no large-scale studies undertaken examining his compositional output. This study fills a gap in the literature by providing an extensive exploration of the use of extended techniques in Ittzes's flute compositions, through performance and written exegesis. This is the first comprehensive study into the use of extended techniques across Ittzes's repertoire of flute works. Drawing on interviews with the composer, this research also provides a unique insight into Ittzes's life and the inspiration and concepts behind his work. This exegesis also includes a guide for performing Ittzes's works and sheds light on how Ittzes intends for them to be interpreted. Chapter 1 provides biographical details about Ittzes and outlines the literature discussing extended techniques. The second chapter explores the key influences on Ittzes's work as a flutist and composers, particularly the influence of Hungarian flutist Istv‚àö¬8n Matuz. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss Ittzes's compositions from 1988 through to 2012, tracing the development of his style over his career so far. Chapter 5 is a performance guide, offering a method for studying three of Ittzes's compositions. The techniques from this guide can then be extrapolated to apply to the remainder of his oeuvre. Ittzes is still composing, so this study explores what may amount to only the first part of his output, but it lays the groundwork for future studies into one of the most significant and experimental flutist-composers of his generation.