I started to compose my piano pieces called Games in 1973. Until 1979, the publication of the first four volumes, these works existed only as manuscripts, on sheets of music paper. However, in 1974, I started two large music notebooks with grey covers in which I collected my favourite pieces for the two people who played a special role in my life. One of the notebooks was Zoltán Kocsis's, who, from then on, always played my piano pieces from it, and he gave it back to me from time to time over the following 32 years (sometimes at my request) so that I could write more pieces into it. I might even say that Zoli Kocsis's Manuscript Book is a document of our friendship and mutual respect.

The notebook I gave Márta, which I also continually added to, meant something else to me. When I wrote the words ''K. M. hangjegy koenyvetskéje'' (M. K.'s Music Notebook) on the title page, I thought about the ''Notenbüchlein'' that Johann Sebastian Bach compiled for his beloved wife, Anna Magdalena Bach.

This notebook is our joint work, and it holds the memories and outcomes of the strength and inspiration I received from Márta, strength and inspiration that are so important to me. [...] I look at the pages, their corners worn and their edges ragged from being thumbed through, and the memories return of our practising together, rehearsals, recitals, our beautiful and eventful life we spent full of music. In Márta's meticulously written fingerings, in my hasty performance instructions and remarks, I can again hear her playing, her voice, our arguments, our struggles - the 74 years we lived together.

György Kurtág

The facsimile publication of the notebook was released on the 100th birthday of György Kurtág in limited number of copies, featuring a foreword by the composer and an accompanying essay by Tünde Mózes-Szitha.