Máté Balogh’s string quartet Dadamusik fits in well with the author’s text-music in recent years. While Hemingway’s Speech (2017), Kipling’s Speech (2018), or Bahnmusik (2019) are exact representations of acoustic experiences, Dadamusik is a transcript of a senseless poem. Each sound in the composition is a musical representation of the meaningless poem Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters a Dadaist artist of the early 20th century. However, knowledge of the poem is not necessary to fully reception the piece. The text as an organizing structure participates in the formation of the piece: each moment is composed of elements of vowels (musical sounds) and consonants (various noises), expressed in a verbal recitation. Schwitters liberated the text from its exact meaning in his poem, while in Balogh’s composition, elements of the spoken language are further abstracted, or resolved, in instrumental music, that is, in timbre.

The work was commissioned by the Kunststiftung Nordhein-Westfalen and is dedicated to the Asasello Quartett.