{"id":12848,"date":"2026-01-06T18:37:43","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T17:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.haydneum.com\/in-memory-of-lajos-rovatkay\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T13:35:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T11:35:50","slug":"in-memory-of-lajos-rovatkay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.haydneum.com\/en\/in-memory-of-lajos-rovatkay\/","title":{"rendered":"In memory of Lajos Rov\u00e1tkay"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a broken heart, we remember Lajos Rov\u00e1tkay, our dear musician friend and mentor, a member of the Haydneum Scientific Committee, who returned to his Creator on 2 January 2026, in the ninety third year of his life. This remarkably versatile musician, researcher, conductor, organist and harpsichordist, and distinguished musicologist was a professor at the Hochschule in Hanover.
\nLajos Rov\u00e1tkay was born in \u00d3buda Hungary. After completing his studies at the Archiepiscopal Grammar School, he continued at the Conservatoire and later at the Liszt Academy of Music, studying under such outstanding teachers as J\u00e1nos Hammerschlag, Gy\u00f6rgy Seb\u0151k, Lajos B\u00e1rdos and Rezs\u0151 Sug\u00e1r. He maintained close relationships with key figures of the musical life of the period, including Alad\u00e1r T\u00f3th, Bence Szabolcsi and Gy\u00f6rgy Ligeti.
\nIn 1955 he founded the early music ensemble Collegium Musicum, with which he performed works by Sch\u00fctz, Tunder and Buxtehude.
\nIn 1956 he left Hungary with a single rucksack. It contained nothing but a notebook in which he had collected and organised articulations drawn from the instrumental parts of Bach\u2019s cantatas.
\nHe studied at the Frankfurt Hochschule with the organist Helmut Walcha. While J\u00e1nos Hammerschlag had influenced him with a rhetorical and agogically rich manner of playing, Walcha left a profound impression through his clear and transparent style.
\nHe was personally acquainted with Paul Hindemith and frequently took part in his concerts as a continuo player.
\nA few years later he moved to Hanover, where he began teaching organ and piano at the Hochschule, later adding the harpsichord, and subsequently assumed the leadership of the already established early music studio.
\nHe was passionately interested in the early Baroque. He researched the oeuvre of Alessandro Grandi and his contemporaries, copied their works from manuscripts, and incorporated them into his teaching and performances. Later he prepared scholarly editions and made recordings with the ensemble Musica Antiqua K\u00f6ln. His lifelong enthusiasm for Venetian Baroque music began with Grandi and led him to the art of Agostino Steffani, whose connections to Hanover were particularly strong. On the three hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Hanover Opera, he presented Steffani\u2019s opera Enrico Leone with his own ensemble, the Capella Agostino Steffani, and conducted it over two consecutive seasons.
\nThe \u201cVenetian red thread\u201d then guided him towards Antonio Caldara, who transmitted Venetian traditions into the Viennese Baroque. From there, through his boundless enthusiasm for Gregor Joseph Werner, he arrived at the Esterh\u00e1zy Baroque. He recorded five CDs of Werner\u2019s music with two ensembles that were particularly close to his heart, La Festa Musicale and the Voktett Hannover. He greatly anticipated the release of the fifth disc and was just able to live to see it appear.
\nNumerous other music editions and CD recordings are also associated with his name.
\nThe immeasurable depth of Lajos Rov\u00e1tkay\u2019s knowledge and his passion for music remain exemplary for us. His exceptional insights into musical relationships reveal how profoundly thoughtful a practising musician he was.
\nHe was especially fascinated by Renaissance vocal polyphony and by early Baroque bass patterns such as the romanesca and the ruggiero. Restlessly, he investigated the role of the ritornello form in Bach, examining how Bach combined and embedded it within counterpoint in a wholly unique and personal manner. He devoted enormous attention to what the augmented sixth expressed and how it functioned as music progresses in time, compiling an entire theoretical compendium of its various manifestations. He also possessed a vast knowledge of the origins of Baroque thematic topoi, most notably fugue subjects. One could recount the subjects of his enthusiasm endlessly, yet for him the most essential presence always remained the cosmic energy of Johann Sebastian Bach.
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\n\u00c1gnes Pint\u00e9r, 5 January 2026<\/em><\/p>\n