This book examines the impact place and displacement can have on the composition and interpretation of Western art music, using as its primary objects of study the work of István Anhalt (1919–2012), György Kurtág (1926–), and Sándor Veress (1907–92).
Although all three composers are of Hungarian origin, their careers followed radically different paths. Whereas, Kurtág remained in Budapest for most of his career, Anhalt and Veress left: the former in 1946 and immigrated to Canada and the latter in 1948 and settled in Switzerland. All three composers have had an extraordinary impact in the cultural environments within which their work took place.
In the first section, “Place and Displacement,” contributors examine what happens when composers and their music migrate in the culturally complex world of the late twentieth century. The past one hundred years produced record numbers of refugees, and this fact is now beginning to resonate in the study of music. As Anhalt himself forcefully asserts, however, not all composers who emigrate should be understood as exiles. The first chapters of this book explore some of the problems and questions surrounding this issue.
Essays in the second section, “Perspectives on Reception, Analysis, and Interpretation,” look at how performing acts of interpretation on music implies bringing the time, place, and identity of the musician, the analyst, and the teacher to bear on the object of study. Like Kodály, Kurtág considers his work to be “naturally” embedded in Hungarian culture, but he is also a quintessentially European artist. Much of his production—he is one of the twentieth century’s most prolific composers of vocal music—involves the setting of Hungarian texts, but in the late 1970s his cultural horizons expanded to include texts in Russian, German, French, English, and ancient Greek. The book explores how musicologists’ divergent cultural perspectives impinge on the interpretation of this work.
The final section, “The Presence of the Past and Memory in Contemporary Music,” examines the impact time and memory can have on notions of place and identity in music. All living art taps into the personal and collective past in one way or another. The final four chapters look at various aspects of this relationship.

Friedemann Sallis obtained his PhD in musicology under the direction of the late Carl Dahlhaus at the Technische Universitt Berlin. His writings include a book on the early works of Gyôrgy Ligeti and numerous articles. He is the co-editor of A Handbook to Twentieth-Century Musical Sketches (2004).

Robin Elliott taught at University College Dublin for six years before assuming the Jean A. Chalmers Chair in Canadian Music at the University of Toronto in 2002. He has edited several books, including two with Gordon E. Smith: Istvan Anhalt: Pathways and Memory (2001) and Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts (WLUP, in press).

Kenneth DeLong is a professor of music history at the University of Calgary, Alberta. He has published extensively on Romantic Czech music. He is also a music critic for the Calgary Herald and Opera Canada. Recent publications include chapters in The Unknown Schubert, edited by Barbara M. Reul and Lorraine Byrne Bodley (2008), and Henry Irving: a Re-Evaluation of the Pre-Eminent Victorian Actor-Manager, edited by Richard Foulkes (2008).

Friedemann Sallis' profile page

Robin Elliott taught at University College Dublin for six years before assuming the Jean A. Chalmers Chair in Canadian Music at the University of Toronto in 2002. He has edited several books, including , with Gordon E. Smith, Istvan Anhalt: Pathways and Memory (2001) and with Friedemann Sallis and Kenneth DeLong, Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile: Interpreting the Music of Istvan Anhalt and György Kurtág (WLU Press, 2009).

Gordon E. Smith is a professor of ethnomusicology at Queen’s University. Formerly director of the School of Music, he is currently Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science. His recent publications include Istvan Anhalt: Pathways and Memory (with Robin Elliott), Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology: Canadian Perspectives, Past and Present (2007); and Marius Barbeau: Modelling Twentieth-Century Culture (2008).

Robin Elliott's profile page

Kenneth DeLong is professor of music history at the University of Calgary. His research interests principally concern nineteenth-century Czech and English music, opera, and Liszt’s piano music. Recent research activities include a conference paper on Liszt’s Il Penseroso for the Vienna conference of the Word and Music Association, and articles on Schubert and Vorísek for The Unknown Schubert and on Sullivan for Henry Irving, both published by Ashgate Press. He is a correspondent and reviewer for Opera Canada magazine and for thirty years has been the principal music critic for The Calgary Herald.

Kenneth DeLong's profile page

This volume of essays elegantly weaves together personal accounts, documentary studies, musical analyses, and reflections on performance and aesthetics, providing a vivid picture of how Anhalt, Kurtág, and Veress (re)defined their identities—musical, political, and personal—in the context of the places where they chose or resigned themselves to live. Readers both familiar and less familiar with this repertory will enjoy the wide range of new perspectives and sources presented. A most inspiring read.

Christoph Neidhöfer, Schulich School of Music, McGill University, 2011 July

Centre and Periphery contains a wide variety of approaches that collectively provide valuable insights into the three composers and their work. Since over half the book is devoted to Anhalt, it is especially important as a contribution to the growing body of Anhalt research.... The editorial work is top notch, with beautifully typeset musical examples and reproductions of manuscript pages.... Rounding out the presentation are biographies of all the contributors as well as a first-rate index.

Edward Jurkowski, University of Lethbridge, CAML (Canadian Assoc. of Music Libraries) Review, 40, No. 1, April 2012, 2012 May

This volume of essays elegantly weaves together personal accounts, documentary studies, musical analyses, and reflections on performance and aesthetics, providing a vivid picture of how Anhalt, Kurtág, and Veress (re)defined their identities—musical, political, and personal—in the context of the places where they chose or resigned themselves to live. Readers both familiar and less familiar with this repertory will enjoy the wide range of new perspectives and sources presented. A most inspiring read.

Christoph Neidhöfer, Schulich School of Music, McGill University, 2011 July

The book's editors ... have shaped this diverse collection of approaches and perspectives into a wide-ranging but coherent whole, bringing together ‘essays that examine how ideas of place and identity impinge on the creation, analysis, and interpretation of twentieth-century art music.’.... While Centre and Periphery is likely to be read primarily by those interested in the music of Veress, Kurtág, and Anhalt, it is a substantial contribution to the broader literature on identity and migration. With is emphasis on Anhalt, the book is a major contribution to the study of musical lie in post-WWII Canada.... The Wilfrid Laurier University Press deserves much praise for taking on this very worthy project and presenting it in this richly illustrated and finely edited form. This relatively small university press has rapidly carved out a niche with a number of titles on music in postwar Canada, among them In Search of Alberto Guerrero (2006), Music Traditions, Cultures, and Contexts (2010), Weinzweig (2011), and Beckwith's memoirs, Unheard Of (2012). The WLU Press has just issued Out of Time (2013), the biography of another Nazi-era refugee, the conductor, Georg Tintner. These twenty-first century assessments of recent history come not a moment too soon and have much to say about music and imagination in twentieth-century Canada. Both Centre and Periphery, Roots and Exile and Mapping Canada's Music tell the stories of individuals uprooted and forced to find new beginnings in a country that was accepting of their talents and that was enriched by their contributions.

Brian C. Thompson, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Fontes Artis Musicae, 61/1, 2014 June