Béla Bartók on Music Theory Print

14 Bagatelles

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Bartók, along with composer Zoltán Kodály, began collecting Hungarian folk music in 1905. Curious about the particular national features of folk music, Bartók believed that the most interesting folk traditions existed in a multicultural environment with an active exchange of ideas between cultures. The first Bagatelle may reflect some of Bartók’s view of multicultural folk music, with different key signatures for left and right hands.

44 Duos for Two Violins

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

Béla Bartók did not intend this work to be played in performances, but rather to be useful as a work for young students. The work was commissioned by Erich Doflein, a German violinist and teacher, who asked Bartók if he would arrange some of the pieces from the For Children series. He composed other works in this period that were meant to be pedagogical, such as Mikrokosmos. This intention for educative works was exploited by the fact that he was a teacher himself, then he chose to write works for his pupils to play. Nevertheless, all songs and dances included in this series are based on folk music from many Eastern Europe countries, but harmonic and rhythmic freedom is evident throughout the whole piece. In 1936, Bartók arranged 6 of these duos for piano, under the title Petite Suite.

Allegro barbaro (Bartók)

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History of the composition#

Allegro barbaro was composed in 1911, but the first performance didn’t occur until 1921. According to Maurice Hinson, editor, Bartók premiered the piece in February 1913 in Kecskemet, Hungary. Like many of Bartók’s compositions, there are several different editions of Allegro barbaro. The piece was performed in private by Bartók many times by memory before he even started to notate the music. In many early printed versions of the composition, the tempo markings were indicated at a much slower speed. These indications would confuse musicians because the recordings of Bartók performing his own composition was much faster than indicated. Also, many times certain accents and dynamics would be performed by the composer, but would not make it to paper because each performance wasn’t the same.

Bluebeard's Castle

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition history#

Balázs originally conceived the libretto for his roommate Zoltán Kodály in 1908, and wrote it during the following two years. It was first published serially in 1910 with a joint dedication to Kodály and Bartók, and in 1912 appeared with the prologue in the collection “Mysteries”. Bartók was motivated to complete the opera in 1911 by the closing date of the Ferenc Erkel Prize competition, in which it was duly entered. A second competition, organised by the music publishers Rózsavölgyi and with a closing date in 1912, encouraged Bartók to make some modifications to the work. Little is known about the Ferenc Erkel Prize other than that Bluebeard’s Castle did not win. The Rózsavölgyi judges, after reviewing the composition, decided that the work (with only two characters and a single location) was not dramatic enough to be considered in the category for which it was entered: theatrical music. It is thought that the panel of judges who were to look at the musical (rather than the theatrical) aspects of the competition entries never saw Bartók’s entry. In 1913 Balázs produced a spoken performance at which Bartók played some piano pieces on a separate part of the program. A 1915 letter to Bartók’s wife, Márta (to whom he dedicated the opera), ends: “Now I know that I will never hear it in this life. You asked me to play it for you—I am afraid I would not be able to get through it. Still I’ll try so that we may mourn it together.”

Cantata profana

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Text#

The source texts which Bartók used to create the libretto were two Romanian colinde that he collected from Transylvania in April 1914. Colinde are ballads which are sung during the Christmas season, although many colinde have no connection to the nativity of Jesus and are believed to have pre-Christian origins. The story concerns a father who has taught his nine sons only how to hunt; they know nothing of work and spend all of their time in the forest. One day, while hunting a large and beautiful stag, they cross a haunted bridge and are themselves transformed into stags. The father takes his rifle and goes out in search of his missing sons. Finding the stags gathered around a spring, he drops to one knee and takes aim. The largest stag, his eldest son, pleads with his father not to shoot; the father, recognizing his son in the stag, begs them to come home. The stag then replies that they can never come home, as their antlers cannot pass through doorways and they can no longer drink from cups. In an English translation created much later, Bartók retains the six-syllable versification of the original Romanian text. Below is his translation of the text from the third movement: Once upon a time there Was an aged man, he Had nine handsome boys. Never has he taught them Any handicraft, he Taught them only how to Hunt in forests dark. There they roamed, hunted All the year around, and Changed into stags in Forests dark and wild. Never will their antlers Enter gates and doors, but Only woods and shrubs; Never will their bodies Wear a shirt and coat but Only foliage; Nevermore their feet will Walk on houses’ floors but Only in the sward; Nevermore their mouth will Drink from cups and jugs but From the clearest springs. Bartók translated the original Romanian into Hungarian and entrusted a German translation to Bence Szabolcsi. In 1955, Robert Shaw created a new English translation. The original Romanian text has not appeared in any of the published versions of Cantata profana.

Concerto for Orchestra (Bartók)

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Composition#

The work was written in response to a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation (run by the conductor Serge Koussevitzky) after Bartók moved to the United States from his native Hungary, which he had fled because of World War II. In 1943, while Bartók was in hospital suffering from what would later be discovered to be leukemia, he was visited by Koussevitzky, who wanted to inform him of the commission for him to write the work that became this concerto. It has been speculated that Bartók’s previous work, the String Quartet No. 6 (1939), could well have been his last were it not for this commission. Bartók then wrote several other works afterwards, including his Sonata for Solo Violin and Piano Concerto No. 3.

Contrasts (Bartók)

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Structure#

The work is in three movements: The movements contrast in tempo. The first movement contains a cadenza for clarinet and the last one for violin. The piece features examples of alternate or dual-thirds (C and C in an A triad): : This mixed thirds structure may be thought of as bitonal in that the major and minor third of a triad are used. This structure may be extended through considering each third of the original triad as also being a possible third in a triad a half step in either direction. Thus C/D is a major third in an A major triad and the minor third of a B major triad: : Szigeti recalled that Bartók had told him that the start of Contrasts had partial inspiration from the “Blues” second movement of Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano. F. Bónis has further noted the parallel between a short passage in the same Ravel movement and a passage in the first movement of Contrasts.

Dance Suite (Bartók)

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Composition#

Béla Bartók composed the Dance Suite in 1923 in order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the union of the cities Buda and Pest, to form the Hungarian capital Budapest. Then, after its great success, the director of Universal Edition, Emil Hertzka, commissioned from him an arrangement for piano, which was published in 1925. However, he never publicly performed this arrangement, and it was premiered in March 1945, a few months before his death, by his friend György Sándor. The work premiered on 19 November 1923 in Budapest, alongside Ernst von Dohnányi’s Festival Overture and Zoltán Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus. The British premiere was on 10 August 1925 at the Promenade Concerts, at Queen’s Hall, under the baton of Henry Wood.

Divertimento for String Orchestra (Bartók)

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Divertimento#

The term “Divertimento” (Italian for “diversion”) denotes a work primarily designed for the entertainment of both the listeners and the performers. The divertimento was popularized in the Classical period by Haydn, Boccherini, and Mozart. This is a neo-classical work constructed around modal tonalities, but it cannot simply be defined as a modernist work or a strictly neoclassical work. One of the most evident neoclassical characteristics is the treatment of texture. Frequently, a small group of soloists contrasts the whole orchestra, greatly varying the work’s texture. This is reminiscent of the Baroque genre of the Concerto Grosso, where a small group of soloists, the concertino, was contrasted and accompanied by the tutti orchestra, or the ripieno. While baroque tonality comes within reach, the work is for the most part tonally modernistic. Dynamically, the work features sharp contrasts. The work also utilizes the fugal elements of imitation, fugato, and contains a three voice fugue.

Eight Hungarian Folksongs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

The Eight Hungarian Folksongs were composed in two different periods. The first five songs were written in 1907. On this occasion, Bartók spent time traveling around Csík County in Transylvania and collecting folk music. The first song was collected in 1906, and the other four were collected in 1907. This was the first time Bartók decided to depart from his earlier primitive compositional style, as Bartók’s desire to educate the public was so evident that the melody in his folksongs was doubled by the right hand of the pianist (in which case, if there was an amateur singer or no singer at all, the melody could still be heard). These eight songs, despite being composed ten years apart, were the first example of Bartók not doubling the melodies, and he also followed that style in future collections of folk music. Since Bartók’s collections of songs were not meant to be played as cycles, but that the performer should rather mix and match them as Bartók also did at the time, Eight Hungarian Folksongs is not very well known as a song cycle. The set was first published by Universal Edition in 1922. However, the copyright was reassigned to Hawkes and Son in 1939, with catalog number B. & H. 18065.

Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

This composition has eight movements: The first movement, Molto moderato, the original melody is repeated three times without not much variation and a coda at the end. The mode of this melody comes from the Dorian mode scale on C, but the accompaniment plays unrelated triad chords, all of them derived from melody notes. In the second movement, Molto capriccioso, the main melody is repeated also three times, but here, even though it shares its Dorian mode on C, there are fragments written in Mixolydian mode, its rhythm is much more syncopated, there are much more sudden tempo changes and it is much more dissonant than the first. The third movement, Lento rubato, is polytonal. The fourth, Allegretto scherzando, is a very quick scherzo-like movement. The fifth movement, Allegro molto, uses the pentatonic scale and also counterpoint and polytonal harmonies all along the movement. The sixth movement, Allegro moderato, molto capriccioso, is a bitonal movement; one hand plays only in the black keys of the piano, making a melody on a pentatonic scale, while the other hand uses all of the white keys, which create dissonances. The seventh movement, Sostenuto, rubato, is dedicated to the memory of French composer Claude Debussy, for Bartók’s music was very influenced by Debussy’s style when Bartók was a young composer. It was published separately from this work in a memorial supplement of La revue musicale, published in December 1920 and dedicated to late Debussy, even though this movement contains no references to any of Debussy’s works nor to his composition style. The eighth movement, Allegro, is in a variation form, and its melody is repeated over and over, like in the first movement. The melody is somehow similar to that of the second movement’s.

Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

The collection consists of fifteen movements, some of which are grouped together. A typical performance lasts 13–15 minutes. The movement list is as follows: :Four Old Tunes : :Old Dance Tunes : Some critics claim Bartók intended the work to be split into two parts: the first one would include the first six movements, and the second one would include the following nine movements. However, such division is not present in the original score.

Five Hungarian Folksongs (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Bartók spent many of his adult years traveling around modern-day Hungary and Romania collecting folk music. His educational vocation led him to write down many folk songs as he traveled, as these works would later be used for either educational purposes or concert performances and recitals. However, most of the early songs he collected called for a singer with piano accompaniment, but had the piano double the melody following the voice. That was the case in Ten Hungarian Folksongs, composed in 1906 for voice and piano, in a collection of twenty songs that also included ten additional songs by Zoltán Kodály. One of the first few known examples of Bartók pursuing artistic ambitions and reharmonizing songs without doubling the main melody was Eight Hungarian Folksongs. Since Bartók started using in the 10s and 20s much of the folk material he collected in the early 20th century, he also recomposed some of the sets, with newer harmony and no voice doubling. Five Hungarian Folksongs was an example of that. It was presumably composed in 1928 with the intent of it being recorded for His Master’s Voice, which he did on December 5, 1928, with soprano Vilma Medgyaszay. After it was recorded, it was forgotten about and lost until Béla Bartók’s son, Béla Bartók III, sent the sketches used by Bartók for the recording in 1963, almost two decades after Bartók’s death, to Denijs Dille. Kálmán Nádasdy, Medgyaszay’s teacher, confirmed that Bartók used those sketches during rehearsals and even managed to make copies of songs 1, 2, 4, and 8 of the original set. Since the revised set was not intended to be published or performed again, the pieces had to be thoroughly reconstructed from the sketches, as only the piano part was available and song No. 9 was not clearly readable and followed Medgyaszay’s very rubato and casual recitation. The voice part was taken directly from the original set. Even though the set was presumably finished for recording in 1928, it was eventually published in 1970 by Editio Musica Budapest.

Five Songs, Op. 15 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Bartók, who later became very well known for collecting folk music from central and eastern Europe, wrote this set of songs after returning to Budapest with a large selection of Slovak folk music early in the month of January 1916. He composed an arrangement of Krutí Tono Vretena during the second week of that month and began composing this cycle of original songs. He composed the first song, Az én szerelmem, on January 15 (according to Bartók’s own correspondence); the second, Színes álomban, was composed on January 28; the fourth, Nyár, on February 5; and the fifth, Itt lent a völgyben, on February 6. These were the first songs to be composed after Bártok left the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. He composed a new set of songs, later entitled Five Songs, Op. 16, to texts by Endre Ady, before completing what would later become the third movement, A vágyak éjjele, which was composed separately from a text by Wanda Gleiman and added subsequently. Bartók did not initially conceive the set of five songs as a whole, but rather chose to plan the premiere of the four songs together with the Slovak song composed in early January on March 12, 1916, upon request by the magazine Nyugat. However, the singer with whom Bartók chose to premiere the set, mezzo-soprano Ilona Durigó, was unavailable at the time, as she was touring around the Netherlands. They were again set to be premiered in a concert in Vienna at the end of the year, which was cancelled again and caused Bartók to lay this set aside for two years. This set of five songs was eventually copyrighted by Universal Edition in 1961 and, after being revised by Bartók’s son Peter Bartók with the help of Eve Beglarian, Nelson Dellamaggiore and Denijs Dille, republished in its form most commonly performed today in 1991. Together with Op. 16, this set constitutes the only instance in which Bartók composed songs from scratch without any folk material.

For Children

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Contents#

The final, revised version of For Children is divided into two volumes: ;Volume I ;Volume II

Four Dirges

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Composition#

Béla Bartók had been researching folk songs for quite some time before the first realization of this composition in 1909. Since 1905, Bartók had been travelling around Eastern Europe, especially around Hungary and Romania, collecting folk songs and tunes which would later become some of the basis of a significant part of his production as a composer. It was especially in 1908 that Bartók started to become increasingly interested in the tonal aspect of his works, which started to show a distinctive flavor to that of other contemporary composers. Bartók composed these four short pieces for solo piano between 1909 and 1910. The set was never formally premiered and was initially published in 1912 by Rózsavölgyi & Társa in Budapest. It was only partially first performed in Budapest in 1917 by fellow pianist Ernő Dohnányi.

Homage to Paderewski

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Background#

Homage to Paderewski was commissioned by the music publisher Boosey & Hawkes in 1941 in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Paderewski’s American debut in 1891. It was Zygmunt Stojowski who initiated the venture. He encouraged some composer friends of Paderewski’s to write miniatures for the anniversary. However, Paderewski died on 29 June 1941, before the project was completed, and so the album, on its publication in 1942, became a posthumous tribute to his life and work. Twenty-one composers submitted 22 works, and 17 were chosen for publication. Of these 17 composers, only three were native-born Americans. The remainder had either settled in North America or were working there temporarily (Benjamin Britten and Eugene Goossens were in the United States; Arthur Benjamin was in Canada). Britten misunderstood the commission and wrote a piece for two pianos. It was published separately but is still considered a part of the overall homage. Béla Bartók did not write a new piece but provided a short suite of three pieces written in 1914–18. Jaromír Weinberger’s contribution also seems to have been composed earlier, in 1924. Ernest Schelling, a student of Paderewski, had died in 1939, but his widow submitted a late untitled composition, in the belief that he would have wanted to be involved. The pieces are all short, none taking more than four minutes to play and some just over one minute. The premiere recording of the complete work was made in 2011 by Jonathan Plowright, with Aaron Shorr in the Britten piece.

Hungarian folksongs for voice and piano (Bartók)

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4 Songs BB 37 (Sz 29 / W –)#

Hungarian Folksongs (1st series), nos. 1–4, for voice and piano (c.1904–1905) *1. Lekaszálták már a rétet (“They mowed the pasture already”) *2. Add reám csókodat, el kell mennem (“Kiss me for I have to leave”) *3. Fehér László lovat lopott (“László Fehér stole a horse *4. Az egri ménes mind szürke (“The horses of Eger are all grey”)

10 Songs BB 42 (Sz 33 / W 13)#

Source: Hungarian Folksongs, for voice and piano (1906) (nos. 1–10: Béla Bartók; nos. 11–20: Zoltán Kodály not listed) *Elindultam szép hazámból (“I left my beautiful country”) *Általmennék én a Tiszán ladikon *Fehér László lovat lopott (“László Fehér stole a horse”) *A gyulai kert alatt (“In the summer fields”) *A kertmegi kert alatt (“I was in a summer garden”) *Ablakomba, ablakomba (“My window, my window”) *Száraz ágtól messze virít (“A dry branch of bloom in far”) *Végig mentem a tárkányi sej, haj, nagy uccán (“Walking through the town”) *Nem messze van ide (“Not far from here” - The Horseman) *Szánt a babám csireg, csörög (“My love has gone ploughing”) :(Five songs later recomposed as BB 97, 1928)

Hungarian Pictures

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

The original piano pieces were created during Bartók’s journey around Romania and Hungary when he started collecting and arranging folk music that further transformed his somewhat Lisztian early style into the style he came to develop. Therefore, many of the compositions from this period were either based on folk music or created from scratch with a reasonable resemblance to folk music. However, neither money nor widespread fame would be plentiful in his lifetime, as he had to struggle with moderate opposition in his country to his modern style and some of his major works, such as The Miraculous Mandarin, being banned for years. From the 1930s onwards, Bartók started arranging some of his piano music for orchestral concert performances with the expressed intent of making money out of it. This was the case of his Transylvanian Dances, arranged from his Sonatina, and this set, which takes five pieces from works created two decades earlier. The set was completed in August 1931 in Mondsee. Pieces 1, 2, 3 and 5 were premiered in Budapest by the Budapest Concert Orchestra under Massimo Freccia on January 24, 1932. The first complete performance of the whole suite took place two years later, on November 26, 1934, with Heinrich Laber conducting the Philharmonic Society Orchestra. It was eventually published by Editio Musica Budapest in 1983 and arranged for wind quintet by Christopher Sears in 1985.

Kossuth (Bartók)

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Musical background#

The music of Richard Strauss was an early influence on Bartók, who was studying at the Budapest Royal Academy of Music when he encountered the symphonic poems of Strauss, Also sprach Zarathustra and Ein Heldenleben. Bartók was present at the 1902 Budapest premiere of Also sprach Zarathustra, where he met Strauss in person. According to Bartók “I was aroused as by a flash of lightning by the first Budapest performance of Also Sprach Zarathustra. It contained the seeds for a new life. I started composing again.” Soon after, Bartok first made a piano reduction of Ein Heldenleben. He then went on to compose his own symphonic poem Kossuth completing the piano score by spring of 1903 and the orchestral version in summer of 1903 in Gmunden in Austria.

Mikrokosmos (Bartók)

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Title#

The title Mikrokosmos comes from the Greek mikros kosmos, meaning “little world”, to reflect Bartók’s aim that the pieces “deal not only with the rhythmic, but also with melodic, harmonic and pianistic problems.” The works were first published with the subtitle “Progressive Pieces for Piano” to emphasise the collection’s didactic structure. Ernst Roth, as representative of the publisher Boosey & Hawkes, initially suggested “Progressive Piano Pieces in Modern Idiom”, but this was rejected by Bartok on the grounds that “in 20, or let us say in 40 years this work will cease to be ‘modern.’ And what does it mean ‘modern’? This word has no definite sense, can be misinterpreted, misunderstood!”

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis#

As its title indicates, the piece is written for string instruments (violins, violas, cellos, double basses, and harp), percussion instruments (xylophone, snare drum, cymbals, tam-tam, bass drum, and timpani) and celesta. The ensemble also includes a piano, which, due to the hammer mechanisms inside, can also be considered a percussion instrument; the celesta player joins the pianist in some four-hands passages. Bartók divides the strings into two ensembles which, he directs, should be placed antiphonally on opposite sides of the stage, and he makes use of antiphonal effects particularly in the second and fourth movements. The piece is in four movements: the first and third slow; the second and fourth quick. All the movements are written without a key signature: The first movement is a slow fugue with a constantly changing time signature. The movement is based around the note A, on which it begins and ends. It begins with muted strings, and as more voices enter, the texture thickens and the music becomes louder, coming to a climax on E, a tritone away from A. Mutes are then removed, and the music becomes gradually quieter over gentle celesta arpeggios. The movement ends with the second phrase of the fugue subject played softly over its inversion. The first movement can be seen as a basis for material in the later movements; the fugue subject recurs in different guises throughout the piece. The second movement is quick, with a theme in time which is transformed into time towards the end. It is marked with a loud syncopated piano and percussion accents in a whirling dance, evolving in an extended pizzicato section, with a piano concerto-like conclusion. The third movement is slow, an example of what is often called Bartók’s “night music”. It features timpani glissandi, an unusual technique at the time of the work’s composition, as well as a prominent xylophone part. The rhythm of the xylophone solo that opens the third movement is a “written-out accelerando/ritardando” that follows the Fibonacci sequence, the notated rhythm representing 1:1:2:3:5:8:5:3:2:1:1 notes per beat in sequence. The fourth and final movement, which begins with notes on the timpani and strummed pizzicato chords on the strings, has the character of a lively folk dance.

Night music (Bartók)

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Characteristics#

As with many musical styles, it is not possible to make a satisfying let alone indisputable definition of Night music. Bartók did not say or explain much about this style, but he approved of the term and used it himself. Most of the works in Night music style do not carry a title. From an audience point of view, Night music consists of those works or passages that convey to the listener the sounds of nature at night". This is quite subjective and self-referential. Mostly, subjective and far-fetched descriptions are available: “quiet, blurred cluster chords and imitations of the twittering of birds and croaking of nocturnal creatures”, “In an atmosphere of hushed expectancy, a tapestry is woven of the tiny sounds of nocturnal animals and insects.” More concrete is “Eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies”. ## Evocations of the mood of night and spaciousness. ## Melodies are portrayed in the music, rather than being a direct means of (self-)expression. For instance, a pastoral flute and its melody are portrayed in The Night’s Music from Out of Doors. The effect on the listener is not primarily the esthetic effect of the melody. The melody’s effect is rather indirect: the evocation of being out of doors at night in the plain and hearing the shepherd play his melody. In the words of Kundera, not only the natural sounds at night, but also the lonely songs and melodies, far from being a Lied or other self-expression of the composer, find their origin in the external world. In the words of Schneider “Bartók seems to be suggesting musically the old Romantic organicist idea that peasant and shepherds’ music is a natural phenomenon, a view he expressed in writing on several occasions”. He also points out that “the G’s in bar 37, which start as the mere sound of repeated notes and turn into the shepherd’s melody gradually emerge from the myriad of other natural sounds”. # On a more technical musical level, a piece or movement of night music style may show any of the following characteristics. ## An ostinato sound on every beat in the slow prevailing tempo, often this sound is dissonant, and/or a cluster chord. Because of the slow and repetitive nature, these sounds come to fulfill an accompanying or background role. ## Curt motives at irregular time intervals within the meter. These motives may be the imitations of the natural sounds or more abstract, often primitive, motives. An example is A–A–A–C–A–A in the second movement of the Sonata for two pianos and percussion. This motive is scored as a quintuplet of sixteenths in time on the third beat, plus a sixteenth note on the fourth beat: the last A. As the implied or latent rhythm is 3+2+1, it sounds as an accelerando which evaporates suddenly. ## Wide pitch ranges in glissandi, jumps and doublings over many octaves. This contrasts heavily with cluster chords of adjacent notes and trills and may well add to the evocation of spaciousness or loneliness. ## Overlap and insertions of widely different materials, e.g. a bird call in a melodic line. Different materials sound irrespective of one another leading to novel sound effects, and, more subjectively, multiple layers and perhaps the feeling of spaciousness.

Nine Little Piano Pieces

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

A composer devoted to education, Bartók wrote many easy short pieces during his lifetime. However, in the 1920s he had also earned a high reputation as a concert pianist and performer, which made him tour frequently, especially while he was in Europe. 1925 was a year that was specifically productive in terms of public performance; however, that implied that he wouldn’t be active again until the end of May, 1926, after his tours and most of his sporadic concert activity came to a pause. Bartók finished a fairly decently long list of compositions during the second half of 1926: the Piano Sonata, which was finished in June; Out of Doors, which was completed between June and August; and one of his most important pieces for the piano – the First Piano Concerto, which he began composing in August and finished on November 12. Along with these pieces, he also completed this set of Nine Little Piano Pieces, a compilation of short pieces that were released in three volumes and had a primarily educational purpose. Bartók finished the whole set consisting in three volumes on October 31, 1926. A partial premiere of Nine Little Piano Pieces took place on December 8, 1926, in a recital that Bartók himself gave at the Academy of Music in Budapest, where he also premiered his piano sonata and Out of Doors. On that occasion, Bartók only played seven short movements from the collection.

Out of Doors (Bartók)

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Pieces#

Out of Doors contains the following five pieces with approximate duration based on metronome markings: # “With Drums and Pipes” (Hungarian: “Síppal, dobbal”) – Pesante. 1 min 45 s # “Barcarolla” – Andante. 2 min 17 s # “Musettes” – Moderato. 2 min 35 s # “The Night’s Music” (Hungarian: “Az éjszaka zenéje”) – Lento – (Un poco) più andante. 4 min 40 s # “The Chase” (Hungarian: “Hajsza”) – Presto. 2 min – 2 min 12 s

Piano Concerto No. 1 (Bartók)

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Background#

For almost three years, Bartók had composed little. He broke that silence with several piano works, one of which was the Piano Concerto, composed between August and November 1926.

Premieres#

The work was premiered at the fifth International Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Frankfurt on July 1, 1927, with Bartók as the soloist and Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting. The scheduled 1927 American premiere in Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic, on a tour by Bartók, was canceled by conductor Willem Mengelberg due to insufficient rehearsing. Bartók’s Rhapsody was substituted into the program. The Concerto eventually premiered in the USA on February 13, 1928 in the same venue, with Fritz Reiner conducting the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Bartók as the soloist.

Piano Concerto No. 2 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

In approaching the composition, Bartók wanted the music to be more contrapuntal. He also wanted to simplify his music (like many of his contemporaries), but his use of counterpoint in this piece makes for an extremely complicated piece of music. This aspect had proven particularly troublesome in the First Concerto, so much so, in fact, that the New York Philharmonic, which was to have given the premiere, could not master it in time, and Bartók’s Rhapsody had to be substituted into the program. The composer himself claimed in a 1939 article to have composed this concerto as a direct contrast to his First Concerto, acknowledging that the First “is a bit difficult — one might even say very difficult! — as much for orchestra as for audience.” Even so, the Second Concerto is notorious for its difficulty. András Schiff said, “For the piano player, it’s a finger-breaking piece. It is probably the single most difficult piece that I have ever played, and I usually end up with a keyboard covered by blood.” Stephen Kovacevich also declared that it was the most technically demanding piece he had ever played and that he nearly paralyzed his hands while preparing the piece. The concerto was dated 1930/1931, but not premiered until 23 January 1933 in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt Radio Symphony was conducted by Hans Rosbaud with Bartók as the soloist. The first performance in Hungary was later that same year, conducted by Otto Klemperer with Louis Kentner playing the piano at Bartók’s request. Bartók himself played the work at a BBC Symphony Concert in the Queen’s Hall on 8 November 1933, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Adrian Boult. The concert was broadcast live and described in Radio Times as the first performance in England. Bartók played it again at the Proms in London under Sir Henry Wood on 7 January 1936, an initiative of the BBC music producer Edward Clark. On 18 April 1934 he played it in Konserthuset with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra under Vàclav Talich. The first performance in the United States was given in Chicago on 2 March 1939, with Storm Bull as soloist and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Frederick Stock. The New York premiere was given at Carnegie Hall in 1947, with Andor Foldes as soloist and the National Orchestral Association conducted by Léon Barzin. The French premiere was given in 1945 by Yvonne Loriod, who had learnt it in only eight days.

Piano Concerto No. 3 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Context#

The Piano Concerto No. 3 was one of the pieces composed by Bartók after departing Hungary following the outbreak of World War II. Bartók’s migration from Europe to America preceded that of his music. Lack of local interest, combined with Bartók’s extended battle with leukemia and a general sense of discomfort in the American atmosphere prevented Bartók from composing a great deal in his early years in America. Fortunately, the composer was commissioned to create his Concerto for Orchestra which was extremely well received and decreased the composer’s financial difficulties. This, combined with an abatement of his medical condition, allowed for a change in the composer’s general disposition. The changes in the composer’s emotional and financial state are considered by a few to be the primary causes for the third piano concerto’s seemingly light, airy, almost neoclassical tone, especially in comparison to Bartók’s earlier works. However, while the composition of a piece as a gift (his wife Ditta Pásztory-Bartók’s upcoming 42nd birthday on October 31, 1945 - Bartók intended the solo part for her to perform, providing her with a source of income after his death ) as opposed to a commission undoubtedly impacted the composing process, some think it more likely that the piece was instead the culmination of a trend of reduction and simplification which began almost ten years prior, with the Second Violin Concerto, and which concluded Bartók’s exploration of tonality and complexity. Bartók died on September 26, 1945, with the concerto complete except for the orchestration of the final 17 bars of music. The task of completing their orchestration, drawing on Bartók’s notes, was eventually done by the composer’s friend, Tibor Serly. The Third Piano Concerto was later published in an edition by Serly and Erwin Stein, an editor for Boosey & Hawkes. It was premiered in Philadelphia on February 8, 1946, under Hungarian conductor Eugene Ormandy with György Sándor as piano soloist. Beginning in the 1990s, the composer’s son, Peter Bartók, in association with Argentinian musician Nelson Dellamaggiore, worked to re-print and revise past editions of the Third Piano Concerto, to eradicate the multiple printed errors identified but never corrected by his father. Although few in actual number, changes made to the Piano Concerto affected the notes, pedalling and tempos of several key passages. in the world premiere of the revised edition. According to conductor David Bowden, and Peter Bartók, who was in attendance: “These changes generally make the piano part more accessible or clarify questions of chordal structure….” The revised editions of both the two-piano reduction and the orchestral score of the Piano Concerto No. 3 are now available from Boosey & Hawkes.

Rhapsody No. 1 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis#

The first movement is in ternary form (ABA′, plus a coda), the main theme of which begins with a rising-scale violin melody heavily laden with Romani influences, including the characteristic dotted rhythms. This is a Romanian fiddle tune from Mureș County, Transylvania . It is in the Lydian mode, first occurring on G, with a drone-like accompaniment in the piano part. When it returns in the third section, it is transposed to C. The contrasting, middle section of the movement is a mournful one, characterized by short-long figurations. This is the only Hungarian melody used in either of the two rhapsodies, a Transylvanian fiddle tune called the Lament of Árvátfalva recorded by Béla Vikár and later transcribed by Bartók. It possesses an air of brilliance, exhibiting the most virtuosic and vibrant dance melodies. In the published score, Bartók provided two alternative endings. The first, longer version brings back the main theme from the first movement, in the original G Lydian tonality, and finishes with a ten-bar, cadenza-like flourish. The second, shorter ending does not recall material from the lassú, but instead is based on the E major first theme of the second movement, now transposed to A major. When the second movement is played on its own, this shorter ending is obligatory.

Rhapsody No. 2 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis#

The opening lassú section presents three themes arranged in a rondo or five-part song form: ABACA. Although mainly in D minor, the opening section emphasizes the fifth scale degree so strongly as to suggest a sort of Phrygian mode on A, and the movement closes with a cadence on A, and the instruction Fermata breve, poi attacca (pause briefly, then connect to the next movement). As in the First Rhapsody, the following friss movement is an informal chain form, here consisting of seven folk themes—six Transylvanian Gypsy fiddle dances and one Ruthenian dance (the fifth tune, Uvevanẙi) from Szeklence in Máramaros County . These seven dances are arranged into thirteen sections in various quick tempos, producing the impression of perpetual exposition. The movement begins in G, but is primarily anchored in D (with prominent use of the closely related acoustic and Lydian scales), and concludes in that key. Bartók appears to have been dissatisfied with the original ending, as published in 1929, and made as many as seven tentative alternatives, finally publishing one of them as definitive (; ). Other features of the piece include open-interval harmonies, drones, fiery rhythms and folk melodies.

Rhapsody, Op. 1 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

The Rhapsody for piano was a very important work, especially for the fact that it was at that time when Bartók decided to begin his third list of compositions. In this stage, he decided to embark on a new period in his artistic career where he would mainly explore folk music from Romania and Hungary. This turned out to be the pivotal work from which he would develop a new direction for both his compositional style and his preoccupations as an artist. The Rhapsody was completed in late 1904 and was dedicated to Emma Gruber, who later became the wife of Zoltán Kodály. Drafts for the composition are not extant. The virtuoso piano writing of the work’s “elaborate textures and sectional contrasts” relates to the model of Franz Liszt. After five revisions and updates, Bartók also released a version for piano and orchestra in 1905 and a version for two pianos. In 1907, Bartók also composed a fourth version of the same piece, which was shortened by almost half of the total length of the composition.

Romanian Christmas Carols

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

This work consists of twenty little songs put together into two major series. The movements are listed as follows: Series A Series B The movement numbered XVIIb is generally appended to the previous one, and, in publications, the variation is represented as a single movement, even though it is clearly specified where the reprise begins. Bartók also wrote a concert version with slight variations to the original version. These changes consist mostly of denser chords and octaves.

Romanian Folk Dances

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

This set of dances consists of six movements and, according to the composer, it should take four minutes and three seconds to perform, but most professional pianists take up to five minutes. The list of the movements is as follows (with the original Hungarian title listed first, the most commonly known Romanian title second, and the English translation in parentheses):

Arrangements#

Aside from the version Bartók wrote for a small orchestral ensemble, some of Bartók’s friends wrote adaptations or transcriptions of this piece for several different ensembles. The following are the best-known: * Arthur Willner’s version for string orchestra. It is a mere transcription with no modification of the original music. * Zoltán Székely’s version for violin and piano. This is not just a transcription, but also an arrangement and adaptation of the piece for these two instruments. Some of the modifications Székely made included transposing some of the movements (the second movement was transposed from D minor to F minor, the third from B minor to D minor and the fourth from A major to C major), repeating some sections, adding bars, and using several techniques for the violin such as artificial harmonics, double stops, and Sautillé.

Slovakian Dance

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

Slovakian Dance is scored for a solo piano and takes around 2 minutes to perform. It has a total of 92 bars and three different sections. The first section is the ritornell that was used in movements 1, 2, and 4 of Bartok’s Dance Suite, marked Tranquillo in the score. It acts as a short introduction, as well as a placing element within its original piece, as the Dance was meant to be played after a ritornello. This section has 17 bars and is separated by a double bar. The second section, the Slovakian Dance itself, is marked Allegretto in the score and generally gravitates towards F major, even though the key signature makes no specifications. This lively, dance, ends in bar 81, when the ritornell is reprised for the last few bars, marked Lento in the score.

Sonata for Solo Violin (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Violinist Yehudi Menuhin commissioned a work for solo violin from Bartók in November 1943. It was written in New York and in Asheville, North Carolina, where Bartók underwent treatment for leukemia. Bartók finished composing the piece in March 1944. He wrote letters to Menuhin in April and June 1944 to agree on minor changes to make the Sonata easier to play.

Structure and analysis#

The Sonata consists of four movements: The Tempo di ciaccona is essentially a sonata-form movement written somewhat in the style of a chaconne, even though it is not its form. It is full of typical Hungarian folk intervals and harmonies. The Fuga begins with a four-voice fugue on a pulsating, staccato melody. After a section where the melody is accompanied quietly with fast running notes, it returns as a series of chords, alternately played with the bow and plucked in inversion. Nevertheless, it is not a strict fugue, as every episode introduces new material to the subject. The Melodia begins with a lyrical melody, stated alone and in all different registers of the instrument. It continues in sixths, octaves, and tenths, accompanied by trills and tremolos. The Presto alternates between a very quiet, fast, bumblebee-like passage played with a mute, and a cheerful melody. Bartók originally wrote the rapid passages in quarter-tones, but many violinists choose to perform a version, suggested by Menuhin, that only uses the standard 12 notes of Western classical music. Three contrasting themes appear throughout this movement, all of which re-appear in the final coda. The Solo Sonata presents violinists with many difficulties and uses the full gamut of violin techniques: several notes played simultaneously (multiple stops), artificial harmonics, left-hand pizzicato executed simultaneously with a melody played with the bow, and wide leaps between pitches.

Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Instrumentation#

The score requires four performers, two pianists and two percussionists, who play seven instruments between them: timpani, bass drum (gran cassa), cymbals, triangle, snare drum (both on- and off- snares), tam-tam (gong) and xylophone. In the published score, the composer provides detailed instructions for the percussionists, stipulating, for example, which part of a suspended cymbal is to be struck with what type of stick. He also provides precise instructions for the platform layout of the four players and their instruments.

Sonatina (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Structure#

This sonatina consists of three movements and, according to Bartók’s notes, takes 3 minutes 47 seconds to perform: Though Bartók arranged it in three movements, the piece actually consists of five different folk tunes: he used two in the first movement, in an A–B–A form, and two in the last movement, which he then combines snatches of in the coda. In a radio broadcast of the Sonatina in 1944, Bartók described the piece: This sonatina was originally conceived as a group of Rumanian folk dances for piano. The three parts which Mrs. Bartók will play were selected from a group and given the title of Sonatina. The first movement, which is called “Bagpipers”, is a dance – these are two dances played by two bagpipe players, the first by one and the second by another. The second movement is called “Bear Dance” – this was played for me by a peasant violinist on the G and D string, on the lower strings in order to have it more similar to a bear’s voice. Generally the violin players use the E string. And the last movement contains also two folk melodies played by peasant violin players. Bartók arranged this piece for orchestra sixteen years later. He called the orchestral version Transylvanian Dances, Sz. 96, BB 102.

String Quartet No. 1 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Music#

The work is in three movements, played without breaks between each: The work was at least in part inspired by Bartók’s unrequited love for the violinist Stefi Geyer – in a letter to her, he called the first movement a “funeral dirge” and its opening notes trace a motif which first appeared in his Violin Concerto No. 1, a work dedicated to Geyer and suppressed by Bartók for many years. The intense contrapuntal writing of this movement is often compared to Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14, Op. 131, the opening movement of which is a slow fugue. The following two movements are progressively faster, and the mood of the work lightens considerably, ending quite happily. The third movement is generally considered to be the most typical of Bartók’s mature style, including early evidence of his interest in Hungarian folk music.

String Quartet No. 2 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

References#

Bartók Quartet No. 2, lecture by Roger Parker, followed by a performance by the Badke Quartet, Gresham College, 4 December 2007 (available for download as MP3 or MP4, as well as a text document)

External links#

- Performance by the Borromeo String Quartet from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in MP3 format

String Quartet No. 3 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Music#

It has often been suggested that Bartók was inspired to write the piece after hearing a performance of Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite (1926) in 1927. The piece is the most tightly constructed of Bartók’s six string quartets, the whole deriving from a relatively small amount of thematic material integrated into a single continuous structure. It is also Bartók’s shortest quartet, with a typical performance lasting around 15 minutes. The work is even more harmonically adventurous and contrapuntally complex than Bartók’s previous two string quartets and explores a number of extended instrumental techniques, including sul ponticello (playing with the bow as close as possible to the bridge), col legno (playing with the wood rather than the hair of the bow), and glissandi (sliding from one note to another). The string quartet is in one continuous stretch with no breaks but is divided in the score into four parts: # Prima parte: Moderato # Seconda parte: Allegro # Ricapitulazione della prima parte: Moderato #Coda: Allegro molto The mood of the first part is quite bleak, contrasting with the second part, which is livelier and provides evidence of the inspiration Bartók drew from Hungarian folk music, with dance-like melodies to the fore. Though Bartók called the third section a “recapitulation”, it is not a repetition of the music from the prima parte, but varied and simplified. Although not marked as such, the coda is in fact a telescoped recapitulation of the seconda parte.

String Quartet No. 4 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis#

Bartók’s musical vocabulary, as demonstrated in his string quartets particularly, departs from traditional use of major and minor keys, focusing more on the chromatic scale and attempting to utilize each note equally. Regardless, Bartók doesn’t follow any form of serialism, instead dividing the chromatic scale into symmetrical units, with tonal centers being based on “axes of symmetry”. He also incorporates whole-tone, pentatonic, and octatonic scales — as well as diatonic and heptatonia seconda scales — as subsets of the chromatic scale. His use of these subset scales allowed him to incorporate a wide range of folk music in an expanded harmonic system. Indeed, his original studies and settings of many examples gleaned from his extensive explorations of the Hungarian countryside and Eastern and Central Europe served as a major influence upon his expanded musical vocabulary. Bartók held a long fascination with mathematics and how it pertained to music. He experimented with incorporating the golden section and the Fibonacci sequence into his writing. Though these fascinations aren’t obviously present in his Fourth String Quartet, Derek Locke has proposed that the quartet is structured using both the golden section and numbers from the Fibonacci series. He maintains that their use was “not so much a matter of ‘aesthetic’ proportions as a method for avoiding arbitrariness’. Movements I and V share similar motifs; the second theme in the first movement is prominent in the fifth. Movements II and IV share similar ideas as well, but the ideas present within these two movements can be considered variations on themes presented earlier, expanding and building on ideas presented in the first and fifth movements. Movement III differs from the other four movements in that it is textured and quiet. The symmetry of the movements isn’t limited only to the themes; the lengths of the movements show symmetry as well. The first, third and fifth movements are approximately six minutes long, whereas the second and fourth are shorter, at about three minutes each.

String Quartet No. 5 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Music#

The string quartet is in five movements: Like the String Quartet No. 4 and several other works by Bartók, the piece is in an arch form. Additionally, the first movement, which is in a sort of sonata form, is itself arch-like, in that each section of exposition is given in reverse order during the recapitulation – the melodies of each section are also inverted (played upside-down). Bartók himself pointed out that the keys used in the movement ascend in the steps of the whole tone scale: the exposition is in B, C and D; the development is in E; and the recapitulation is in F, A and B. The three middle movements are all in ternary form, of which the third is in the unevenly-divided aksak time signatures typical of Bulgarian folk music: for the main scherzo, and in the trio. The last movement is again arch-like: Bartók described it as being in the form ABCB′A′ with a coda to round things off. The two slow movements, the second Adagio molto and the fourth Andante are great examples of Bartók’s night music style: eerie dissonances, imitations of natural sounds, and lonely melodies.

String Quartet No. 6 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The string quartet was begun in August 1939 in Saanen, Switzerland, where Bartók was a guest of his patron, the conductor Paul Sacher. Shortly after he completed the Divertimento for String Orchestra on the 17th, he started on a commission for his friend, the violinist Zoltán Székely. Székely was acting as intermediary for the New Hungarian Quartet, who had given the Budapest premiere of the String Quartet No. 5. In addition to the state of the world being tumultuous so too was the composer’s life. In December 1939, after the completion of the quartet, Bartók learned of his mother’s death. Bartók then decided to leave with his family for the United States. Additionally, his own health began to fail. The early signs of a blood disorder began showing for which Bartók would undergo hydrotherapy. It can be seen from Bartók’s sketches that he had intended the last movement to have a quick, Romanian folk dance-like character with an aksak rhythmic character, but he abandoned this plan, whether motivated by pure compositional logic or despair at the impending death of his mother and the unfolding catastrophe of the war.

Suite, Op. 14 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Analysis#

According to Bartók, the Suite is part of a new trend in piano technique that he saw as a break from his earlier Post-romantic writing. In 1945, he claimed to have used only the most restricted means of piano technique in this work, “accentuating in some of its movements the percussive character of the piano.” Though Bartók does not quote from folk melodies in this composition, he makes extensive use of other folk-like elements, such as a Romanian Ardeleana rhythm in the first movement. In addition, the third movement of this Suite shows Arabic influence, the earliest Bartók work of its kind, and a North African influence in its ostinato and scalar patterns. Throughout the piece, he uses exotic scale patterns, such as the Lydian and whole tone scales in the first movement; in addition, there is a twelve-tone row in the second movement, which is probably the only one in Bartók’s entire oeuvre.

Ten Easy Pieces (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

Though initially it was conceived as Eleven Piano Recital Pieces, one of the pieces was dropped and used as a bagatelle in Bartók’s Fourteen Bagatelles. However, he was required by a contractual obligation with his publisher to write eleven pieces, so he wrote a dedication which is not numbered but serves to complement the set. For this reason, this set and his set of bagatelles are related, both in their harmonic and rhythmic styles and in their educational vocation. These works were heavily influenced by Bartók’s fascination with folk music and by his admiration for Claude Debussy, who had, by then, made a name for himself. Whereas Fourteen Bagatelles is decidedly more difficult for young pianists, this set was planned to serve as an easy contemporary preparation for students. It is, indeed, being used in the intermediate piano repertoire, together with his other set of short pieces, For Children. The set was published a year later, in 1909, by Rozsnyai Károly.

The Barbarian (song)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Description#

This piece of music is instrumental, and it is the shortest one on the album (4:27). Although the composition of “The Barbarian” was attributed to the three band members, it is an arrangement for rock band of Béla Bartók’s 1911 piano piece Allegro barbaro. Although the original piece is for piano only, the band arranged the song for organ, piano, bass, and drums. The music of the song is aggressive with a heavy metal style. Greg Lake used a fuzz box to give his bass a fuller, guitar-like sound. The band members did not give credit to Bartók, thinking that the label would arrange the matter. Bartók’s family sued ELP for copyright infringement,

The Miraculous Mandarin

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Synopsis#

Beginning—Curtain rises # First seduction game # Second seduction game # Third seduction game—the Mandarin enters # Dance of the girl # The chase—the tramps leap out # Suddenly the Mandarin’s head appears # The Mandarin falls to the floor After an orchestral introduction depicting the chaos of the big city, the action begins in a room belonging to three tramps. They search their pockets and drawers for money, but find none. They then force a girl to stand by the window and attract passing men into the room. The girl begins a lockspiel—a “decoy game”, or saucy dance. She first attracts a shabby old rake, who makes comical romantic gestures. The girl asks, “Got any money?” He replies, “Who needs money? All that matters is love.” He begins to pursue the girl, growing more and more insistent until the tramps seize him and throw him out. The girl goes back to the window and performs a second lockspiel. This time, she attracts a shy young man, who also has no money. He begins to dance with the girl. The dance grows more passionate, then the tramps jump him and throw him out too. The girl goes to the window again and begins her dance. The tramps and girl see a bizarre figure in the street, soon heard coming up the stairs. The tramps hide, and the figure, a mandarin (wealthy Chinese man), stands immobile in the doorway. The tramps urge the girl to lure him closer. She begins another saucy dance, the Mandarin’s passions slowly rising. Suddenly, he leaps up and embraces the girl. They struggle and she escapes; he begins to chase her. The tramps leap on him, strip him of his valuables, and attempt to suffocate him under pillows and blankets. However, he continues to stare at the girl. They stab him three times with a rusty sword; he almost falls, but throws himself again at the girl. The tramps grab him again and hang him from a lamp hook. The lamp falls, plunging the room into darkness, and the Mandarin’s body begins to glow with an eerie blue-green light. The tramps and girl are terrified. Suddenly, the girl knows what they must do. She tells the tramps to release the Mandarin; they do. He leaps at the girl again, and this time she does not resist and they embrace. With the Mandarin’s longing fulfilled, his wounds begin to bleed and he dies.#

Music#

The score begins with an orchestral depiction of the “concrete jungle.” The violins have rapidly rising and falling, wave-like scales over the very unusual interval of an augmented octave. One of the central motifs of the work is set forward in bar 3 — a rhythm in minor seconds. This motif will reappear at the violent actions of the tramps. The sound of car horns is imitated by fanfares on the trumpets and trombones. As the curtain rises, the violas play a wide-leaping theme that will be associated both with the tramps and the girl. The 3 lockspiele are scored for the clarinet, each one longer and more florid than the last. The old rake is represented by trombone glissandi spanning a minor third, another very important interval. As the tramps throw him out, the minor second in returns. The music for the shy young man is a slow dance in 5/4 time , also interrupted by the minor second as the tramps throw him out. When the Mandarin is heard in the street, the trombone plays a simple pentatonic theme harmonized by 3 lines of parallel tritones in the other trombones and the tuba. When the Mandarin enters the room, the trombones and tuba play downward glissandos, again spanning a minor third. Three measures later, this interval is played fortississimo by the full brass. The girl’s dance for the Mandarin contains both a waltz and the viola theme associated with her and the tramps. When the Mandarin seizes the girl, the minor second is heard again. The chase is represented by a fugue, whose subject also has a pentatonic flavor. The concert suite ends at this point. In the complete ballet, the minor second returns again as the tramps rob the Mandarin. The attempted suffocation and stabbing are illustrated with great force in the orchestra. As the tramps hang the Mandarin from the lamp, the texture is blurred with glissandi on trombones, timpani, piano and cellos. The glowing body of the Mandarin is represented by the entry of a chorus singing wordlessly, once again in the interval of a minor third. The climax, after the girl embraces the Mandarin, is a theme given out fortissimo by the low brass against minor-second tremolos in the woodwinds. As the Mandarin begins to bleed, the downward minor-third glissando heard at his entry is echoed in the trombone, contrabassoon and low strings. The work then stutters arhythmically to a close. The scoring is generally heavy, and Bartók employs many colorful techniques here, including chromatic scales, trills and tremolos in the woodwinds; glissandi in the horns, trombones and tuba; cluster chords and tremolos on the piano; scales and arpeggios on the piano, harp and celeste; and scales, double stops, trills, tremolos, and glissandi in the strings. Other special effects include fluttertonguing in the flutes; muting the brasses and strings, a cymbal roll a deux (a cymbal crash followed by scraping the plates together); playing the bass drum with the wooden part of a timpani mallet; a roll on the gong; rolled timpani glissandi; string harmonics; col legno and sul ponticello playing in the strings; scordatura in the cellos; and, at one point, quarter-tones in the violins. In 2000 a new edition edited by Peter Bartók, the composer’s son, was published. Based on the composer’s written manuscripts, corrections, and the concurrently written score for piano with four hands, it restored a considerable amount of previously lost music.

The Wooden Prince

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The work#

The Wooden Prince has never achieved the fame of Bartók’s other ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin (1926) but it was enough of a success at its premiere to prompt the Opera House to stage Bartók’s opera, Bluebeard’s Castle (which had not been performed since 1911) in the following year. Like Bluebeard, The Wooden Prince uses a huge orchestra (it even includes saxophones), though the critic Paul Griffiths believes it sounds like an earlier work in style (Griffiths p. 71). The music shows the influence of Debussy and Richard Strauss, as well as Wagner (the introduction echoes the prelude of Das Rheingold). Bartók used a scenario by the poet Béla Balázs, which had appeared in the influential literary journal Nyugat in 1912.

Three Burlesques

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

After Bartók’s long-lasting depression following his participation in the Rubinstein Competition in Paris in 1906, he decided to embark on a great journey around rural Romania and Hungary, where he found great inspiration from peasant songs. During this journey, he wrote hundreds of pieces, some of which were published during this period. Many compositions from this period were either largely based on peasant and folk music or made from scratch trying to resemble folk music, as can be seen in other sets such as Three Hungarian Folktunes, Four Dirges, Ten Easy Pieces, and Fourteen Bagatelles. The composition of this set spanned this entire period. The first burlesque was composed in 1908; the third, in 1910; and the second, in 1911. It was published by Rózsavölgyi soon after its completion, in 1912, and was republished by Boosey & Hawkes in 1950. Bartók is known to have become particularly fond of this set. He decided to perform the second burlesque for recording on November 10, 1929, and later used this same burlesque in an orchestral set of arrangements of old peasant tunes entitled Hungarian Sketches. He asked again to perform the whole set for recording in 1944, when he was in New York but, unfortunately, this would never come true.

Three Rondos on Slovak Folk Tunes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Composition#

Béla Bartók had a lifelong artistic interest in folk music primarily from modern day Romania and Hungary. This is shown in his output as a composer since, even though Bartók first intended to use opus numbers to categorize his most artistically relevant compositions, he eventually refused to use any numbering system. The first of the three rondos was composed in 1916, together with many other compositions based on Hungarian and Romanian folk songs. Bartók composed the rondo while he was collecting folk tunes from Hungary and surrounding areas. It is a somewhat faithful transcription of a children’s tune named , with a few ornamentations, that he made in one of his trips. The other two rondos were composed in 1927 and follow a much more different style from their preceding one. The compositional structure is much more complex and rhythms are much more emphasized than in the first rondo. The traditional melodies are still present but are developed much further. Béla Bartók admitted to have tried to include a third theme for the second rondo, whereas rondos usually have only two themes, but eventually decided not to include it for practicality reasons. All three rondos were compiled together and published by Universal Edition, Vienna, later in 1930.

Twenty Hungarian Folksongs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

This set of folksongs was finished in 1929, after several years of collecting and arranging folksongs, most of which were published in a book published in 1924 entitled A magyar népdal (The Hungarian Folk Song). This included most of the raw material that he worked on in many other different pieces that were also based on folk material. This was Bartók’s last set of songs based on folk tunes and was put together in a seemingly random fashion, as they were grouped loosely into different categories, but not according to the date of composition of the individual pieces. However, he wrote the last five songs of the set in an uninterrupted movement. It was published by Universal Edition in 1932 and again by Hawkes & Son in 1939.

Two Romanian Dances

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Romanian Dance No. 1, Op. 8a, No. 1#

The first dance (Allegro vivace) is rhapsodic in form, though with a recurrent main theme. This theme, which provides the melodic, textural, and rhythmic foundations of the work, is first heard pianissimo in the murky depths of the keyboard. The middle section, Lento, presents an evocative modal melody against a various tremolo harmonies in the bass. This section fades away, and, after a long and increasingly frenzied crescendo, the main theme returns in triumphant fortissimo octaves. Unusually for Bartók, major and minor chords are used extensively in this piece.

Village Scenes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

Bartók, a composer primarily known for collecting and arranging folk music from central and eastern Europe, wrote this set of folk songs while on a project and journey around Europe that spanned several decades, starting around the 1900s. The folk tunes were collected in and around the Zólyom County area, which is in modern-day Slovakia, around 1915–6. It was finished in December 1924 in Budapest and dedicated to his second wife, Ditta. It was engraved and published under Universal Edition some years later, in 1927, along with many other song collections made in earlier years. It then faded into obscurity until Béla’s son, Peter Bartók, revised and republished the piece in 1994, by examining both the published version and the manuscripts left behind by the composer together with scholars Eve Beglarian and Nelson Dellamaggiore.

Viola Concerto (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

History and Performance Editions#

Primrose asked Bartók to write the concerto in the winter of 1944. They exchanged several letters about the piece. In one, from September 8, 1945, Bartók claims that he is nearly done with it and only has the orchestration to complete, but the sketches he left behind do not reflect it. On his death-bed Bartók left a draft of what contained almost all of the solo viola part, but debate still persists on whether he really intended a four or a three-movement work. Bartók wrote in a letter dated August 5, 1945 that the general concept is “a serious Allegro, a Scherzo, a (rather short) slow movement, and a finale beginning Allegretto and developing the tempo to an Allegro molto. Each movement, or at least 3 of them will, be preceded by a (short) recurring introduction (mostly solo for the viola), a kind of ritornello.” (The aforementioned idea of a thematic introduction to each movement was also used in Bartók’s String Quartet No. 6.) After Bartók died, his close friend Tibor Serly completed the piece in 1949. The orchestration is largely Serly’s although Bartók left frequent short-hand prompts. The concerto was premiered on December 2, 1949, by Primrose and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, with Antal Doráti conducting. The first revised critical edition, by Peter Bartók and Nelson Dellamaggiore, has restored many original Bartók features, but has not fundamentally changed the orchestration. It received world premiere in 1993. These two official editions are published by Boosey & Hawkes. (It was revised once more by Csaba Erdélyi.) Another revision has been prepared by the violist Tabea Zimmermann.

Violin Concerto No. 1 (Bartók)

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Background#

The concerto was dedicated, as was Othmar Schoeck’s concerto for the same instrument, to the violinist Stefi Geyer, with whom Bartók was in love. Geyer could not reciprocate Bartók’s feelings and rejected the concerto. It was revived after both Bartók and Geyer had died. Geyer’s copy of the manuscript was bequeathed to Paul Sacher to be performed by him and Hansheinz Schneeberger. The concerto was later championed by David Oistrakh.

Violin Concerto No. 2 (Bartók)

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Structure#

It has the following three movements: The concerto is scored for 2 flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (2nd doubling English horn), 2 clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons (2nd doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, side drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tamtam (gong), celesta, harp, and strings.

Selected recordings#

Bartók: Violin Concerto No. 2 – Zoltán Székely (violin), Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Willem Mengelberg.
Bartók / Stravinsky: Violin Concerto No. 2 / Violin Concerto – Viktoria Mullova (violin), Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Bartók: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2 – Thomas Zehetmair (violin), Budapest Festival Orchestra, IIván Fischer (cond.) Berlin Classics.
Bartók: Violin Concertos Nos. 1 & 2, Viola Concerto – James Ehnes (violin) with the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda

Béla Bartók on Music Theory Print

14 Bagatelles

Background#

See also#

44 Duos for Two Violins

Composition#

Allegro barbaro (Bartók)

History of the composition#

Bluebeard's Castle

Composition history#

Cantata profana

Text#

Concerto for Orchestra (Bartók)

Composition#

Contrasts (Bartók)

Structure#

Dance Suite (Bartók)

Composition#

Divertimento for String Orchestra (Bartók)

Divertimento#

Eight Hungarian Folksongs

Composition#

Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs

Structure#

Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs

Structure#

Five Hungarian Folksongs (Bartók)

Background#

Five Songs, Op. 15 (Bartók)

Background#

For Children

Contents#

See also#

Four Dirges

Composition#

Homage to Paderewski

Background#

Hungarian folksongs for voice and piano (Bartók)

4 Songs BB 37 (Sz 29 / W –)#

10 Songs BB 42 (Sz 33 / W 13)#

Hungarian Pictures

Composition#

Kossuth (Bartók)

Musical background#

Mikrokosmos (Bartók)

Title#

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

Analysis#

Night music (Bartók)

Characteristics#

Nine Little Piano Pieces

Composition#

Out of Doors (Bartók)

Pieces#

Piano Concerto No. 1 (Bartók)

Background#

Premieres#

Piano Concerto No. 2 (Bartók)

Composition#

Piano Concerto No. 3 (Bartók)

Context#

Rhapsody No. 1 (Bartók)

Analysis#

Rhapsody No. 2 (Bartók)

Analysis#

Rhapsody, Op. 1 (Bartók)

Composition#

Romanian Christmas Carols

Structure#

Romanian Folk Dances

Structure#

Arrangements#

Slovakian Dance

Structure#

Sonata for Solo Violin (Bartók)

Background#

Structure and analysis#

Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion

Instrumentation#

Sonatina (Bartók)