Bela
Bartok not only is the greatest composer Hungary has produced, but his music - a
unique synthesis of the Western classical tradition with mid-European folk music
- is one of the outstanding musical achievements of the twentieth century.
Bartok was born in Nagyszentmiklos, a small town now in Romania. His father, a teacher and amateur musician, died when Bartok was young, and his mother, Paula, had to support her family by teaching the piano. Paula Bartok was fully aware of her son's musical gifts - his earliest compositions date from his ninth year - and she finally managed to find a permanent teaching position in Poszony (now Bratislava), where she found excellent piano and harmony teachers for the young composer.
In 1899 Bartok had to decide where to continue his studies, and although the Vienna Conservatoire was the obvious choice, Bartok followed the advice of his schoolfellow, Erno Dohnanyi, and went to the Budapest Academy. There he was considered a virtuoso pianist of outstanding potential. As a composer, Like Dohnanyi he initially took Brahms as a model. But in 1902 and 1903 he was profoundly affected by two preoccupations: the music of Richard Strauss and the rising tide of Hungarian nationalism. Both influences found expression in 1903 in the symphonic poem Kossuth, based on the life of the leader of Hungary's 1848 uprising.
Bartok found a further and more enduring outlet for his nationalist sentiments in Hungarian folk songs, which he started collecting in 1904. This led to a lifelong collaboration with Zoltin
Kodaly, a pioneer in the field. From 1906, Bart6k made annual trips, using an Edison phonograph as recording equipment, to collect songs not only in Hungary but also in
Romania, Slovakia and Transylvania.
Also through Kodily, Bartok was introduced to the music of Debussy, which was a revelation to him. The twin influences of Debussy and folk song formed the
background to the composition of his first mature works, the First String Quartet of 1908 and various short piano pieces, including the
14 Bagatelles. In 1909 he married his teenage pupil, Marta Ziegler, to whom he dedicated his one-act opera
Bluebeard's Castle, an allegorical study of the individual's ultimate isolation from the rest of humanity.
Starting in 1907, Bart6k served as a professor of piano at the Budapest Academy, a position that gave him a degree of security and enabled him to continue his research into folklore, including a visit to northern Africa in 1913. His health was too frail for active participation in World War
I; during the period 1914 to 1917 he wrote the ballet The Wooden Prince and his
Second String Quartet, works that show the impression made by Stravinsky's rhythmic innovations in
The Rite of Spring and Schoenberg's experiments with tonality. In the
pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin Bartok pushed to an audacious extreme these tendencies towards driving rhythmic exuberance and unusual orchestral colours (variations, or shades, of tone).
The 1920s saw the consolidation of Bartok's international reputation as composer and pianist, both in solo music and partnering the great Hungarian violinists of the time, such as
Joseph Szigeti. He wrote virtuoso works to perform himself in the 1920s and 1930s, including the
First and Second Piano Concertos, the Piano Sonata and the
Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. The last was written for himself and his second wife, Ditta PAsztory, whom he had married in 1923 following his divorce
from Marta. Its journey from primeval darkness to searing light makes for a gripping aural experience.
Impressive too is the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta of 1937, one
of many classic commissions by the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher. This work creates the sense of an odyssey, enhanced by the telling return of the first movement's tortuous and mysterious fugue theme towards the end of the final fourth
movement. The slow movement contains a favourite Bartok device, a 'night music' section where, in an atmosphere
of hushed expectancy, a tapestry is woven of the tiny sounds of nocturnal animals and insects.
In 1940 the Bartoks moved to New York to escape the political situation in Hungary. The declining health, periods of depression and financial worries that clouded Bart6k's American years did not prevent him from completing such masterpieces as the
Concerto for Orchestra and the Sixth String Quartet. The delicate
Third Piano Concerto was practically finished when Bart6k died in New York in September 1945.
Concerto for Orchestra
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Violin Concerto No. 2
Piano Concerto No. 3
Dance Suite
Bluebeard's Castle
String Quartet No. 6