- Biography
- Romanian Dances
- Miraculous Mandarin
- Dance Suite
- Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
- String Quartets
- Concerto for Orchestra
- Piano Concerto No. 3
Biography
Bartók stands out as being the most famous composer to have emerged from Hungary.
His style is very clearly derived from the folk music of his native land and characteristically combines wonderful folk tunes with energetic rhythms in a gypsy idiom.
Born near the borders of Hungary, Yugoslavia and Romania, Bartók was brought up by his mother (his father died when he was only seven years old).
It was a hard life: young Bartók was always ill and his mother had to work very hard to keep the family on an even keel financially.
The political climate at the time was unsettled and this, too, posed its own restrictions on the early years of Bartók’s life.
He showed enormous promise as a musician and became the organist of the Gymnasium Chapel at Pozsony, later taking up a place at the Budapest Academy.
He was, in fact, offered a place at the celebrated Vienna Conservatoire, but turned this down in order to follow his first love, Hungarian folk music.
In 1905 Bartók teamed up with Kodály to carry out an in-depth survey of folk music from many countries, including their own, and this provided the main creative influence on the material that each used in their compositions thereafter.
A few years later Bartók accepted a position as a professor at the Academy where he had himself been a student.
Following the First World War he began to produce works of considerable stature, including the wonderful music to the ballets The Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin, as well as a whole host of piano pieces and a couple of string quartets.
Also a fantastic concert pianist, Bartók was attracting praise from all quarters and was awarded a special prize in the United States for his extraordinarily difficult work the String Quartet No. 3.
Bartók travelled to the United States and to Britain on a number of occasions as a concert pianist and his works were invariably extremely well received.
However, he was deeply affected by the political distractions going on around him, and the depression he felt at seeing the increasing Nazi control of Central Europe shows through his work.
He was an intensely proud man who desperately wanted to make his own way without the assistance of others wherever possible.
He was quite a withdrawn individual and this may have stemmed from the problems he had experienced as a child and through not having a father for the important developmental years in his childhood.
He married twice – each time to pupils of his who were both considerably younger than himself.
Care should be exercised when exploring the works of Bartók.
His Concerto for Orchestra, written in 1943, is a wonderful work that shows a masterly skill at writing for the orchestra; this is now often used by symphony orchestras around the world as something of a showpiece.
The Music for Strings Percussion and Celesta is also a very approachable work, as is the Piano Concerto No. 3.
The Dance Suite and Romanian Dances are essential listening, which can lead one on into the more astringent world of the string quartets and piano music.
Romanian Dances
1915, Keyboard Works
Certainly the best introduction to Bartók’s music, this set of six tiny pieces is an interpretation of Hungarian folk art at its freshest. Whilst they were originally written for piano, there exists a sparkling arrangement for piano and violin.
Miraculous Mandarin
1919, Ballet
The music of ‘The Miraculous Mandarin’ is of a symphonic nature, even though the work was written as a ballet. Set in New York, where Bartók eventually died, it opens with the snarling whirl of the city’s traffic, thereby setting the scene for a story of hoodlum violence and hopeless love.
Dance Suite
1923, Orchestral
In 1923 Bartók (along with Kodály and Dohnányi) was commissioned to write a work to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Budapest, the capital city (the city having previously been three separate towns). As in much of his work, Bartók drew on the peasant heritage and folk roots of his country to produce a suite of delightful nationalistic dance tunes.
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta: 4th Movement
1939, Chamber Music
As Bartók grew older and his popularity seemed to be dimming, he became increasingly reluctant to write music for large symphony orchestras unless he was absolutely sure that the resulting work would receive a performance. This, considering Bartók’s tragic life, is quite understandable, as his family was often struggling to survive and in desperate need of money. Unperformed works simply did not pay.
He was, however, strongly drawn to chamber music, which was less expensive to perform, and wrote six of the finest string quartets of the twentieth century. An admirer of Bartók, Paul Sacher, was the founder and conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, and on its tenth anniversary he commissioned the composer to write a fitting piece. Bartók produced the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, which was first performed in January 1937 in Basel.
Bartók did not refer to his four-movement piece as either a suite or a symphony, although it is certainly related to both these forms. Each movement is based on a variation of a main theme.
Despite being slow, the first movement (Andante tranquillo) has a strong drive to it, and a mournful theme for the violas is soon picked up by the other instruments, leading to an intense ending. The second section (Allegro) clearly shows the division of the strings into two opposing ‘choirs’: the main theme from the first movement is divided between them. The third movement (Adagio) has a slow, almost exotic feel to it, and opens with a xylophone solo, developing to an interesting middle section that becomes a shimmering web of strings with delicate work from harp, piano and celesta. The finale rounds off the whole work with a guitar-like strumming from the strings backing a wild violin melody.
String Quartets
1939, Chamber Music
Many people have said that Bartók’s string quartets are some of the finest written since those of Beethoven, and they are certainly a thorny and compelling set. No. 1 is almost always likened to Debussy’s work, while the second is the traditional Bartók in fierce folk-music mode. Numbers 3 and 4 are a little gritty, yet perfect for the true fan of the composer. The fifth is light-hearted and cheerful, and the sixth (possibly the best) has all its four movements linked by a sad folk-like melody.
Concerto for Orchestra
Concerto for Orchestra: Introduction
1945, Concerti, Orchestral
Traditionally, a concerto is written for a solo instrument, such as a violin or piano, accompanied by an orchestra, so the title of the Hungarian composer’s possibly most famous work may require some explanation. As Bartók’s himself said: ‘The title of this symphony-like orchestral work is explained by its tendency to treat the single orchestral instruments in a . . . soloistic manner’. In other words, there are brilliant opportunities available for a virtuoso orchestra, and everybody will get the chance to show off.
Bartók was on a lecture tour of the USA when he wrote the concerto. During the trip he became very ill – to the point that funds were raised by American music societies in order that he might get some professional treatment. Bartók was very poor towards the end of his life, and it is a widely held belief that the commissioning of the concerto was the psychological stimulus that kept him alive. He died in 1945, only two years after its completion.
This five-movement work is very much a piece of twentieth-century music, for it breaks with classic musical conventions. The first movement (Andante non troppo – Allegro vivace) starts with a slow and eerie string passage: new instrumental groups are added, each one giving a new colour to the overall musical picture. The second movement is a light-hearted ‘Game of Pairs’, where the main themes are picked by up a pair of woodwinds at a time, starting with a pair of bassoons, followed by two oboes, then clarinets, flutes and, finally, muted trumpets. The third movement (Elegy: Andante non troppo) is a slow death-song, which contrasts sharply with the Allegretto of the fourth. This, according to Bartók, mocked a theme from Shostakovitch’s Seventh Symphony, even though Shostakovitch was the Hungarian’s idol. The Presto of the finale is full of dance-like rhythms and ends with extraordinary brilliance.
Piano Concerto No. 3
1945, Concerti, Orchestral
Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto was his last completed work. On the evening of the final day he spent in his small New York apartment, a fellow Hungarian friend found him feverishly writing out the last movement. Only seventeen or eighteen bars were left to be completed when he was taken to hospital the next morning, but four days later he was dead.
During the last years of his life, Bartók and his wife were barely scraping a living in America even though he practically worked himself to death, and they seem to have survived on gifts and acts of generosity from the friends they made in New York. When Bartók died in September 1945, at no time had his income exceeded $4,000 which, though an apparently large sum of money, could not support the ill composer and his family. However, some time later his works were bringing his family $100,000 a year. Like Mozart, Bartók always seemed to find himself having to make ends meet and therefore having to write music ‘to order’ rather than from pure inspiration.
The same friend who took Bartók to hospital also finished off the concerto, being familiar with the composer’s shorthand. It was first performed in February 1946 and surprised audiences with its uncharacteristic charm and tranquillity.
The first movement is an Allegretto where the piano introduces a ‘folky’ melody backed by violas and second violins. The second section is interestingly marked Adagio religioso; while there seems to be no religious intent in the music, there is a hymn-like feel. The closing Allegro vivace alludes to a folk song in the final bars.