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 new 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
Zoltan Kodaly, a pioneer in the field. From 1906, Bartok 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 Kodaly, 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, Bartok 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 Pasztorv, 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 m Hungary. The declining health, periods of depression,
and financial worries that clouded Bartok'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 Bartok died in New York in September
1945.
