Béla Bartók Life and Work

This book is the first comprehensive biographical study of Bartok as man, composer, and folklorist, including the background and development of his unique musical language and the impact of his pioneering investigations of multinational musical folklore on his composed works.

Benjamin Suchoff is an adjunct professor in the department of ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. He has been successor-trustee of the estate of Bela Bartok, curator of its New York archive, and editor of the thirteen-volume Bartok Archive Studies in Musicology series and the two volumes of piano works in the Bartok Archive Edition

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

PART ONE Bartok's Life

Early Musical Developments in Hungary

3

(11)

The Habsburg dynasty

5

(2)

The Hungarian Minorities

7

(3)

The Kossuth Rebelion

10

(4)

Childhood and Youth: 1881-1899

14

(10)

Valcer Opus 1

17

(1)

First Public Appearance

18

(3)

Rejection of Theism

21

(3)

Summary of Hungarian Musical Dialect: 1889-1905

24

(26)

The Academy Professors

25

(3)

The Impact of Strauss and Liszt

28

(7)

Kossuth Symphonic Poem

35

(7)

Discovery of Indigenous Rural Folk Song

42

(3)

Bartok and Kodaly

45

(5)

Fusion of National Styles: 1906-1925

50

(53)

The Discovery of Old-Style Hungarian Folk Song

54

(1)

The Stefi Geyer Episode

55

(8)

The First Encounter with Romanian Folk Song

63

(3)

Fieldwork in Romanian Villages of Transylvania

66

(3)

Trailblazing a New Frontier in Ethnomusicology

69

(1)

Transformation of Folk Music into Art Music

70

(2)

Duke Bluebeard's Castle, op. 11

72

(3)

The New Hungarian Music Society

75

(1)

The Advent of the First World War

76

(8)

The Wooden Prince, op. 13

84

(5)

The Miraculous Mandarin, op. 19

89

(14)

Synthesis of East and West: 1926-1945

103

(60)

First American Tour

108

(4)

Cantata Profana

112

(16)

Appointment to the Academy of Sciences

128

(5)

Austrian Anschluss

133

(10)

Exile in America

143

(20)

PART TWO Folk Music Research

Hungarian Folk Music

163

(6)

Class A. The Old Style of Hungarian Peasant Music

165

(1)

Class B. The New Style of Hungarian Peasant Music

166

(1)

Class C. Other Tunes in Hungarian Peasant Music

167

(1)

Table 6.1: Strophic Structure in Class C Melodies

167

(2)

Slovak Folk Music

169

(3)

Table 7.1: Classification of Slovak Folk Melodies

169

(1)

Old Style Melodies

170

(1)

Mixed Style Melodies

170

(1)

New Style Melodies

171

(1)

Romanian Folk Music

172

(1)

RFM.i: Instrumental Melodies

173

(4)

Table 8.1: Classification of Romanian Instrumental Folk Melodies

173

(1)

Instruments

174

(1)

Dance Genres and Their Choreography

175

(1)

Musical Characteristics

175

(2)

RFM.ii: Vocal Melodies

177

(2)

Table 8.2: Classification of Romanian Vocal Folk Melodies

177

(2)

RFM. iii: Texts

179

(2)

Table 8.3: Classification of Romanian Folk Texts

179

(2)

RFM.iv: Carols and Christmas Songs (Colinde)

181

(5)

Table 8.4: Stanza Structure in the Colinda Melodies

182

(1)

Table 8.5: Classification of the Colinda Texts

183

(3)

RFM.v: Maramures County

186

(17)

Table 8.6: Classification of Maramures County Folk Melodies

187

(2)

Arab Folk Music From the Biskra District

189

(6)

Wind Instruments

189

(1)

Stringed Instruments

190

(1)

Percussion Instruments

190

(1)

Vocal Melodies

191

(1)

Scale and Range

191

(1)

Musical Form

192

(1)

Rhythm

192

(1)

Accompaniment

193

(1)

Tempo

193

(1)

Peculiarities of Performance

193

(1)

Classification of the Instrumental Dance Melodies

194

(1)

Ruthenian Folk Melody

195

(3)

Yugoslav Folk Music

198

(5)

YFM.i: Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs

203

(5)

Morphology of the Serbo-Croatian Vocal Folk Melodies

206

(1)

Table 11.1: Tabulation of Yugoslav Melodies

206

(2)

YFM.ii: Tabulation of Material

208

(7)

Table 11.2: Selected Data from Bartok's ``Tabulation of Material''

208

(1)

Bulgarian Folk Music

209

(3)

Table 12.1: Bartok's Classified Bulgarian Folk Music Collection

210

(2)

Turkish Folk Music from Asia Minor

212

(3)

Table 13.1: Classification of Turkish Folk Melodies

213

(2)

Epilogue

215

(4)

List of Compositions

219

(41)

Personalia

260

(4)

Abbreviations

264

(2)

Notes

266

(32)

Select Bibliography

298

(13)

Index

311

(16)

About the Author

327

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Béla Bartók Life and Work

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials