Bartók Béla

  

(Nagyszentmiklós, March 25, 1881 - New York, September 26, 1945)

Having proved himself to be an excellent pianist since childhood, he perfected himself at the Budapest Academy of Music, attracting the attention of the international public already in the early years of the century. At the same time he begins with Kodàly to deal with the popular song of his country, carrying out for a decade an intense activity of collector and transcriber of the very rich folkloric musical heritage of the Balkans and Arabs. From 1907 he taught piano at the Budapest Academy, always holding extensive concenistic tours at home and abroad, also in duo with his wife and with the violinist Szigeti.

Surrounded by the admiration and esteem of his contemporaries, in 1939 he left Hungary for political reasons and settled in the United States, where he gave lectures and devoted himself to concerts and teaching, without being able to integrate himself entirely in this foreign country. , so much so that a few years later he died in solitude and in the blackest misery.

Influenced at the time of his training above all by the great currents of Central European music, from Brahms to Wagner, to impressionism, Bartok gradually turned to the study of the popular musical heritage of his country, drawing decisive suggestions for his production. In fact, he knew how to blend the advanced techniques of European cultured music, the in-depth and unscrupulous knowledge of the most modern musical trends in Europe of the time, with the awareness that only by drawing deeply on musical folklore would it be possible to create an art free from influence of other civilizations, de-provincialized and at the same time open to the most current problems of language. The Balkan folklore, with its incredible richness of rhythms, melodic movements and modal inflections completely foreign to the tonality, thus provided him with a very solid base on which he could erect a grandiose musical edifice that qualifies him as a composer deeply rooted in the civilization of his country, initiator of a national movement from which very broad developments can be expected.

But Bartòk was too warned a musician not to use this popular "material" in a modernly critical sense.

In his production it is thus possible to recognize the reflection of the great Central European musical culture even after the introduction of the popular element. Suffice it to say that after 1910 he felt strongly the influence of the Viennese brand expressionism, that in some later works the inclination to a neoclassical stylization is evident, which finally, in the last works of his maturity, he seems to aspire to a expansive simplicity of language, in which he definitely appeals to that tone which in some works of the middle period he had almost come to deny or at least to subject to severe criticism.

All this is a testimony of the musician's extremely open mentality, who bends the folkloric material to a type of expression at a high level of art: what in fact constitutes in him the moment of the push forward is precisely this non-superficial relationship with singing and popular dance, this dialectical relationship that allows him to overcome the distress of a material linked to peasant life by transfiguring it into compositions of grandiose developments without betraying its spirit and also profoundly modifying the immediate, in itself almost naturalistic data. Bartòk has indicated which path to follow in the use of popular song in art music: it is a difficult and full of problems path, but it is also the only one that allows to extensively renew the technical means of the modern musician without giving in to a superficial and utilitarian conception of manifestations of popular art.

In addition to orchestral music, Bartòk is also the author of the opera Il Castello di Bluebeard (1918) and of the "scenic actions" Il Principe di legno (1917) and Il Mandarinoarino (wonderful mandarin) (1919); but chamber music also retains a prominent place in his production, in particular the six grandiose quartets (1908-39), the pieces for different instruments and piano and those for solo piano (including the Mikrokosmos, the only method of piano teaching based on criteria of unscrupulous modernity).

 

Written for the Basel orchestra conducted by Paul Sacher, this piece was considered Bartòk's orchestral masterpiece for many years. In fact, the suggestion that is released is extraordinary and unforgettable. The absorption of the ethnic experience has here reached its maximum stage of rarefaction: the literal citations of popular themes having become scarce, the ethnic factor is transfigured in the music but remains in the incessant changing of rhythms and in certain typical melodic inflections. The first movement "Andante tranquil" borders, in its chromatism, with atonality: it is a "fan-like" fugue based on a theme initially proposed by violas in pianissimo with mute, a chromatic theme that gradually widens with the subsequent entries of the other instruments (always at a distance of fifths) until they explode in a spasmodic chord of E flat major, to give rise shortly after to a dreamy episode with the intervention of the celesta.

The following "Allegro", in clear opposition to the first movement, presents marked rhythms, an extraordinary vigor of melodic accents, an iridescent instrumental in which frequent pizzicato glissandi are typical. If here a precise reference to Hungarian folk music returns for a moment, in the third movement, "Adagio", we are again in an unreal atmosphere, generated by a restless chromatism and a timbral background created by the celesta, the harp and the piano as well that from the pedal timpani, which allow a constant glissando.

Only the "Allegro molto" ending brings back a very different atmosphere, where "Hungarian" rhythms and melodies return: it is an agile, rapid, marked piece, in which the orchestra achieves admirable effects of sonority in a speech that sometimes seems gypsy improvised , before ending abruptly on a la maggiore chord.