Béla Bartók

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist who lived from 25 March 1881 to 26 September 1945. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century, along with Franz Liszt, and is regarded as one of Hungary's greatest composers. Some of his famous works include the opera Bluebeard's Castle, the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the Concerto for Orchestra, and six string quartets.

Bartók was also very interested in collecting and studying folk music. His work helped start the field of comparative musicology, which is now known as ethnomusicology. He showed many composers how to bring together folk music and classical music from different cultures in their own works. According to Anthony Tommasini, Bartók was a strong modern composer who created his own special style by mixing traditional sounds with new, exciting musical ideas. His music often blends the sounds of traditional peasants' folk music with more modern, experimental styles of avant-garde music.

Biography

Childhood and early years (1881–1898)

Béla Bartók was born on 25 March 1881 in Nagyszentmiklós, which was part of Austria-Hungary and is now Sânnicolau Mare, Romania. His father was also named Béla, and his mother, Paula, spoke Hungarian well. Béla showed musical talent early, playing many pieces on the piano by age four.

When Béla was seven, his father passed away, and the family moved to Nagyszőlős (now Vynohradiv, Ukraine) and later to Pressburg (now Bratislava, Slovakia). At age 11, Béla gave his first public recital in Nagyszőlős, where he played his own first composition, a short piece called "The Course of the Danube."

Early musical career (1899–1908)

From 1899 to 1903, Bartók studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. There, he met Zoltán Kodály, who became a lifelong friend. In 1903, Bartók wrote his first major orchestral work, Kossuth, honoring Lajos Kossuth, a hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.

Bartók was inspired by the music of Richard Strauss and began to collect folk music after hearing a young nanny sing folk songs. Starting in 1907, he was influenced by French composer Claude Debussy. Bartók’s early works combined folk music with classic styles. In 1908, he and Kodály traveled to collect old Magyar folk melodies, discovering they were based on pentatonic scales, similar to Asian traditions.

Middle years and career (1909–1939)

In 1909, Bartók married Márta Ziegler, and they had a son named Béla Bartók III. They divorced in 1923, and soon after, Bartók married Ditta Pásztory, a piano student. They had a son named Péter.

Bartók wrote his only opera, Bluebeard's Castle, in 1911. The opera uses symbolism to explore fate and was revised several times. After facing disappointment with its reception, Bartók focused on collecting folk music. He traveled widely, collecting melodies from the Carpathian Basin, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Algeria.

His ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, started in 1918, faced delays due to its content. Bartók’s style matured in the late 1920s and 1930s. Notable works from this time include Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and the Concerto for Orchestra. In 1936, he traveled to Turkey to study Turkish folk music.

World War II and final years (1940–1945)

As World War II approached, Bartók opposed the Nazis and Hungary’s alliance with Germany. In 1940, he moved to the United States with his wife Ditta. Though he became a US citizen in 1945, he struggled to feel at home there. Bartók continued to compose, supported by a research fellowship from Columbia University.

Despite health problems, Bartók created masterpieces in his final years, including the Concerto for Orchestra, premiered in 1944. He also worked on a Sonata for Solo Violin and his Piano Concerto No. 3, finishing it just before he passed away.

Bartók died in New York City on 26 September 1945 from complications of leukemia. He was initially buried in New York but was later re-interred in Budapest in 1988.

Music

Further information: List of compositions by Béla Bartók

Bartók’s music showed two big changes in how music sounded in the 1900s. First, he moved away from old ways of harmony that composers had used for 200 years. Second, he used folk music from many places as inspiration, starting with Hungarian tunes and later including music from the Carpathian Basin, Algeria, and Turkey.

One special style he created was called “Night music.” This type of music often appeared in the slow parts of his bigger pieces and had strange, eerie sounds mixed with nature noises and lonely melodies. An example is the third movement of his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

Bartók’s early works showed classic and romantic styles, with some influences from folk and Romani music. As he grew older, he was inspired by composers like Richard Strauss and began collecting folk songs from many cultures. He used these songs in his music in different ways—sometimes using real folk tunes, sometimes making up his own versions, and sometimes just letting the feeling of folk music guide his style.

Later in life, Bartók combined ideas from Eastern and Western music. Some of his most famous works include six string quartets, Cantata Profana, Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the Concerto for Orchestra, and the Third Piano Concerto. He also wrote Mikrokosmos, a set of piano pieces for young students.

Musical analysis

Béla Bartók's music from the late 1920s shows strong influence from the Carpathian basin and European art music. He changed how he used musical tones, moving away from traditional ways of creating harmony with major and minor scales.

Even though Bartók said his music was always based on certain musical rules, he didn’t use the usual chords or scales. Experts have studied different ways he hinted at musical centers, often using special patterns of symmetry. Some believe these patterns come from methods that don’t follow traditional musical rules. Others see his music as using many different tones and scales, like the 12-tone system, the octatonic scale, and various seven-note scales.

Bartók sometimes used all twelve musical tones in a piece while still keeping a sense of musical rules. For example, in his Second Violin Concerto, he showed that using all twelve tones could still feel familiar. In his chamber music, he mixed different groups of tones, like using black keys for one part and white keys for another. He also used organized patterns of intervals in some early works.

One music theorist felt that Bartók’s mix of traditional and unique methods made it hard to repeat his style, as each piece had its own special way of creating musical structure.

Catalogues

Béla Bartók made many pieces of music, and keeping track of them can be tricky. He gave numbers to his works, but stopped because it was hard to tell which pieces were his own and which he collected from others. After he passed away, people tried different ways to list his music. The most common way uses numbers called Sz., ranging from 1 to 121. Another way uses DD numbers for early works, and the newest way uses BB numbers from 1 to 129.

On January 1, 2016, Bartók's music became freely available to everyone in the European Union.

Discography

Béla Bartók worked with Zoltán Kodály to record folk and peasant melodies from Magyar, Slovak, and Romanian areas. They started by writing down the tunes but later used a phonomotor, a wax cylinder recording machine created by Thomas Edison. Many recordings of Bartók’s music and playing have been released by the Hungarian label Hungaroton over the years.

In March 2016, Decca Classics released Béla Bartók: The Complete Works, the first full collection of all his compositions. This 32-disc set includes new recordings of early piano and vocal works but does not feature any of Bartók’s own performances.

Statues and other memorials

• A statue of Bartók can be found in Brussels, Belgium, near the central train station in a public square.
• There is a statue outside Malvern Court in London, south of the South Kensington tube station. An English Heritage blue plaque marks the place where Bartók stayed at 7 Sydney Place in London.
• A statue stands in front of the house where Bartók lived his last years in Hungary, now the Béla Bartók Memorial House. Copies of this statue are in Makó, Paris, London, and Toronto.
• A bust with a plaque honors him at his last home in New York City at 309 W. 57th Street.
• A bust of Bartók is placed in front of the Ankara State Conservatory in Ankara, Turkey, next to another famous musician.
• In 1999, Bartók was honored in the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.
• A bronze statue by artist Imre Varga is in the lobby of The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada.
• A bronze bust of Bartók is in Anton Scudier Central Park in Timișoara, Romania.
• A statue sculpted by Imre Varga is near the river Seine in a park in Paris, France.
• The park also has a special fountain/sculpture called Cristaux designed by Jean-Yves Lechevallier in 1980.
• There is an expressive sculpture by András Beck in a square in Paris.
• Statues of Bartók can also be seen in the city center of Târgu Mureș, Romania, and in front of Nákó Castle in his hometown, Nagyszentmiklós.
• Bartók has a star on the Walk of Fame in Vienna.