Brandon Mendez

MUS 501
Presentation #10
November 20, 2017

Chapter 32: Bela Bartok

Background

- Bela Bartok (1881-1945) was an innovator in the modernist movement by blending elements of nationalist
ideas and the classical music tradition.
o His training and understanding of classical music started at an early age, where he composed
pieces modeled after music by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and Liszt.
o Through expeditions ranging over Europe and North Africa, he eventually started to collect and
study peasant music, and ended up publishing nearly two thousand Hungarian, Slovak, Croatian,
Serbian, and Bulgarian songs.
He utilized the new recording technology of the time to record the folk singers,
preserving the unique characteristics of their voice.
Through all of his research, he published many more collections, books, and articles
about folk music, further developing the relatively new ethnomusicology field.
Bartok felt that peasant music represented Hungarian national music better than the urban
popular music at the time, and that the peasant music offered composers a fresh start
following the music that came from the Romantic period.
o His distinctive style, which combined both peasant and modern classical music, formed around
1908 with his First String Quartet and his opera Bluebeards Castle, which featured influence
from Debussy and Hungarian folk songs.

Bartoks Synthesis

- His synthesis preserves the integrity of the traditions of classical music and peasant music.
- From classical music, Bartok retained its elaborate contrapuntal and formal procedures, such as fugue and
sonata form.
- From folk and peasant music, Bartok borrowed the rhythmic complexity and irregular meters, modal scales
and mixed modes, and specific types of melodic structure and ornamentation.
- His unique and dissonant harmony comes from both sides of his influences, for example, the frequent use
of seconds and fourths in his chords come from both folk music and his modernist contemporaries.

Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta

- Elements of the piece borrowed from folk music

o Melodies rise from and return to the tonal center, thus helping establish the tonal center (example
a)
o Melodies center around a single tone (example c)
o Melodies descend to the tonal center from the upper octave (example f)
o Melodies repeat and vary small motives in AABB form, similar to Hungarian tunes (example a)
o Rhythmic-melodic motifs, such as Bulgarian dance tunes (example f)
o Use of modes and modal mixture (example c)
o Use of song melodies over drones
- Elements of the piece borrowed from classical music
o Tonic/dominant relationship (example d)
o Counterpoint in contrary motion (example b)
o First movement is an elaborate fugue, with the harmony following the circle of fifths
o Second movement is in sonata form
o Finale movement is a rondo that includes a reprise of the fugue theme
Thematic references to the first movement are similar to the cyclic symphonies of
Berlioz, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky