Stage Works of Bela Bartok


Book Description

A product of Hungary's political ferment at the start of the twentieth century, Bela Bartok's works combine determination to participate in Western art movements coupled with an enthusiasm for the folk traditions of a disappearing world. In this introduction to Bartok's stage works, Julian Grant describes the score for Duke Bluebeard's Castle, a symbolist version of the Bluebeard myth. Included in this volume are also his ballet scenarios and discussions of the choreographic potential and musical qualities of the scores. Ferenc Bonis indicates the appeal for Bartok of the natural world, against the cataclysm of the First World War. Together, these works give an insight into issues of sexuality, humanity and creativity.Contents: Works contained in this volume: Duke Bluebeard's Castle, The Wooden Prince, The Miraculous Mandarin; Images the Self: 'Duke Bluebeard's Castle', Paul Banks; Bartok and 'World Music', Simon Broughton; Annie Miller, Keith Bosley and Peter Sherwood; A Foot in Bluebeard's Door, Julian Grant; Around the Bluebeard Myth, Mike Ashman; A kekszakallu herceg vara: Libretto by Bela Balazs; Duke Bluebeard's Castle: English translation by John Lloyd Davies; 'The Wooden Prince': A Tale for Adults, Ferenc Bonis; A fabol faragott kiralyfi: Scenario by Bela Balazs; The Wooden Prince: English translation by lstvan Farkas; 'The Miraculous Mandarin': The Birth and Vicissitudes of a Masterpiece, Ferenc Bonis; A csodalatos mandarin: Scenario by Menyhert Lengyel; The Miraculous Mandarin: English Translation by lstvan Farkas







Béla Bartók


Book Description

This second edition ofBela Bartok: A Guide to Researchpresents a concisely detailed history of Bartok's musical development, a catalogue of his compositions according to genre (including basic data on Bartok's publishers, achives, library collections, and catalogues), and 1200 annotated primary and secondary sources. A decade of scholarship since the first edition (1988) is included; over forty percent of the material in the second edition is new. Four indexes cover listings by author and title; Bartok's compositions and his editions and transcriptions of earlier keyboard works; proper names; and subjects. Primary sources include: Bartok's own essays, articles, lectures on folk music and art music, letters, and other documents; his folk music collections; facsimilies, reprints, and revisions of his music; and his own editions and transcriptions of earlier keyboard music. Secondary sources include: biographical and historical studies, specialized studies of his personality, philiosophy, andpolitical attitudes; theoretic, analytic, stylistic, and aesthetic studies of his music; discussions of folk music influences and art music influences; studies of his compositional process (based on autograph manuscripts, editions, and his own recordings); discussions of his orientation toward pedagogy; and discussions of insitutional sources for Bartok's research (including archival and bibliographic sources, special issues, festivals, conferences, colloquia, concert programs, and computerized data bases for Bartok analysis and research. This annotated, topically-organizedGuideis the most extensive bibliographical research tool on Bartok. It is the first to draw together the most important primary and secondary bibliographic sources, which cover his varied activities as composer, ethnomusicologist, pianist, pedagogue, linguist, and editor. It is significant not only for those interested in musicological research into Bartok's compositional and scholarly activities but also for those interestedin ethnomusicological research methodology in general, and the study of Eastern European, North African Arab, and Turkish folk music in particular.




Béla Bartók


Book Description

This research guide is an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources and catalogue of Bartók’s compositions. Since the publication of the second edition, a wealth of information has been proliferating in the field of Bartók research. The third edition of this research guide provides an update in this field and represents the multidisciplinary research areas in the growing Bartók literature.




Béla Bartók


Book Description

"This deeply researched biography of Béla Bartók (1881–1945) provides a more comprehensive view of the innovative Hungarian musician than ever before. David Cooper traces Bartók’s international career as an ardent ethno-musicologist and composer, teacher, and pianist, while also providing a detailed discussion of most of his works. Further, the author explores how Europe’s political and cultural tumult affected Bartók’s work, travel, and reluctant emigration to the safety of America in his final years. Cooper illuminates Bartók’s personal life and relationships, while also expanding what is known about the influence of other musicians—Richard Strauss, Zoltán Kodály, and Yehudi Menuhin, among many others. The author also looks closely at some of the composer’s actions and behaviors which may have been manifestations of Asperger syndrome. The book, in short, is a consummate biography of an internationally admired musician."




Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok


Book Description

Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartók explores the means by which two early 20th century operas - Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) - transformed the harmonic structures of the traditional major/minor scale system into a new musical language. It also looks at how this language reflects the psychodramatic symbolism of the Franco-Belgian poet, Maurice Maeterlinck, and his Hungarian disciple, Béla Balázs. These two operas represent the first significant attempts to establish more profound correspondences between the symbolist dramatic conception and the new musical language. Duke Bluebeard's Castle is based almost exclusively on interactions between pentatonic/diatonic folk modalities and their more abstract symmetrical transformations (including whole-tone, octatonic, and other pitch constructions derived from the system of the interval cycles). The opposition of these two harmonic extremes serve as the basis for dramatic polarity between the characters as real-life beings and as instruments of fate. The book also explores the new musico-dramatic relations within their larger historical, social psychological, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts.




Bela Bartok


Book Description

This long-awaited, authoritative account of Bartók's compositional processes stresses the composer's position as one of the masters of Western music history and avoids a purely theoretical approach or one that emphasizes him as an enthusiast for Hungarian folk music. For Bèla Bartók, composition often began with improvisation at the piano. Làszló Somfai maintains that Bartók composed without preconceived musical theories and refused to teach composition precisely for this reason. He was not an analytical composer but a musical creator for whom intuition played a central role. These conclusions are the result of Somfai's three decades of work with Bartók's oeuvre; of careful analysis of some 3,600 pages of sketches, drafts, and autograph manuscripts; and of the study of documents reflecting the development of Bartók's compositions. Included as well are corrections preserved only on recordings of Bartók's performances of his own works. Somfai also provides the first comprehensive catalog of every known work of Bartók, published and unpublished, and of all extant draft, sketch, and preparatory material. His book will be basic to all future scholarly work on Bartók and will assist performers in clarifying the problems of Bartók notation. Moreover, it will be a model for future work on other major composers.




The Cambridge Companion to Bartók


Book Description

This is a wide-ranging and accessible guide to Bartók and his music.







Bartók and His World


Book Description

Béla Bartók, who died in New York fifty years ago this September, is one of the most frequently performed twentieth-century composers. He is also the subject of a rapidly growing critical and analytical literature. Bartók was born in Hungary and made his home there for all but his last five years, when he resided in the United States. As a result, many aspects of his life and work have been accessible only to readers of Hungarian. The main goal of this volume is to provide English-speaking audiences with new insights into the life and reception of this musician, especially in Hungary. Part I begins with an essay by Leon Botstein that places Bartók in a large historical and cultural context. László Somfai reports on the catalog of Bartók's works that is currently in progress. Peter Laki shows the extremes of the composer's reception in Hungary, while Tibor Tallián surveys the often mixed reviews from the American years. The essays of Carl Leafstedt and Vera Lampert deal with his librettists Béla Balázs and Melchior Lengyel respectively. David Schneider addresses the artistic relationship between Bartók and Stravinsky. Most of the letters and interviews in Part II concern Bartók's travels and emigration as they reflected on his personal life and artistic evolution. Part III presents early critical assessments of Bartók's work as well as literary and poetic responses to his music and personality.