Composer Profiles

Béla Bártok

Born: Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary - 1881

Died: New York City, New York - 1945

Biography

For the first half of the twentieth century, the three

most innovative and original composers were Igor

Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and Béla Bártok.

Born in what is now Romania, Bártok and his

mother moved around the country after his father

died when he was seven years old. His mother, a piano teacher, began teaching young Béla when

he was five, and soon the future composer began demonstrating enormous ability. It is

particularly interesting to note that Bártok was the only early twentieth century composer to be a

performing prodigy as well, unlike his contemporaries. He began composing at ten, and was

accepted into the Budapest Academy in 1899, where he studied piano and composition. He did

not begin seriously composing until 1902 when he heard Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra.

This piece provided the spark of inspiration that started Bártok’s career as a composer: “At last I

saw the way that lay before me”. After several works in the vein of late nineteenth century

Romanticism, inspired mostly by Liszt and Strauss, Bártok took the first major departure from

traditional orchestral technique in 1905, when he and his colleague, fellow Hungarian Zoltán

Kodály traveled around Hungary to record and collect folk songs. Since his mother began playing

and teaching him folk songs at the piano when he was very young, Bártok had developed a strong

sense of nationalism that would be crucial to his musical development. In 1906, he published

together with Kodály a collection of piano pieces titled Twenty Hungarian Folk Songs. In this

“peasant music”, as Bártok himself exclaimed, was “the ideal starting point for a musical

renaissance”. Traveling around with a wax cylinder phonograph recorder, he would assimilate all

kinds of folk music and adapt it to his orchestral writing. The result was a series of works

including the First String Quartet, the one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle, and the ballets The

Wooden Prince and The Miraculous Mandarin. Bártok, along with Kodály, also helped to develop

the field of ethnomusicology and are considered some of its primary founders.

With the onset of World War II in the late 1930’s, Bártok became quickly disenchanted

with the Nazi Party and feared that an invasion of Hungary was inevitable. In 1939, he left

Hungary and immigrated to the United States, where he was given a position at Columbia

University in New York. Between 1939 and 1943, Bártok composed little, due to his demanding

schedule and financial difficulties. He returned to composing in the latter half of 1943, producing

monumental works such as the Concerto for Orchestra, which is considered his most popular

work. Bártok’s health began to deteriorate soon afterward; he was formally diagnosed with

leukemia and died from complications on September 26, 1945 at the age of sixty-four.

Works

Bártok is credited for two major stylistic innovations in the early twentieth century. First, the

breakdown of the traditional diatonic harmonies that composers of the Romantic Era and prior

had used was replaced in Bártok’s compositions with diverse elements including polytonality (the

use of two keys simultaneously), whole-tone, modal, and chromatic influences. Still, Bártok

maintained that he was primarily a “tonal” composer, though he declared that the concept of

tonality was outdated, and that to develop a more personal harmonic language, one must be freed

from “the tyrannical rule of the major and minor keys”. The second great contribution was the

renewed interest in nationalism as the source for musical material. Franz Liszt provided an early

inspiration for Bártok, and developed his technique of unifying smaller melodic elements into a

cyclical format from his Hungarian countryman. However, Liszt’s use of gypsy music was a source

of contention for Bártok, who believed that the music of the farmers and peasants truly

represented the authentic folk sound he sought to capture. Bártok considered using triadic

harmonies over folk melodies a corruption of the melodic integrity, and developed a harmonic

language that gave it a more natural quality. Bártok’s frequent use of interval relationships such as

seconds, fourths, and sevenths gave a new quality to his music free from any imitation or

Romantic tendencies. His music is normally characterized by irregular meters and driving

rhythms punctuated by offbeat accents and other articulations. The use of fugue and imitation

polyphony permeates his unique formal structures, and a variety of complex harmonic movement

is also a signature of Bártok’s work. His formats and musical techniques varied between his pieces,

all to better incorporate the music material together without sacrificing the authenticity of his

ideas. So adamant was he that all aspects of his music be performed exactly to his specifications,

that when the Budapest Philharmonic Society played his First Suite in 1915, with alterations made

by the directors, Bártok wrote to the organization, saying: “I must, under the circumstances,

declare that I should be exceptionally grateful to you if you would never again perform any of my

works”. After his death in 1945, statues and busts displaying his likeness were placed in Brussels,

London, New York, Turkey, and Budapest.

Suggested Listening

String Quartet No. 1 (1908); Bluebeard’s Castle

(1911); The Wooden Prince (1914); String Quartet

No. 2 (1915); The Miraculous Mandarin (1918);

Piano Concerto No. 1 (1926); Music for Strings,

Percussion, and Celesta (1936); Contrasts (1938);

Mikrokosmos (1939); Concerto for Orchestra

(1945)

Statue of Béla Bártok in Brussels, Belgium

by the Hungarian sculptor Imre Varga.