János Kárpáti
From the Ungaresca to the Allegro barbaro
Responses to Hungarian Music Abroad
What is it, one wonders, that has prompt ed foreigners from time to
time to don the Hungarian cloak? Surely it must have been a friendly curiosity
or an attraction towards what they knew as or felt to be Hungarian. To
us, how they viewed us, what they discerned in us, and how their musical
impressions of us changed over time cannot be a matter of indifference."
Thus wrote Zoltán Kodály in 1943, in his foreword to Dr Margit
Prahács's bibliography, Magyar témák a külföldi
zenében" (Hungarian Themes in Foreign Music).1 It
is of these "musical impressions of us" that I would like to
present an overview, highlighting some of the types--even stereotypes--rather
than a detailed and finely-honed analysis. The world loves to simplify
the image it has of individual nationalities. We should not be surprised,
then, if the image it has of Hungarian music is similarly more simple than
the music itself. Yet the opinion of the outside observer is indeed important
to us, precisely because of this tendency to condense all that is characteristic.
At the outset, I would like to emphasize that this historical overview
will inevitably be deficient, since I have focused mainly on the period
closest to us, the last one hundred years, and indeed, more specifically
on Bartók and the reception of Bartók, for his case reveals
a number of characteristic features. At the same time, however, any examination
of responses to Hungarian music has to take place on two levels: in the
first period we examine predominantly the extent to which the music itself
was adopted, while during the last one hundred years the critics' views
take precedence.
By way of introduction, here are some surprising facts and figures from
Margit Prahács's bibliography. Her material is presented to the
reader in two categories, the first covering compositions with a Hun garian
theme or title and the second those with a Gypsy theme or title. It should
be noted that this distinction is not made on ethnic grounds, but in order
to reflect more faithfully the typical 19th-century view--indeed, misconception--regarding
what constituted Hungarian and Gypsy music, respectively. In the bibliography
by Margit Prahács the Hungarian group comprises some 1,300 works
by nearly 900 composers, while the group classified as Gypsy includes some
800 works by 670 composers. These figures are of course only symptomatic
in value; the large numbers merely show how popular Hungarian or Hungarian-style
music was and do not imply genuine knowledge of it. In any case, Hungarian
(-style) music clearly enjoyed pride of place among Europe's "exotica"
in the last century, and is only surpassed in number by the bibliography
of Spanish-style pieces.
The first known work referring to Hun garian style appears in the mid-16th
century in a Polish collection of piecesin organ tabulature and bears the
title Hayduczki, i.e., Hajdú Dance. A little later one finds an
Ungarischer Tanz (Hungarian Dance) in a collection of lute music published
in Strasbourg, and in another we find a number of pieces with the title
Passamezzo ungaro. From the end of the 16th century onwards, we find similar
pieces cropping up increasingly often in German, Italian, Flemish and Czech
collections of dance tunes, mostly composed for organ or lute, and generally
with the title Ungaresca. Thanks to the work of Ottó Gombosi and
Bence Szabolcsi, we now know that, in their particular structure and harmonization,
both recalling the folk traditions of bagpipe music, these dances may be
considered as an evocation of Hungarian music, although they were com posed
abroad, and are similar to western European dances such as the allemanda
and the padovana.2 The epithet Hun garian thus stood for a particular
type of music pointing to Eastern Europe. It is worth mentioning that another
Eastern European theme also emerged, in conjunction with the ungaresca:
the Polish polacca, which eventually evolved into the polonaise so familiar
in 18th-19th century Europe. In their musical characteristics, however,
the Hungarian and the Polish dances were definitely different.
The road which leads from the unga res ca to the new type of Hungarian
dance music which emerged at the end of the 18th century, the verbunkos,
is not a straight one, although the link is just discernible in the roots
of the music, in the characteristic dance rhythms and melodic construction
which point eastwards. The dance tunes by virtuoso Gypsy violinists, such
as Bihari, and trained musicians such as Lavotta and Csermák, quickly
reached Vienna and soon served as models for similar works by Austrian,
German and Bohe mian musicians. In the Vienna music publishers' catalogues
between 1770 and 1880, there are hundreds of titles to be found like Echt
ungarische Nationaltänze (Authen tic Hungarian National Dances), Rondeau
hongrois (Hungarian rondeau), Ungarische Werbungstänze (Hungarian
Ver bunkos Dances), Rákóczy-Marsch (Rákó czy
March).3 In most cases their titles reveal the composer's intentions,
as in Haydn's Rondo all'Ongarese or Schubert's Divertis sement à
l'hongroise; there are also some pieces which appear to have arrived at
Hungarian musical themes almost spontaneously, possibly as a result of
the pervasive influence of verbunkos music, such as the 3rd movement of
Mozart's Violin Concerto in A major, or the closing movements of Beethoven's
3rd and 7th symphonies.
The Hungaricisms of the romantic era, which played an important role
in the work of composers such as Berlioz, Liszt, and Brahms, would merit
a study unto themselves. Although the way in which they encountered Hungarian
music was different in each case, all three of them felt drawn to the Hungarian
dances or songs as material inviting arrangement; the resulting compositions
contributed substantially to shaping the image of Hungarian music for no
less than a century. At the same time, there are two issues underlying
the 19th-century's fascination with Hun garian music, which cannot be discussed
in detail here, but which should at least be outlined. The issue of Hungarian
versus Gypsy music, mentioned above, is one. Since the verbunkos and csárdás
dances and the popular songs (nóta) were played almost exclusively
by Gypsy musicians, even Liszt himself fell victim to a serious misunderstanding.
Although the tunes he adapted for his Hungarian Rhapsodies were a mixture
of both genuine Hungarian traditional melodies and popular tunes, in a
theoretical work (Des bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie) published
later in Paris, he classifed these melodies as being of Gypsy origin and
thus lent the weight of his reputation to a completely erroneous notion--one
which has survived to this day.4
The other problem lies in the interpretation of the "folk"
origins of the csárdás and the nóta. Enough has been
written on this subject already to fill a library, so I will limit myself
to mentioning the damaging effect which so-called "Hungarian folk
tunes", composed and promoted by amateurs, had on the image of Hungarian
music abroad. Great masters such as Brahms used their discrimination to
select from this pool and ennobled this material in adapting it. Interpreted
by the Gypsy ensembles of the cafés and salons, however, the end-of-century
Hungarian popular tunes (nóta), spread unhindered all over the cities
of Europe and this gradually turned the more noble face of Hungarian music
Liszt and Brahms had created
into something altogether sentimental and tacky.
The popularity of Hungarian music around the turn of the century was
thus a dubious one and the more discerning public sometimes and quite rightly
rejected it.
Béla Bartók started to compose in the first decade of
the 20th century, with a tone redolent of 19th-century romanticism, and
this did not prove altogether successful. His symphonic poem, Kossuth,
was rather coldly received in Manchester in 1904, while his Rhapsody, following
in the footsteps of Liszt, merely received a certificate of merit at the
Rubenstein International Competition in Paris in 1905. Today these fiascos
may be regarded as symbolic, since they showed clearly the cul-de-sac down
which the young musician was heading, and which he was soon to extricate
himself from, mainly due to the invigorating influence of Hungarian peasant
music and the new French music. As he himself states in his autobiography,
"I recognized... that the melodies which are erroneously considered
to be Hungarian folk music--but in reality are more or less trivial, rustic-style
compositions--are of little inherent interest, and so in 1905 I set about
collecting peasant music, which was hitherto completely unknown. I had
the great fortune of finding a companion in this undertaking, in the person
of my colleague, the outstanding musician, Zoltán Kodály."5
The year 1910 was a milestone on the parallel roads on which Bartók
and Kodály had embarked. Around the same time as the two each presented
an entire evening of their music in Budapest, a "Hungarian Festival"
was held in Paris, at which Henry Expert, one of the most influential French
musicologists, gave a lecture on the new Hungarian music followed by a
concert presenting works by Leó Weiner, Árpád Szendy,
Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók, Ödön
Mihalovich and Ernst von Dohnányi.
To continue on the subject of how Hungarian music was received in France,
we can turn here to a quotation which is telling indeed: "Among the
most ardent aficionados of the new Hungarian music is Michael D[imitri]
Calvocoressi, [of Greek birth] the renowned music critic and aesthetician,
who recently gave a series of lectures in the hall of the École
des Hautes Études Sociales on 'Tendencies in Modern Music', including
the new Hungarian music... Calvocoressi prefaced his exposé with
Schumann's remark that 'the time is coming when we will see a nationalization
of music...' Well, Schumann's prediction has come true. This is now the
predominant tendency throughout Europe. The movement started in Russia
with Stravinsky, closely followed by the Spaniards and the Hungarians."6
This lecture took place in the 1913-1914 season, not long after the scandal
of the Russian Ballet's first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring
had thrown the French capital into a ferment. This, however, suggests that
it was not simply a question of the emergence of music which had a national
flavour, as Calvo coressi had suggested, but rather the arrival of something
wild and redolent of the temperament of a strange, alien world. People
were at first taken aback by the relentless dominance of rhythm, but they
soon grew to accept it and it was not long before they had come to expect
it in all music originating in the "east".
In a similar way, Bartók's piano piece entitled Allegro barbaro
came to be seen as a message from distant realms, unfamiliar and savage.
According to Kodály, when Bartók composed this piano piece
in 1911, he called it simply Allegro, and it was not until later, recalling
a reference by one of the critics at the Hungarian Festival in Paris--"ces
jeunes barbares hongrois"--that the name occurred to him. There is
no written trace of the French critic's words, but we do have a feuilleton,
published in 1920, by Émile Vuillermoz, one of the musicians who
was present, which says essentially the same, and in fact also refers to
Kodály: "In the presence of the unusually free style of these
young Hungarian composers, their candour and their delicious harmonic sensibility,
many listeners experienced a feeling of surprise mingled with a hint of
unease. How can one classify these savages? How does one find an aesthetic
category for this subtle barbarity, this combination of spontaneity and
refinement?"7
Bartók's Allegro barbaro thus became much more than simply a
short piece for piano; it became virtually a symbol. This is reflected
in the strange route taken by the publication of the piece took. First
it appeared in 1913 as a musical supplement to the literary journal Nyugat,
which is an indication that it was regarded within Hungary too as a kind
of statement intended for an audience which did not only include musicians.
Six years later it was also published in the Vienna music journal Musikblätter
des Anbruch as an example of Hungarian avant-garde music. The records show
that of all Bartók's works, this was the one most often played in
France, and we know that Bartók himself liked to play it at his
concerts abroad, because he felt that this piece indeed managed to deliver
his "message" to his audiences.
Bartók's real conquest of Europe began in 1922, when he performed
in England and in Paris. Calvocoressi, mentioned above, had paved the way
for him in London, but his success was ensured by the efforts of two young
composers and critics, Cecil Gray and Peter Warlock, who launched themselves
into the task of
understanding and publicizing Bartók's music with a combination
of sensitivity and enthusiasm which was quite remarkable. Immediately prior
to Bartók's arrival, Warlock published a study in The Musical Times
presenting Bartók not in isolation, but in the company of Kodály
and László Lajtha, while at the same time making no secret
which of the three he consider-ed the best. "It is... in his two String
Quartets... that Bartók's singular genius is revealed most clearly.
Much fine chamber music has been written in the last few years, but Bartók
appears to be the only composer who, working on the lines indicated by
Beethoven in his last Quartets, has achieved the same technical perfection
in the expression of original ideas in an idiom that is all his own."8
If he was well received in London, he was even more warmly received
in Paris shortly afterwards, where Henry Prunières, the editor of
the old and venerable journal, Revue Musicale, was the organizer of the
soirée. The press had little to say in response to the concert,
but the dinner and private recital at the home of the editor was an event
recorded in the annals of musical history. According to a letter written
by Bartók, [the dinner] was attended "by over 'half the leading
composers of the world'-that is, Ravel, Szymanowski, Stravinsky--as well
as a few young (notorious) Frenchmen whom you would not know."9
During the 1920s Bartók's name and the new Hungarian music which,
naturally enough, he represented was known not only in London and Paris
but virtually all over Europe. His works were given a permanent place in
the festivals of the Inter national Society for New Music (IGNM), and he
himself performed repeatedly in the great concert halls of Europe, notably
the First Piano Concerto, written in 1926 and the Second, completed in
1931. The favourable manner in which these works were received was in no
small part due to the fact that they also contained the eastward-pointing
tonality of the Allegro barbaro and this provided a key for foreign audiences.
Let me quote from a review which appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung
in 1929: "Just as, in his study of folk songs, [Bartók] is
searching for authenticity, he strives as a composer to express the national
voice. There is a real gulf between this and the Hungaricisms known and
loved in the salons of Western Europe; his compositions touch the gateway
to the East. Although his path shows to some extent the influence of Schoenberg,
the direction bears the hallmark of folk music which, with its unbridled
harmonies, is clearly closer to the East."10
As regards the reception Hungarian music received in the German-speaking
world, constraints of space allow me to draw attention here to just two
important, albeit somewhat contradictory, critical responses. The first
one is the unreserved admiration for the national school, which drew on
folk sources, and it can be illustrated by a single quotation, from an
article by a Dr Walter Jacobs in the Kölnische Zeitung in February
1928 on the subject of the performance of Kodály's Psalmus Hungaricus.
"It is understandable why the Hungarians perceive this to be a work
of national importance, since they expect the recent research on folk music
and related grass-roots arts to lead to a strengthening of Magyar music,
which has for so long lain dormant while only Gypsy music was disseminated
throughout Europe as "Hun garian". Kodály, like Bartók,
is a collector [of folk music], but he keeps his distance from the perversities
of modern musical practice; in his music the Hungarians find their folk
and sacred musical traditions revived, while we too are capitvated by its
very strangeness, with the Byzantine Church-style choral unison at the
beginning of this work and the plainsong-type melody at the end."11
The attitude of the Schoenberg circle is not quite so unambiguous. Thanks
to the publications of János Breuer we now have a clear picture
of the relationship between Bartók and Schoenberg and of the critical
activity of Adorno, set out in his reflections on the aesthetics of using
folk music in art music and, related to this, his opinions on the work
of Bartók and Kodály. Schoen berg's Harmonielehre, published
in 1911, cites two bars of an early piano piece by Bartók as an
illustration of the new harmonic direction. Even more significant as an
indication of this recognition is the extent to which Schoenberg and his
circle cultivated the works of Bartók between 1919 and 1921, a response
to the composer's work hitherto without precedent. At that time a society,
founded by Schoenberg under the name of Musikalische Privat aufführungen,
used to meet in Vienna with the aim of making quality contemporary music
accessible to its members through private rehearsal-type performances.
No fewer than eleven of Bartók's compositions were included in the
programmes of these private concerts, clearly demonstrating the open-mindedness
of the organizers --Schoenberg and his acolytes--who despite their fundamentally
anti-folk aesthetic principles nevertheless included several compositions
by Bartók based on Romanian and Hungarian folk music.12
Adorno, however, who alongside his philosphical essays had also studied
composition under Alban Berg, was implacable in passing judgement on the
use of folk music: "...Only by achieving the psychological self-annihilation
of the romantic Ego, by culpably rendering it absolute, by atomizing it
into coincidence, only by the cataclysmic demise of the remaining world
of form does the problem of new perception of folk music become radical,
and all new folk music becomes kitsch, irrespective of whether or not it
was intended to be that. All music masquerading as folk music today is
serving some ideological purpose; the music of the people, meanwhile, prostrates
itself without further thought before a reified society. He who [claims
to] writes folk music today is a cheat; on the other hand, he who thinks
he can rescue folk music by using elements of it in his own material is
a romantic of the sort of romanticism which is as passé as the folk-song
itself."13
Adorno wrote this in 1925, before National-Socialist notions of völkisch/national
folk culture had made their appearance. Adorno--thanks no doubt to his
thorough schooling in philosophy and aesthetics and his clear logic--felt
the presence of a real danger. For all that, he discussed Bartók
on a completely different aesthetic level and acknowledged that the Hungarian
composer was, after Schoen berg, one of the great masters of the age. "Bartók
yielded readily to the seductive charms of musical impressionism, but in
such simplified form [...] that he could do no serious damage to the musical
features of impressionism. He first broke through to his own centre with
the poundingly brief Suite for Piano, op.14, and the Allegro barbaro, then
made great strides forward with the grandiosely beautiful and quite specific
2nd String Quartet, op.17, and his Études, op.18; and now, with
his two Violin Sonatas [...] he appears to have reached his goal...",
wrote Adorno, also in 1925.14 In 1929, he devoted a whole article to Bartók's
3rd String Quartet. "This is without doubt the best work by the Hungarian
master... The opening Lento, which has some similarity to his 2nd Violin
Sonata, is also organized in a similar fashion, in "intonations",
[rather than following the sonata style structure]; freely flowing imitations
preserve it from disintegrating into mere improvization; and then the Allegro
barbaro, over and over again, but this time as pure movement, punctuated
by the autonomy of the melodic lines..."15
Adorno's collected reflections on aesthetics were published in book
form after the Second World War, under the title Philosophy of the New
Music. In it he organizes the music of the first half of the 20th century
around two distinct poles: the progressive, embodied by the music of Schoenberg,
and restoration, represented by Stravinsky. Bartók, however, he
places somewhere between the two, in a kind of no-man's-land, arguing that
Béla Bartók was striving to reconcile Schoenberg and Stravinsky,
although his best works--in terms of their density and integrity--are far
superior to the works of the latter.16
This idea of "reconciliation" was interpreted rather as a
"compromise", in other words, pejoratively, by the post-war French
theoretician, René Leibowitz, who condemned Bartók roundly--while
not disputing his musical genius-- for not taking the path which, according
to Leibowitz, was the only true one, that of twelve-tone composition, and
for not having managed to extricate himself from the "pernicious"
influence of folk music.17 Perhaps Leibo witz's views, expressed
with much less depth than those of Adorno, would not be worth mentioning
if they had not found such supporters as Pierre Boulez, and adversaries
such as András Mihály, the Hun garian composer and politico-musicologist,
who at that time still adhered faith-fully to Marxist ideas.18
In contrast to the extreme view taken by René Leibowitz, who
would have liked to purge Bartók's life work of all folk-inspired
elements or at least push those works to the fringe, András Mihály
produced a peculiar defence of Bartók in 1950. He saw Bartók's
greatest value precisely in those works which were most openly folk-inspired,
and was ready to let go, as it were, the great masterpieces, branding them
as the products of the "decadent bourgeois avant-garde".19
This confrontation reflected a particular perspective on art and aesthetics
arising from the Cold War. On the one side there were the intransigent
and dogmatic dodecaphonists, who built into the foundations of their aesthetics
the principle of political dissent; lined up against them on the other
side were the Zhdanovian Marxists, who took elements of Nazi "völkisch"
cultural precepts straight over into their idealized notion of socialist
culture, all the while using anti-fascist slogans and decrying bourgeois
decadence. Bartók's oeuvre did not, of course, deserve to be divided
up in this way, but there were advantages for both sides. What the dodecaphonists
regarded as worthless, the Marxists claimed as their own. It is a characteristic
cock-a-snook of history, that the most important figures in this debate
later changed their views; András Mihály came to accept the
"whole" of Bartók in the 60s and 70s and, he and his ensemble
presented the works of Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Boulez in Hungary,
including those which had hitherto been banned. Meanwhile, Pierre Boulez's
magnificent interpretations, as conductor, of Bartók's orchestral
works, bore witness to the great esteem in which he held the Hungarian
composer.
The generations of Hungarian composers emerging after the war found
themselves under a dual pressure for over fifteen years: the weight of
the Bartók legacy and the impossibility of obtaining information
from the rest of Europe. However, 1956 was a turning-point for Hungarian
music in terms of its international links: György Ligeti opted for
exile, which meant breaking with Hungarian musical life, but adapting completely
to the contemporary Europe, in the environment of the Darmstadt school
and the electronic studio in Cologne. György Kurtág, in contrast,
stayed at home, but went to study in Paris in 1958, and in doing so began
his work as a composer afresh. To those who remained at home, Rudolf Maros
was a key figure in the 1960s; he, by maintaining good relations abroad,
was able to bring vital information into the country, while at the same
time representing post-war Hun garian music at a high standard in the international
arena.
The same decade saw the reappearance of Hungarian music on the European
podium. Ligeti was of course already well known and his refugee status
further enhanced the favourable reception he was given. All the more significant,
therefore, were the successes achieved at festivals of contemporary music
and at competitive events by other musicians who had re main ed in Hungary.
Compositions by András Szoollosy, Zsolt Durkó and Attila
Bozay, for example, all took first place or at least a place in the top
rankings in the large international field at the annual Inter national
Rostrum of Composers in Paris.
Nowadays, of course, it is not possible to speak of a "Hungarian
school". Accord ing, however, to Rolf Haglund, a Swedish critic, if
one drew up a list of the fifty most important composers in the world,
at least half-a-dozen Hungarian names would be among them. Writing in a
Swedish newspaper in 1981, he said: "Meeting Jeney and his music has
been such an experience for me as if one of the most outstanding Gurus
of the music, let us say John Cage or Anton Webern, had suddenly appeared
among us here in Borås."20
If Rolf Haglund would have included half-a-dozen Hungarian composers
in an international list of 50 at the beginning of the 1980s, the number
today would have to be changed. Out of, say 10 world greats there would
be at least two Hungarians, Ligeti and Kurtág. This is no reflection
of personal bias, but the more or less generally accepted international
opinion, judging by the prestigious international awards, the many concert
series, festivals, recordings of their works, not to mention the conference
papers on their music and appraisals of their work in the literature. While
their careers are far from parallel, the 1990 Autumn Festival in Paris
brought them together, and a whole issue of the journal Contrechamps, which
has links to the Boulez circle, was devoted jointly to their work. In the
introductory study, Philippe Albéra not only traces the common traditions,
unpicks the threads leading to Bartókian experience in a manner
which is quite out of the ordinary, but identifies a particular couleur
hongroise in the work of both of them. "In the case of Kurtág
this is embodied in a type of instrumental arrangement which gives preference
to unusual and heterogeneous combinations of tone; the cimbalom and the
mandolin, which remind one of the popular orchestras of Eastern Europe,
play a central role. With Ligeti, the 'couleur hongroise', which was relegated
to the background in 1956 [...] re-emerges strongly in the 1980s, but is
extended to include other types of traditional music from around the world."21
As we know, the author is referring here to the extraordinarily fruitful
influence on Ligeti's musical idiom of his encounter with the complex rhythms
and micro-polyphony of African tribal music.
Observed from Hungary, we would hard ly consider these traits as characteristically
Hungarian, but it appears that the acoustics are different abroad-- and
this applies also to the other contemporary Hun garian composers who are
conversant in the language of Europe. While for around four hundred years
one stereotype or another was used to identify the Hun garian character,
in the last fifty years--in a world that has been stretched and broadened
by ideas, technology and systems disavowing any national character or at
least freed from it --the vaguest of references is sufficient to conjure
up associations with the Hungarianness of the past.
1 Magyar témák a külföldi zenében (Hun
garian Themes in Foreign Music), ed. Margit Prahács. Budapest, Magyarságtudományi
Intézet, 1943.
2 Ottó Gombosi, under the heading "Ungares ca", in:
Zenei lexikon (Dictionary of Music), ed. B. Szabolcsi-A. Tóth. Budapest,
Gyõzõ N., 1930-31. Bence Szabolcsi: A XVII. század
magyar világi dallamai (Secular Hungarian Tunes of the 17th Century),
Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959.
3 Alexander Weinmann: "Magyar zene a bécsi zenemûpiacon"
(Hungarian Music on the Vienna Music Market), In: Magyar Zenetörténeti
Tanul mányok Szabolcsi Bence 70. születésnapjára
(Studies on the History of Hungarian Music on the Occasion of Bence Szabolcsi's
70th Birthday ), ed. Ferenc Bónis. Budapest, Zenemûkiadó,
1969, pp.131-177.
4 Paris, 1859. On how this problem has persisted, see: Bálint
Sárosi: "Párizsi ítélet: a magyar népies
zene a cigányoké" (Judgement of Paris: Hungarian popular
music belongs to the Gypsies), Muzsika, XL, March 1997, pp. 3-6, and its
English version the present issue of The Hungarian Quarterly, pp. 133-139.
5 n From his autobiography, written in German (1921-23), in: Bartók
Béla összegyûjtött írásai I. (Béla
Bartók's Collected Writings I.), ed. by András Szõllõssy.
Budapest, Zenemûkiadó, 1967, p. 9.
6 n Zeneközlöny, vol. XII, No.18. See János Demény:
"Bartók Béla mûvészi kibontakozásának
évei (1906-1914)" (The Years of Béla Bartók's
Artistic Development), in: Zenetudományi Tanul mányok Liszt
Ferenc és Bartók Béla emlékére (Studies
in Musicology in Commemoration of Franz Liszt and Béla Bartók),
vol. 3. Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1955, p. 440.
7 n "Le tombeau de Claude Debussy", Le Temps, 2 décembre
1920. Cited by Denijs Dille: "L'Allegro barbaro de Bartók",
Studia Musicolo gica, vol. XII, 1970, p. 5.
8 n The Musical Times, March 1, 1922, p.165.
9 n From a letter to his mother, April 15, 1922. Béla Bartók's
Letters, ed. by János Demény, Budapest, Corvina Press, 1971,
p. 160.
10 n February 4, 1929. Cited by János Demény: "Bartók
Béla pályája delelõjén (1927-1940)"
(Béla Bartók at the Height of his Career, In: Zenetudományi
Tanulmányok Liszt Ferenc és Bartók Béla emlékére
(Studies in Musicologyin Commemoration of Franz Liszt and Béla Bartók),
vol. 10. Budapest, Akadémiai Kiadó, 1962, p. 318.
11 n Kodály-dokumentumok I: Németország 1910-1944
(Kodály Documents I: Germany 1910-1944), ed. by János Breuer.
Budapest, Zenemûkiadó, 1976, p. 181.
12 n János Breuer: "Arnold Schoenberg könyv tárának
Bartók-kottái" (The Bartók Scores in Arnold Schoenberg's
Library), Muzsika, XL, April 1997, pp. 6-9.
13 n Theodor W. Adorno: "Volkslieder sammlun gen", Die Musik
XVII. Vol. 8.
14 n See Adorno's critique in Zeitschrift für Musik, Vol. 92, No.7/8.
15 n See Adorno's critique in Der Anbruch, vol. 11, No. 9/10.
16 n Adorno: Philosophie der neuen Musik. Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp,
1958.
17 n René Leibowitz: "Béla Bartók ou la possibilité
de compromis dans la musique contemporaine", Les Temps Modernes, Paris,
October 1947.
18 n András Mihály: "Válasz egy Bartók-krit
kára" (Response to a Critique of Bartók), Új
Zenei Szemle, I, September 1950, pp. 49-56.
19 n Foreword by András Mihály in: Bartók Béla
levelei (Az utolsó két év gyûjtése)
(Béla Bartók's Letters: Collection from the last two years).
ed. by János Demény. Budapest, 1951.
20 n Borås Tidning, 11 December, 1981.
21 n Contrechamps: Ligeti-Kurtág. Paris, Éditions l'Age
d'homme, 1990, p. 6.
János Kárpáti
is Professor of Musicology and Chief Librarian at the Liszt Ferenc Academy
of Music. His books include A kelet zenéje (Music of the Orient)
Budapest, 1981 and Bartók's Chamber Music (Pendragon Press, Stuyvesant,
N.Y.,1994).
