Székely and Bartók
Székely and Bartók

Author: Claude Kenneson

Publisher: Portland, Or. : Amadeus Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Szekely's story - his childhood in rural Hungary, his rise to fame as a concert violinist, his involvement in the new music movement in prewar Europe, and his work with the Hungarian String Quartet - unfolds through the violinist's own recollections and those of his wife, Mientje, and other longtime colleagues. Bartok's profound influence on Szekely's life and work reveals itself through Szekely's voice and in correspondence. Szekely and Bartok: The Story of a Friendship provides an intimate view of concert life in mid-twentieth-century Europe among such artists as Ravel, Dohnanyi, Hindemith, Milhaud, Honegger, Castlenuovo-Tedesco, Kodaly, and others. The book contains previously unpublished Bartok letters, Szekely's firsthand accounts of Bartok's interpretive preferences, comprehensive listings of Szekely's compositions and first performances, and the complete story of the Hungarian String Quartet from its founding in Budapest in 1935 to the final concert at Dartmouth College in 1972. From 1973 to 1993, Szekely's role as violinist-in-residence at the Banff Centre in Canada was the culmination of a long and distinguished career, and helped establish the institution as a world center for chamber music study. Written from personal recollections and original documents and research, this book is destined to occupy a prominent position in the chamber music literature.

Bartok, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition
Bartok, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition

Author: David E. Schneider

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2006-11-06

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0520932056

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

It is well known that Béla Bartók had an extraordinary ability to synthesize Western art music with the folk music of Eastern Europe. What this rich and beautifully written study makes clear is that, contrary to much prevailing thought about the great twentieth-century Hungarian composer, Bartók was also strongly influenced by the art-music traditions of his native country. Drawing from a wide array of material including contemporary reviews and little known Hungarian documents, David Schneider presents a new approach to Bartók that acknowledges the composer’s debt to a variety of Hungarian music traditions as well as to influential contemporaries such as Igor Stravinsky. Putting representative works from each decade beginning with Bartók’s graduation from the Music Academy in 1903 until his departure for the United States in 1940 under critical lens, Schneider reads the composer’s artistic output as both a continuation and a profound transformation of the very national tradition he repeatedly rejected in public. By clarifying why Bartók felt compelled to obscure his ties to the past and by illuminating what that past actually was, Schneider dispels myths about Bartók’s relationship to nineteenth-century traditions and at the same time provides a new perspective on the relationship between nationalism and modernism in early-twentieth century music.

Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók

Author: David Cooper

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2015-04-28

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 0300213077

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"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."

Bartok's Viola Concerto
Bartok's Viola Concerto

Author: Donald Maurice

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2004-03-04

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 9780195348118

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

When Bela Bartók died in September of 1945, he left a partially completed viola concerto commissioned by the virtuoso violist William Primrose. Yet, while no definitive version of the work exists, this concerto has become arguably the most-performed viola concerto in the world. The story of how the concerto came to be, from its commissioning by Primrose to its first performance to the several completions that are performed today is told here in Bartók's Viola Concerto:The Remarkable Story of His Swansong. After Bartók's death, his family asked the composer's friend Tibor Serly to look over the sketches of the concerto and to prepare it for publication. While a draft was ready, it took Serly years to assemble the sketches into a complete piece. In 1949, Primrose finally unveiled it, at a premiere performance with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. For almost half a century, the Serly version enjoyed great popularity among the viola community, even while it faced charges of inauthenticity. In the 1990s, several revisions appeared and, in 1995, the composer's son, Peter Bartók, released a revision, opening the way or an intensified debate on the authenticity of the multiple versions. This debate continues as violists and Bartók scholars seek the definitive version of this final work of Hungary's greatest composer. Bartók's Viola Concerto tells the story of the genesis and completion of Bartók's viola concerto, its reception over the second half of the twentieth century, its revisions, and future possibilities.

Székely and Bartók
Székely and Bartók

Author: Claude Kenneson

Publisher: Portland, Or. : Amadeus Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 582

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Szekely's story - his childhood in rural Hungary, his rise to fame as a concert violinist, his involvement in the new music movement in prewar Europe, and his work with the Hungarian String Quartet - unfolds through the violinist's own recollections and those of his wife, Mientje, and other longtime colleagues. Bartok's profound influence on Szekely's life and work reveals itself through Szekely's voice and in correspondence. Szekely and Bartok: The Story of a Friendship provides an intimate view of concert life in mid-twentieth-century Europe among such artists as Ravel, Dohnanyi, Hindemith, Milhaud, Honegger, Castlenuovo-Tedesco, Kodaly, and others. The book contains previously unpublished Bartok letters, Szekely's firsthand accounts of Bartok's interpretive preferences, comprehensive listings of Szekely's compositions and first performances, and the complete story of the Hungarian String Quartet from its founding in Budapest in 1935 to the final concert at Dartmouth College in 1972. From 1973 to 1993, Szekely's role as violinist-in-residence at the Banff Centre in Canada was the culmination of a long and distinguished career, and helped establish the institution as a world center for chamber music study. Written from personal recollections and original documents and research, this book is destined to occupy a prominent position in the chamber music literature.

The Concerto
The Concerto

Author: Michael Steinberg

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2000-10-26

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13: 019802634X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Michael Steinberg's 1996 volume The Symphony: A Reader's Guide received glowing reviews across America. It was hailed as "wonderfully clear...recommended warmly to music lovers on all levels" (Washington Post), "informed and thoughtful" (Chicago Tribune), and "composed by a master stylist" (San Francisco Chronicle). Seiji Ozawa wrote that "his beautiful and effortless prose speaks from the heart." Michael Tilson Thomas called The Symphony "an essential book for any concertgoer." Now comes the companion volume--The Concerto: A Listener's Guide. In this marvelous book, Steinberg discusses over 120 works, ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach in the 1720s to John Adams in 1994. Readers will find here the heart of the standard repertory, among them Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, eighteen of Mozart's piano concertos, all the concertos of Beethoven and Brahms, and major works by Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Bruch, Dvora'k, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Elgar, Sibelius, Strauss, and Rachmaninoff. The book also provides luminous introductions to the achievement of twentieth-century masters such as Arnold Schoenberg, Be'la Barto'k, Igor Stravinsky, Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev, Aaron Copland, and Elliott Carter. Steinberg examines the work of these musical giants with unflagging enthusiasm and bright style. He is a master of capturing the expressive, dramatic, and emotional values of the music and of conveying the historical and personal context in which these wondrous works were composed. His writing blends impeccable scholarship, deeply felt love of music, and entertaining whimsy. Here then is a superb journey through one of music's richest and most diverse forms, with Michael Steinberg along as host, guide, and the best of companions.

Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók

Author: Benjamin Suchoff

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 9780810849587

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"With a narrative supported by a substantial number of musical examples and references, Bela Bartok: A Celebration is essential for music teachers and students. Theorists, ethnomusicologists, and musicians will find this an indispensable resource for future research and for understanding Bartok's compositional processes and methodology."--BOOK JACKET.

Bela Bartok
Bela Bartok

Author: László Somfai

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2023-12-22

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0520914619

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

Bartók and His World
Bartók and His World

Author: Peter Laki

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 1995-08-27

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780691006338

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.