Bela Bartok: Folk Music Collector
Hungarian Composer who Collected Folksongs and Folkdances
Brief biography of Hungarian composer Bela Bartok, whose work was greatly influenced by the folk music of his native land.
Bela Bartok (1881-1945) is considered the greatest Hungarian composer since Liszt. He was born in Nagyszentmiklos on the March 25. His works are influenced by Hungarian folk music, from the folk songs and dances of southern and eastern Europe, and the exotic echoes of North Africa and the Middle East. Considered his famous work is Concerto for Orchestra and opera "Bluebeard's Castle."
While his classical music contemporaries like Schoenberg and Stravinsky were creating new music, Bartok was forging both new and old, influenced by Hungarian folk songs.
Bartok learned the piano mainly from his mother. A child prodigy, he studied music at the Budapest Conservatory, having appeared in public as a pianist at the age of ten. Initially influenced by Franz Liszt, he wrote the symphonic poem Kossuth Overture (1903), which performed under Hans Richter in Manchester in 1904.
Bartok Collected Folk Music with Zoltan Kodaly
Bartok took folk music more seriously. He feared that in a rapidly changing world, with more and more people moving from the countryside into the cities, such a musical heritage might be lost forever.
Like the 19th century composers (including Brahms, Liszt and Dvorak who made arrangements of folk music), in the early 20th-century, Bartok with his friend and colleague Zoltan Kodaly, began to collect folk tunes through scientific study. Together, they traveled noting down and recording hundreds of folk songs and folk dances. The rhythms, harmonies and melodies became the basis for many of their works. They analyzed and systematically classified folk songs. They discovered that the true Magyar folk music differed greatly from that of the Hungarian gypsies whose music had been regarded as the only Hungarian folk music that time. Their researches extended to Slovak, Romanian, Balkan and adjoining countries.
Bartok's Musical Career
The folk tunes provided abundant ideas for his compositions. From 1907, Bartok taught at the Budapest Academy, a post he relinquished in 1934 in order to devote more time to his ethnomusicological research.
During the outbreak of World War I, he intensified his creativity when found unfit for military service. He toured as a pianist and gained international acclaim in Europe and the USA, along with a growing recognition of the originality of his work.
In 1922, Bartok was made an honorary member of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Some of his most demanding music was written in the years 1917-34: ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, two piano concertos, and string quartets nos. 2-5.
The increasing political isolation in his homeland encouraged Bartok to pursue a career abroad. A year after his mother's death in 1939, he left Hungary and settled in the USA. He worked at the classification of Yugoslav folk music at Harvard, alongside his collection of Romanian melodies.
Bartok's health declined from 1942. He suffered from leukemia and was no longer in demand as a composer or pianist. To alleviate his financial hardship, a 1943 commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation for the Concerto for Orchestra was provided. He managed to achieve a number of major works despite his terminal illness. He died in New York in 1945.
Bartok's Works
Bartok's genius is more fully revealed in his innovative approach to the keyboard. His orchestral is relatively popular, and especially the six string quartets, which are widely regarded as the best since Beethoven's. Some of his works include:
- ballet The Wooden Prince
- ballet The Miraculous Mandarin
- Concerto for Orchestra
- six string quartets
- Divertimento for string orchestra
- concertos for piano, violin, and viola
- opera Bluebeard's Castle, in one act
- graded teaching pieces for piano
- songs and folksong arrangements
In Concerto for Orchestra, considered his most famous work, Bartok displays his mastery of orchestration while giving radiant expression to his passion for folk songs and dances.
