A Guide to Bartók [antikvár]

PrefaceBoth the author and the publisher of this guide have intended it for concert-going audiences, to serve as a primer for Bartok's orchestral, stage and chamber music compositions. The majority of these works have already become repertoire pieces in concert life. They are frequently heard on the radio, and some of their characteristic melodic phrases, tone colours and rhythms have consciously or unconsciously become part of the musical experience of unprejudiced music-lovers. Bartok's musical legacy, however, also includes a less familiar, less frequently performed and less easily approached territory. These works, like high mountain peaks, are only to be reached by a long and sometimes steep path.There are dozens of documents in the present volume which the reader will be seeing for the first time. These are the results of the author's research in the United States. He offers his sincere thanks to the Ford Foundation, the late Dr. Viktor Bátor and Dr. Benjamin Suchoif, the former and present trustees of the Bartók Estate, for having placed them at his disposal. Scientific registration of these documents has been deliberately avoided here, just as the background literature to this guide has been referred to within the text only by titles. Nor did we desire to raise the barrier of scientific details between the reader and the music. Those who have already leafed through the English editions of Bartok's correspondence or his lectures will notice that the present text has occasionally endeavoured, through the use of fresh nuances, to approach and render Bartok's original ideas more precisely.The author's method springs from his conviction that behind each work of art lies a piece of life and each composition offers a two-fold portrait of its age and its composer. The history of the origin of the various works, their form and idiom provide