Bartók [antikvár]

Without a comprehensive knowledge of the political and geographical upheavals which attended the prolonged death-throes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it can be a baffling task to track down the birth-place of one of Hungary's greatest sons. One might assume, rightly, that Béla Bartok was born in Hungary, but even the knowledge that he was born on 25th March, 1881 in Nagyszent-miklós, Torontál county, is of limited help, since no such place is to be found on any modern map of the country. If one recalls that a large part of eastern Hungary was ceded to Romania in the peace treaties of 1920, then you still need to know that Nagyszentmiklós was then renamed Sînnicolaul Mare. It is as well to get to grips with the geographical vagaries and polyglot population of the region, as they have an important, indeed crucial bearing on the life and work of the composer, who, it should be remembered, was for long widely referred to as 'pianist, composer and folk-song collector'. Bartók's nationalism will be seen to have sprung from a fiercely racial pride, rather than the sentimental attachment to scenic characteristics, domestic or political traditions, or even the 'homeland' which plays such a central rőle in the nationalist fervour of many more romantic patriots.Indeed, racial and linguistic tension, that most intractable of all political problems, lay at the heart of the unrest and upheavals that eventually led to the disintegration of the Hapsburg empire and to the formation of the states which make up eastern Europe today. With the benefit of hindsight, it is not difficult to perceive that the Hapsburg monarchy had been fighting a losing battle since the French revolution. Its political achievement in the hundred and twenty years or so which intervened between then and its eventual dissolution can be measured only in its success in delaying defeat. The more or less bloody suppression of revolutionary movements in Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Italy (to give them their modern names) in the mid-nineteenth century was effective in restoring an illusion of stability, but, as always, such measures inflamed rather than dampened the underlying aspirations which motivated them. The defeat of Lajos Kossuth's Hungarian insurgents in 1849 was, in the words of Zoltán Kodály,