Bartok's Top Ten

Chuck Holton

(1) MUSIC FOR STRINGS, PERCUSSION, AND CELESTE. In his biography of Bela, Halsey Stevens calls this his most perfect work (along with Quartet 4), and I agree. Almost everything that Bartok achieved in music is represented here: the amazing original and inevitable opening fugue which sounds Hungarian and twentieth-century atonal at once (it’s not atonal at all, but a very chromatic expression of A to E-flat axis), and whose structure, when you analyze it, is utterly architectural, yet the work sounds improvised and spontaneous; the wonderful allegro with its asymmetrical dancing rhythms and homage to classical form; the eerie "night music" that evokes realms of experience unexpressed in music before Bela; the jubilant finale (almost all of Bartok's works end in jubilant finales; Halsey Stevens talked about how they seemed to flow spontaneously from his pen, but, again, when you analyze them they're usually dense little buggers, too), with its diatonicization of the formerly chromatic fugue theme harmonized in lush, open string chords. The whole work is incredible for how it can present such diverse aspects that emerge from unitary source material, that opening fugue theme. Runner-ups in this species of Bartok are Sonata (and Concerto) for Two Pianos and Percussion, and Divertimento for Strings.

(2) STRING QUARTET #4. Number 3 is a denser version of similar material, and Number 5 is a more relaxed version (my runners-up in this species). What makes Number 4 so perfect is the exquisite balance it achieves between melodic interest in "real" time and condensation and simultaneity of events, how it combines Eastern European folk-music scales and rhythms with Western European classical and twentieth-century techniques (some borrowed, some invented), and how architectural symmetry (the arch-form he loved so) underscores narrative flow and development (“…and the end of all our exploring shall be to arrive at where we started, and to know the place for the first time” --Eliot). Unbelievable that a pianist could conceive of such a new way to write for strings, and it works. Bartok thought he had invented the notion of "harmonic diminution and augmentation" where he expands and contracts the intervals between the notes in his themes to generate new melodies, until he discovered the folk music of Dalmatia in Yugoslavia where they used the major second (rather than third) as a consonance in harmonizing.

(3) CANTATA PROFANA. For double mixed chorus and large orchestra. This was to be the first of three cantatas using folk music and folk-tales of various Eastern European nations as source material, but it was the only one Bartok completed. It uses a Rumanian folk-tale about nine sons magically transformed into deer while they hunt, unable to return home despite the pleading of their father about the heartbreak of their mother: "These antlers cannot pass through doorways, ... these lips can never again drink from cups but only from cool mountain streams (in Hungarian, forassbol)." Bartok hired a poet to write the libretto from folk tales, but was dissatisfied and actually wrote the beautiful verse himself. The music is gorgeous, and represents the opening of his "late period". The usual organicity of form is present, but severe dissonances have given way to an appealing surface, yet one that’s not merely pretty. Vigorous athleticism, haunting foreboding, heartbreak, and the agonized ambivalence of freedom and independence are expressed convincingly. Notice how the intervals of the brooding modal scales on D of the opening are inverted to produce the serene peacefulness of the ascending D major conclusion. Runner-up: Piano Concerto #2

(4) VIOLIN CONCERTO #2. Actually his only intended Violin Concerto, it became known as #2 when a Concerto he had suppressed as a young man (and used Movement 1 as "Ideal" of Two Portraits) turned up in the attic of the dedicatee in1958 and was published posthumously. This is gorgeous, if sometimes challenging, music: lushly Romantic, but at the same time very chromatic, very athletic, and sometimes acerbic. His sense of humor is shown not only on the surface (the trombone raspberries following his melody varied as a twelve-tone row) but also in the structure: The work's commissioner insisted on a standard form for the work despite Bartok's interest in a variation formwork, so the standard vibrant, dance-like finale is --measure for measure-- a variation of movement one, and movement two is a set of variations; so it's a standard concerto form AND a stream of variations, everybody's happy. Some of my favorite moments in the work are the opening of movement one, with strings and harp strumming B-major chords under a suspended horn note as the violin announces the very original first theme; the opening and first theme of movement two, which, when played properly, must be the most poignant moment in all music; and the surprising yet convincing cadence that ends movement one (has anyone else noticed there is a moment strikingly similar to this near the end of Debussy's Jeux?). Listening to the original ending (of movement 3) Bartok wrote before changing it to sound like a "normal" violin concerto is very interesting: I find the original more powerful and effective, but it does sound like symphony, not a concerto (the revision gives lines originally blasted out by the horn section to the solo violin, which restores the instrument's prominence in the texture but weakens the impact of the line). Runners-up: Viola Concerto, String Quartet #2.

(5) CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA. Well, you knew the war-horse would make it to the list. This does not sound like the work of man dying from leukemia. Really of the same "species" of Bartok as Cantata Profana, I have to give it its own position in the Top Ten out of sheer respect for its success. What I love about it, though, is that, like Cantata Profana, it displays amazing compositional virtuosity -- it doesn't stoop to conquer. The fugal writing in the finale is masterful AND it rocks! Like String Quartet #4 and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, most of what Bartok does well is presented here: brooding, introspective moods, quirky humor and musical playfulness, heroic gestures, gorgeous melodies (the rising theme in asymmetrical rhythm in movement 4), whirlwind finishes. And if you had any doubt as to whether the guy could orchestrate, you won't now. Critics charge him with conservatism: he doesn't advance compositional technique, musical language, formal concepts. Well, true: he already did that! That's what the early piano concerti, the string quartets, the violin sonatas, all the "middle period" works were about! Now he is synthesizing and integrating, and his overarching view is impressive: Folk music traditions of Central and Eastern Europe , Asia , and North Africa , Classical music traditions and twentieth-century innovations (including his own!) of Western Europe and America . By the time of Concerto for Orchestra, his sound was seamless and elegant; he had integrated that vast territory into a very personal idiom of enormous expressive range. The beautiful melody in Movement 4, for example: it moves form 3/8 to 5/8 to 7/8 and back and forth (in the great tradition of rhythmically irregular Bulgarian folk melodies), but there is no hint of artificial construction; it just breathes and flows like free association.

(6) PIANO CONCERTO #1. The best example I know of Bartok's use of piano as percussion. I think of this as an orchestrated Piano Sonata -- they are very similar in sound and construction, and both written in 1926 as vehicles for his concertizing. I love the powerful, aggressive forcefulness and the sense of tension and climax he achieves through developing very simple materials and through repetition of primitive rhythmic structures. Movement two really sets the piano in the percussion section and contrasts it with a haunting wind quartet (all playing in different keys--but check Bartok's Essays: he felt the ear always found a tonal center of gravity even amid dense chromaticism and "polytonality:" he complained that nobody understood that the two different key signatures in treble and bass in his first Bagatelle was a musical joke!). And if you ever get a chance to hear a live performance of this one, don't plan to exhale during the third movement until the crashing final chord. Runners-up: Sonata for Piano, Allegro Barbaro.

(7) SONATA FOR SOLO VIOLIN. Written for Yehudi Menuhin in 1945, this was the last major work Bartok completed (Tibor Serly orchestrated the last few measures of Piano Concerto #3 and pretty much constructed the Viola Concerto from notes). It's good to know that he was able to attend the tumultuously successful premieres of both the Concerto for Orchestra and this Sonata before he died. He must have known his legacy was on the rise despite feeling bitter about his lack of international renown (despite fame in Hungary and Europe ) during his lifetime. The first movement "Chaconne" is as close to the spirit of Bach as I have heard any composer besides Beethoven achieve. The fugue is reminiscent of the gnarly Sonatas for Violin and Piano. The slow movement is another haunting, plaintive melody that must echo both his homeland and his yearning for it. The finale is yet another whirlwind, with solo violin providing both the moto perpetuo and the stomping dance energy. Runners-up: Sonatas for Violin and Piano #1 and #2.

(8) RUMANIAN FOLK SONGS FROM HUNGARY . Originally written for solo piano, there are several alternate versions (including orchestrations). My favorite is the violin and piano duet arranged by Szekely. If not for Bartok the ethnomusicologist, these haunting and expressive melodies would have been lost, as creeping industrialization and urbanization changed the face of Hungary in the first half of the twentieth century. His accompaniments are perfect, adding harmonic and rhythmic interest without violating or distracting from the original source material. The last two numbers convince me that American square-dancing music has Eastern European roots, not English. Runners-up: Piano Concert #3, Contrasts

(9) MUSIC FOR THEATER. We have a tie! Bluebeard's Castle, the very atmospheric opera he dedicated to his wife (would YOU give your wife a present of a story about a guy who kills all his wives, or at least transforms them into zombies? Just hope she's an expressionist and not too literal...) and The Miraculous Mandarin, the pantomime (Bartok wants youth know it is not a ballet) banned for most of his life for its lewd and violent libretto. Both show his early skill at orchestration and color, and his sense of rhythmic originality. Interesting also for how they reveal his influences, especially Debussy and Stravinsky. Runners-up: The Wooden Prince, and piano works Bagatelles and Suite, Opus 14 .

(10) STRING QUARTET #1 and STRING QUARTET #6. We have another tie! These are the bookends to the most significant collection of string quartets since Beethoven. The first, a late Romantic, at times almost Wagnerian, expression which moves from ennui to affirmation. The last, a mournful work: the central theme which introduces each movement and provides the material for the final one is Mesto, sad. Bartok's mother was dying, Hitler's Nazis were overrunning Europe , and he was contemplating emigrating to the U.S. , to leave behind his beloved Hungary . Compare the Mesto theme to the violin theme that opens Movement 2 of Sonata for Violin and Piano #1: they are strikingly similar, but the more mature composer of String Quartet #6 has learned economy of line. HONORABLE MENTION: The Piano Quintet celebrates the influence of Brahms; theKossuth Symphony celebrates the influence of Richard Strauss.