Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Out of Hungary: Bartok, Modernism, and the Cultural Politics of Twentieth-Century Music (p. 3)
• Why Is a Bartok Thematic Catalog Sorely Needed? (p. 64)
• The Gallows and the Altar: Poetic Criticism and Critical Poetry about Bartok in Hungary (p. 79)
• Bartok's Reception in America, 1940-1945 (p. 101)
• Bluebeard as Theater: The Influence of Maeterlinck and Hebbel on Balazs's Bluebeard Drama (p. 119)
• The Miraculous Mandarin: Melchior Lengyel, His Pantomime, and His Connections to Bela Bartok (p. 149)
• Bartok and Stravinsky: Respect, Competition, Influence, and the Hungarian Reaction to Modernism in the 1920s (p. 172)
• Travel Reports from Three Continents: A Selection of Letters from Bela Bartok (p. 203)
• Bela Bartok: An Interview (p. 228)
• A Conversation with Bela Bartok (p. 235)
• Recollections of Bela Bartok (p. 243)
• A Change in Style (p. 276)
• Bartok's Third String Quartet (p. 278)
• Bartok's Foreign Tour (p. 282)
• Two Bartok Obituaries (p. 290)
• A Selection of Poems Inspired (p. 296)
• Index of Names and Compositions (p. 307)
• List of Contributors (p. 313)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

In this sixth volume in the "Bard Music Festival Series," Laki (Hungarian-born musicologist/annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra) notes the divergent views taken of Bartok's career by English-speaking and Hungarian writers, the former focusing on the music, the latter on cultural-historical context. The present volume follows the second path. Of the 16 chapters, ten are translations, eight from the Hungarian, the others from the German. The translations from the Hungarian, most welcome to nonreaders of that language, range from a conversation with Bartok, through selections from his letters reporting on his travels, to eight poems inspired by the composer. A seminal essay by Leon Botstein, director of the Bard Festival, places Bartok in the cultural-artistic milieu of southeast Europe in the early 20th century. Although there are separate chapters on individual works--Duke Bluebeard's Castle, The Miraculous Mandarin, and the Third String Quartet--none is analytic per se. This volume nicely complements The Bartok Companion, ed. by Malcolm Gillies (1994), most of which is devoted to discussion of the music. Each chapter is followed by endnotes. Recommended for virtually all libraries. R. Stahura Ripon College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Peter Laki is a musicologist serving as program annotator for the Cleveland Orchestra.