Bartók: Hungarian Composer and Ethnomusicologist

He was one of the composers of 20th c. classics. He was the Hungarian genius. Besides Ferenc Liszt he is one of the greatest Hungarian composers. As an ethnomusicologist he founded the national folk song collection with Kod ly. He took the national task with collecting ethic (Romanian, Slovak) folklore music in connection with comprising folklore music at an early era. He was regarded as the biggest star of the era though he lived in poor circumstances until his death, he was shy.

Biography He was born in 1881 in Nagyszentmikl s. His full name was: Bart k B la Viktor J nos. He was an ill, introvert little boy. He learnt to walk at the age of two, at the age of three he could hardly talk. At the age of four he could play on his mother s piano whatever he heard for the first time with one finger. At the age of five started learning, at the age of nine he composed and his works were played two years later in a concert. He was a young genius who had absolute listening at the age of seven

His mother who was a teacher taught him to play on the piano. He lost his father, who was the director of an agricultural school, played the piano and cello, led an orchestra and even composed, when he was seven years old. He studied at a high school in Bratislava where he had his main music lectures. He graduated from the Budapest Academy of Music between 1899 and 1903 - majoring in piano and composition. The experience of Richard Strauss's Zarathustra triggers the writing of his large-scale works in his youth.

German classicism and romanticism, especially the art of Brahms, played a decisive role in the development of his style. In cooperation with Zolt n Kod ly, he dealt extensively with Hungarian folk music, and for comparative research, he also examined the folk music of neighbouring nations. As a result of getting to know peasant music, his compositional style also changed, relying on the stylistic features of folk music. He travelled to the United States and gave lectures on issues of Hungarian music at Harvard University. Despite his intentions, he could no longer return home, he died in New York on September 26, 1945.

In 1948, his unique work was also recognized with a posthumous Kossuth Award In 1988, the repatriation of his ashes received enormous media attention. His two sons and many thousands of people accompanied his remains to the Farkasr t cemetery, where most members of the Bart k family are buried. The caretaker of his musical legacy is his younger son, P ter, who is 95 years old and currently lives in Florida.

His work His music was initially met with fierce rejection due to his dissonant voice, crisis mood and peasant colors. The creation of national art music is accomplished by the Kossuth symphony, presented with great success here in 1904. In 1905, he fails at the Rubinstein composition and piano competition in Paris. In 1905, he starts collecting folk music, in which he is greatly helped by Kod ly's advice. The Hungarian folk songs published jointly in 1906, containing twenty arrangements, indicate their vision: instead of folk art, they want to make melodies collected from the peasantry the basis of a new musical style and education.

In Bartk's pedagogical works, this idea remained dominant from Gyermekeknek (1908 09) to the Forty Duets written for violin (1931), but Mikrokosmos (1926, 1932 39) is more indirectly related to the program. His Rhapsody (1904) and Orchestral Suite No. 1 (1905) still meet the expectations of the audience raised on Liszt, Brahms and folk art. In 1911, he writes his only opera, the Bluebeard Prince's Castle, based on B la Bal zs's mystery play. It wasn't even shown at first, it was classified as unplayable. A new style era begins with a piano suite.

The 1917 premiere of the wooden prince ballet won not only a new audience, but also a contract with Universal Edition in Vienna. His pantomime, The Magnificent Mandarin, was banned after the premiere in Cologne due to its text. His oratorio is the Cantata profana, in which he set to music a Romanian folk ballad text he had collected himself. Neo-baroque elements appear in his piano works (Son ta, Szabadban, 1st Piano Concerto) from the mid-twenties. One of his most famous works is The Evening at the Sz kelys. His last finished work is the Solo Sonata for violin, commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin in 1944.

Interesting facts He was not only fond of music from a young age, but also of nature. At the age of five, he raised his own silkworm farm. Many institutions bear his name, among others the Budapest Conservatory, the public radio channel broadcasting classical music and the M pa National Concert Hall. An international choir and piano competition, an opera festival, and even an asteroid named 4132 Bart k preserve his memory. The Bart k B la-P sztory Ditta prize is awarded every year on his birthday, at his last residence in Budapest, II. there is a memorial house in Csal n Street in the district. The complete list of his works was created by music historian Andr s Sz ll sy.

In 2016, on the occasion of the 135th anniversary of his birth, Bartk Year was held in Hungary, and Editio Musica Budapest published a facsimile edition of the Cantata profana. The following year, a documentary about the life of the composer was presented, directed by J zsef Sipos. One of his most recent monuments was inaugurated in 2019 in Kielce, Poland, as part of the events held on the occasion of the Polish-Hungarian Friendship Day. B la Bart k was depicted on the one-thousand-forint denomination of the previous Hungarian banknote series. The interesting thing about the denomination in circulation between 1983 and 1999 is that the graphic artist modeled Bart k on his son (the engineer B la Bart k). On the anniversary of his birth, March 25, 2008, Bart k appeared on the Google logo. This was the first Hungarian logo in the history of the internet search engine.

What man knows or will ever know the whole world? No one ever! Because the world is infinite in both time and space. A finite being will never deal with infinity. If I were to cross myself, I would say this: in the name of nature, art, and science." (Bart k B la)

Bartk Bla A night by szkely people https://youtu.be/QvdJSVmi404

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