The Cambridge Companion to Bartók (Cambridge Companions to Music) by Amanda Bayley

Author:Amanda Bayley [Amanda Bayley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2001-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

His original idea about a concert piece in variation form was realized in the slow movement of the Concerto, as Somfai has demonstrated in an important essay analysing Bartók’s different ‘variation strategies’ on the levels of tonal system, phrase structure, orchestration, register and tempo. 33 He emphasizes the simultaneous presence, in the theme, of classical periodic structure and the strophic principle derived from Hungarian and Slovak folk music. He also shows how Bartók (for whom the variation procedures of folk music had become second nature) approached the classical theme-and-variation form in a completely unique manner and with an ‘encyclopaedic’ intent – encyclopaedic both in the scope of the variation procedures used and in the way the different variations are organized into a ‘super-structure’, characterized by a complex web of internal symmetries.

Although most of the third movement’s material is a variation on themes from the first movement, the new features (among them, dance rhythms and new orchestrational ideas) make the themes sound as fresh as the first time. The twelve-tone theme is separated from the rest of the movement by a slower tempo, Quasi lento, that places special emphasis on the particular structure of this theme. A new motif, made up entirely of perfect fourths, appears in the coda (bar 527) as if to remind us of the importance of that interval – a principal ingredient in Hungarian folksongs of all styles – in almost all the Concerto’s themes.

The Viola Concerto

Many surveys of Bartók’s music omit discussion of the Viola Concerto on the grounds that, in the form that it has become known, as completed by Tibor Serly, it cannot be considered a work by Bartók. It is true that with only fourteen pages of manuscript, too many questions are left unanswered for us to be certain of his intentions. Serly’s work has received a great deal of criticism and has now been followed (though probably not superseded) by another published alternative version (by Peter Bartók and Nelson Dellamaggiore) and (at least) two more unpublished versions (by Csaba Erdélyi and Donald Maurice, respectively). 34 It is understandable that so much attention has been focused on how to complete the Viola Concerto. Yet the question as to what the surviving notes tell us, as they are, is equally worth asking. 35

To be sure, the sketches leave many important points about the overall form undecided. There are only a few hints at the orchestration. In fact, we know little more than the solo viola part (fully worked out by Bartók) and the thematic segments of the orchestral accompaniment. On the basis of this information, however, it is possible to make a few concrete observations on the Concerto as the composer envisioned it. In particular, the themes and their development, to the extent that they were notated, suggest at least something about the general character of the Concerto as it must have existed in Bartók’s mind.

The fact that Bartók worked on the Viola Concerto concurrently with the Third Piano Concerto has naturally caused commentators to look for parallels between the two.

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