Product Description

Bela Bartok's (1881-1945) reputation as a key figure in twentieth-century music is well-established, but to understand the singular nature of his genius and the originality of his contribution, this biography is essential reading. The wide range of illustrations, showing contemporary photographs of people and events, help to bring the reculsive composer to life, and his story is set firmly into its social, cultural and historical contexts. Born into the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bartok worked through his youthful nationalism to a clearer understanding of his native culture, setting off with his friend Zoltan Kodaly to record the folklore of Hungary before it was destroyed by the march of progress. He ventured further into Romania and North Africa in pursuit of original cultures. These sounds and experiences helped him to find his voice as a composer.Despite his nationalism, however, Bartok was a humane and moderate man, whose distaste for authoritarian rule brought him into conflict with a crypto-Fascist government in Hungary and with the Germany of Adolf Hitler. While composing some of his outstanding works, he felt increasingly pressured and in 1940, after the death of his beloved mother, he tore himself away from Hungary and migrated to the United States. Homesick, short of money and stricken with leukaemia, he composed the magnificent Concerto for Orchestra and, on his deathbed in 1945, was completing a poignantly nostalgic Third Piano Concerto. He had never compromised his ideals, nor lost his innocence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #249581 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Kenneth Chalmers is an author, translator and composer who has written on Bartok, Berg, Stravinsky, Verdi and Weill, and collaborated on Decca's 20-volume Mozart Almanac

Customer Reviews

You get what you pay for
Chalmers gives us the surface facts of Bartok's life: places, people, dates and the circumstances of the works. It also portrays the shifting historical backdrop which Bartok sought so hard to avoid engagement with, after his youthful fraternisation with Hungarian Nationalism had burned out. But there is no psychological or musical depth to this book. I do not feel I understand the man any better for having read it. If anything I am now left with a more complex enigma. We are given the locations and dates of his ethno-musicological field trips, but very little indication of their impact on his musical thinking. As for the musical angle I learnt more from the Wikipedia article on Polymodal chromaticism than the meagre gleanings I got from the book. In the book's defence I would say that a strength is the large number of photographs that are included. The portraits of Bartok and his wives and associates arguably give more psychological insight into the man than the text. The pictures illustrating the political context of the Horthy years and the emergent alignment with Nazism are of definite historical interest.

I guess this book would be as good a place as any to start from for someone, like myself, whose interest in the man's music is moving out beyond the more obviously famous works. The book does give one a sense of the chronology of the works, and a sense of the more significant pieces that have yet to be embraced in the popular repertoire. But it does little to explain the origins and development of his hugely individual genius. Another, more expensive book in order then.