Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók (/ˈbeɪlə ˈbɑːrtɒk/; Hungarian: [ˈbeːlɒ ˈbɒrtoːk]; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hungary's greatest composers.[1] Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became known as ethnomusicology.
"Bartok" redirects here. For other uses, see Bartok (disambiguation).Biography[edit]
Childhood and early years (1881–1898)[edit]
Bartók was born in the Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Sânnicolau Mare, Romania) on 25 March 1881.[2] On his father's side, the Bartók family was a Hungarian lower noble family, originating from Borsodszirák, Borsod.[3] His paternal grandmother was a Catholic of Bunjevci origin, but considered herself Hungarian.[4] Bartók's father (1855–1888) was also named Béla. Bartók's mother, Paula (née Voit) (1857–1939), spoke[5] Hungarian fluently.[6] A native of Turócszentmárton (present-day Martin, Slovakia),[7] she had German, Hungarian and Slovak or Polish ancestry.
Béla displayed notable musical talent very early in life. According to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano before he learned to speak in complete sentences.[8] By the age of four he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano, and his mother began formally teaching him the next year.
In 1888, when he was seven, his father, the director of an agricultural school, died suddenly. His mother then took Béla and his sister, Erzsébet, to live in Nagyszőlős (present-day Vynohradiv, Ukraine) and then in Pressburg (Pozsony, present-day Bratislava, Slovakia). Béla gave his first public recital aged 11 in Nagyszőlős, to positive critical reception.[9] Among the pieces he played was his own first composition, written two years previously: a short piece called "The Course of the Danube".[10] Shortly thereafter, László Erkel accepted him as a pupil.[11]
Catalogues[edit]
The cataloguing of Bartók's works is somewhat complex. Bartók assigned opus numbers to his works three times, the last of these series ending with the Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, Op. 21 in 1921. He ended this practice because of the difficulty of distinguishing between original works and ethnographic arrangements, and between major and minor works. Since his death, three attempts—two full and one partial—have been made at cataloguing. The first, and still most widely used, is András Szőllősy's chronological Sz. numbers, from 1 to 121. Denijs Dille subsequently reorganised the juvenilia (Sz. 1–25) thematically, as DD numbers 1 to 77. The most recent catalogue is that of László Somfai; this is a chronological index with works identified by BB numbers 1 to 129, incorporating corrections based on the Béla Bartók Thematic Catalogue.
On 1 January 2016, Bartók's works entered the public domain in the European Union.[91]
Together with his like-minded contemporary Zoltán Kodály, Bartók embarked on an extensive programme of field research to capture the folk and peasant melodies of Magyar, Slovak and Romanian language territories.[64] At first they would transcribe the melodies by hand, but later they began to use a wax cylinder recording machine invented by Thomas Edison.[92] Compilations of Bartók's field recordings, interviews, and original piano playing have been released over the years, largely by the Hungarian record label Hungaroton:
A compilation of field recordings and transcriptions for two violas was also recently released by Tantara Records in 2014.[93]
On 18 March 2016 Decca Classics released Béla Bartók: The Complete Works, the first ever complete compilation of all of Bartók's compositions, including new recordings of never-before-recorded early piano and vocal works. However, none of the composer's own performances are included in this 32-disc set.[94]