Download BELA BARTOK Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste

BELA BARTOK
Music for Strings, Percussion and
Celeste
Béla Viktor János Bartók (March 25, 1881 – September 26, 1945) was a Hungarian composer and
pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Liszt are
regarded as Hungary's greatest composers. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he
was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became ethnomusicology. According
to Bartok’s mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms before he learned to speak in
complete sentences. From 1899 to 1903, Bartók studied at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest.
There he met Zoltán Kodály, who influenced him greatly and became his lifelong friend and colleague.
Early influences included Richard Strauss, whom he met in 1902, and folk music, to which he was first
exposed when visiting a holiday resort in the summer of 1904. From 1907, he also began to be
influenced by the French composer Claude Debussy, whose compositions Kodály had brought back from
Paris. Bartók's music reflects two trends that dramatically changed the sound of music in the 20th
century: the breakdown of the diatonic system of harmony that had served composers for the previous
two hundred years; and the revival of nationalism as a source for musical inspiration. In his search for
new forms of tonality, Bartók turned to Hungarian folk music, as well as to other folk music of the
Carpathian Basin and even of Algeria and Turkey; in so doing he became influential in that stream of
modernism which exploited indigenous music and techniques. One characteristic style of music is his
Night music, which he used mostly in slow movements of multi-movement ensemble or orchestral
compositions in his mature period. It is characterised by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to
sounds of nature and lonely melodies"
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz. 106, BB 114 is one of Bartok’s best-known compositions.
Commissioned by Paul Sacher to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the chamber orchestra Basler
Kammerorchester, the score is dated September 7, 1936. The first movement is a slow fugue based
around the note A, on which the movement begins and ends. It begins on muted strings, and as more
voices enter, the texture thickens and the music becomes louder until the climax. Material from the first
movement can be seen as serving as the basis for the later movements, and the fugue subject recurs in
different guises at points throughout the piece. The second movement is quick, marked with loud
syncopic piano and percussion accents in a whirling dance, evolving in an extended pizzicato section,
with a piano concerto-like conclusion. The third movement is slow, an example of what is often called
Bartók's "Night music". It features timpani glissandi, which was an unusual technique at the time of the
work's composition, as well as a prominent part for the xylophone. The last movement, which begins
with notes on the timpani and strummed pizzicato chords on the strings, has the character of a lively
folk dance.