scholarly journals With or without the B-A-C-H Motive? Bartók’s Hesitation in Writing his First String Quartet

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 15-22
Author(s):  
László Somfai
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Johann Sebastian Bach ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Zoltan Kodaly ◽  
Development Section ◽  
Starting Point

Considering the appearance of the musical cryptogram “B-A-C-H” (B-flat– A–C–B -natural) in well-known works up to the time of his First String Quartet (1908/1909), Béla Bartók knew Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on the Theme B-A-C-H, presumably also Schumann’s Sechs Fugen über den Namen Bach, and Reger’s Fantasia and Fugue on B-A-C-H for organ. Such compositions quoted the celebrated motive, typically as a starting point, with the relevant (aforementioned) pitches because the musical cryptogram in this way allowed immediate recognition of the reference to the name of the Leipzig composer. However, Bartók’s planned “B-A-C-H” quotation in the development section of the sonata-form second movement of his First Quartet was not a typical homage to Johann Sebastian Bach but rather a vision: a distorted reference to the symbolic “B-A-C-H” motive. Undoubtedly Bartók liked this episode. There is reason to believe that his friend Zoltán Kodály advised him to leave out the inorganic and distorted “B-A-C-H” allusion.

scholarly journals Normative Wit

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy R. Mastic
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Starting Point

This article approaches Haydn’s treatment of sonata form from the perspective of the eighteenth-century listener, asking: if a moment is allegedly “witty” according to modern analysts, would Haydn’s contemporary audience have heard it as such? Eighteenth-century wit is a two-sided coin: wit does involve an aspect of surprise or deception, a breaking of understood norms; however, wit must also involve an unsuspected congruity, a larger-scale connection created only by breaking the aforementioned norm. Taking this as my starting point, I provide detailed analyses of the first movements of Haydn’s “Military” Symphony no. 100 and String Quartet in D major, op. 33 no. 6. Compared to the expectations set forth by each exposition, Haydn has recomposed each piece’s respective recapitulation in a significant way. I argue that these pieces are witty in the eighteenth-century sense of the term but not in the sense that the term has been used by recent scholars such as Hepokoski and Darcy, who emphasize the disruptive aspects of wit. Ultimately, I suggest that Haydn can be witty without necessarily being deceptive; wit can involve establishing a kind of unexpected coherence that binds together the recapitulation and another section of a sonata form.

scholarly journals Sonata-Formal Functions and Transformational Processes in the First Movement of Rochberg’s String Quartet No. 6

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafa Bor
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Transformational Theory ◽  
The Third ◽  
Development Section ◽  
Musical Structures ◽  
Event Series ◽  
Set Up

To the extent that it represents the actual temporal event-series of a composition, transformational theory can reveal some interesting correlations between the formal functions of sections and the transformations that characterize them. For example, the changes in characteristic transformations in the first movement of George Rochberg’s sixth string quartet articulate specific functions familiar in sonata form. The differing types of transformations (transposition versus inversion) in the first two sections set up a contrast analogous to that of the first and second themes. The third section functions as a development section, blending both types of transformations found in the exposition. Reprises of these types, and their contrast, define the function of the last two sections as a recapitulation, in which the second-theme group is metaphorically transposed. Rochberg has been criticized for mimicking conventional musical structures, but this analysis demonstrates how he successfully reinvents a tonal form with non-tonal transformations.

Was ist "echte" ungarische Volksmusik?

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-25
Author(s):  
Bálint Sárosi
Keyword(s):  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Zoltan Kodaly

Schon Béla Bartók und Zoltán Kodály haben versucht, das ungarische Volk musikalisch zu "erziehen", indem sie dem Volk nur besonders ausgewählte Lieder darboten. Doch dieser Versuch blieb, wie auch spätere, erfolglos, da das Volk die Volkslieder nur zur Entspannung und Unterhaltung gebraucht. Dies findet es insbesondere in der Zigeunermusik, die auch echte ungarische Volksmusik ist. Ungarische Volksmusik kennt man seit langer Zeit überall auf der Welt durch die Zigeunermusik, die ihre Ursprünge in Ungarn im 15. Jahrhundert hat. bms online (Mano Eßwein)  

Ernest Bloch's Second String Quartet

Tempo ◽  
1959 ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Frederick Rimmer
Keyword(s):  
String Quartet ◽  
String Quartets ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Musical Expression ◽  
The Right

The four string quartets* of Bloch are a convenient medium for assessing both the strength and weakness of his unusual talent, revealing, as they do, an imperfect endowment of those processes of thought and feeling from which, in the right amalgam, a masterpiece of musical expression can emerge. Only the second quartet represents him at his best. It is one of the few works where inspiration and emotion are under the control of the intellect. There are weaknesses in the other quartets largely brought about by preoccupation with cyclic procedures—a notorious and dangerous expedient for a composer unable by nature to accept the traditional usages and disciplines of sonata form.

Bartók as Man of Letters

Tempo ◽  
1972 ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
Benjamin Suchoff
Keyword(s):  
Folk Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Zoltan Kodaly

Bartok's literary efforts range from books and monographs to shorter essays. According to recent findings, there were no less than 119 extant works. Some of them were written in collaboration with Zoltán Kodály or Sandor Reschofsky; others were originally drafted as lectures which were for the most part given on the radio or at educational institutions.Bartók's first essay apparently appeared in print in Budapest in 1904. It is interesting to note that except in 1907 and 1915, at least one of his writings was published each year of his life, in a considerable number of languages, and frequently in widely-known journals. His essays may be divided, according to their topics, into eight basic categories (although there is some overlapping): I. The Investigation of Musical Folklore; II, National Folk Music; III, Comparative Musical Folklore; IV, Book Reviews and Polemics; V, Musical Instruments; VI, The Relation Between Folk Music and Art Music; VII, The Life and Music of Béla Bartók; and VIII, Bartok On Music and Musicians.

Does a ‘monothematic’ expositional design have tautological implications for the recapitulation? An alternative approach to ‘altered recapitulations’ in Haydn

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 369-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Neuwirth
Keyword(s):  
Formal Structure ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Analytical Studies ◽  
Development Section ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Structural Aspects

‘Altered recapitulations,’ commonly regarded as a distinguishing feature of Joseph Haydn’s sonata form movements, are usually explained in terms of the ‘monothematic’ design of the exposition. According to the logic used in such analytical studies, recomposing the recapitulation would have been aimed at restoring the proportional balance between exposition and recapitulation, a need that resulted from the omission of the seemingly redundant, retransposed secondary theme along with the preceding transition. Though such an explanation has long been considered indisputable, this article casts doubt on the validity of the redundancy principle by showing that Haydn often did retain the monothematic section in the recapitulation. Rather, the recomposition of the recapitulation results from two important structural aspects thus far largely neglected in the literature: (1) the repetitive formal structure of the main theme, which is often considerably reworked in the recapitulation; and (2) the insertion of a separate newly composed dominant zone in the recapitulation that serves to compensate for the lack of a structural dominant at the end of the development section. Finally, it is argued here that Haydn, who was deeply rooted in the late Baroque tradition, by no means regarded multiple ‘double returns’ as either problematic or redundant, for he may have been thinking more in terms of an overriding ritornello structure.

Béla Balázs: The Face of Cinema

October ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 148 ◽  
pp. 53-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noël Carroll
Keyword(s):  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
Zoltan Kodaly ◽  
Karl Mannheim ◽  
Sergei Eisenstein ◽  
Michael Curtiz ◽  
The Face ◽  
Gyorgy Lukacs

Herbert Bauer, known to the world as Béla Balázs (1894–1949), led the sort of life about which contemporary intellectuals might fantasize. He knew everyone and he did everything. Born in Hungary, he included György Lukács, Karl Mannheim, Arnold Hauser, Béla Bartók, and Zoltán Kodály in his circle, among others. He knew the filmmakers Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz before their names were Anglicized. He studied with Georg Simmel and met Max Weber. As time went on, he came, so it seems, to know virtually every major European intellectual—Stefan Zweig, Robert Musil, Walter Benjamin, Sergei Eisenstein, Erwin Piscator, and on and on. He lived in the midst of a universe of conversation that dazzles us as we look back enviously upon it.

Study, Copy, and Conquer

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Hedges Brown
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
String Quartet ◽  
Expressive Power ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Sonata Form ◽  
Compositional Process ◽  
Piano Works ◽  
Piano Quartet ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Critical Writings

Schumann's 1842 chamber music exemplifies a common theme in his critical writings, that to sustain a notable inherited tradition composers must not merely imitate the past but reinvent it anew. Yet Schumann's innovative practices have not been sufficiently acknowledged, partly because his instrumental repertory seemed conservative to critics of Schumann's day and beyond, especially when compared to his earlier experimental piano works and songs. This essay offers a revisionist perspective by exploring three chamber movements that recast sonata procedure in one of two complementary ways: either the tonic key monopolizes the exposition (as in the first movement of the Piano Quartet in E♭ major, op. 47), or a modulating main theme undercuts a definitive presence of the tonic key at the outset (as in the first movement of the String Quartet in A major, op. 41, no. 3, and the finale of the String Quartet in A minor, op. 41, no. 1). Viewed against conventional sonata practice, these chamber movements appear puzzling, perhaps even incoherent or awkward, since they thwart the tonal contrast of keys so characteristic of the form. Yet these unusual openings, and the compelling if surprising ramifications that they prompt, signal not compositional weakness but rather an effort to reinterpret the form as a way of strengthening its expressive power. My analyses also draw on other perspectives to illuminate these sonata forms. All three movements adopt a striking thematic idea or formal ploy that evokes a specific Beethovenian precedent; yet each movement also highlights Schumann’s creative distance from his predecessor by departing in notable ways from the conjured model. Aspects of Schumann’s sketches, especially those concerning changes made during the compositional process, also illuminate relevant analytical points. Finally, in the analysis of the finale of the A-minor quartet, I consider how Schumann’s evocation of Hungarian Gypsy music may be not merely incidental to but supportive of his reimagined sonata form. Ultimately, the perspectives offered here easily accommodate—even celebrate—Schumann’s idiosyncratic approach to sonata form. They also demonstrate that Schumann’s earlier experimental tendencies did not contradict his efforts in the early 1840s to further advance his inherited classical past.

scholarly journals From ethnomusicologist to composer. Sándor Veress and the Moldavian Collection

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-261
Author(s):  
Ioana Baalbaki
Keyword(s):  
Chamber Music ◽  
Hungarian Academy ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Bela Bartok ◽  
Carpathian Mountains ◽  
Zoltan Kodaly ◽  
Catholic Faith

AbstractAs a student of Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók, but also a close collaborator of László Lajtha at the Hungarian Ethnographic Museum in Budapest, and later of Béla Bartók at Folk Department of the Hungarian Academy of Science, Sándor Veress followed the path of his masters regarding the relation with folklore music. In 1930, he undertook an expedition in Moldavia, Romania, to collect music from the Csángó population, a small Hungarian speaking community, of catholic faith, living in the east of the Carpathian Mountains. In the seven villages he has visited, he collected, with the help of the phonograph, 138 folk songs on 57 wax cylinders, taking in the same time around 60 pictures and documenting the whole expedition in a journal. Following this journey, during the 30’s, Sándor Veress not only transcribed and analyzed the entire material, but also selected some of the melodies and used them as theme for his own choir arrangements and chamber music compositions.

The Expanded Caesura-Fill and Transcendental States in Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 382-413
Author(s):  
Andrew Aziz
Keyword(s):  
Sonata Form ◽  
Piano Sonata ◽  
Piano Trio ◽  
Late Style ◽  
Development Section ◽  
Middle Period ◽  
Transcendental State

Anticipating Beethoven's late style, his Piano Sonata Op. 106, "Hammerklavier," contains distinct passages that serve to suspend formal time (noted by numerous scholars, including Adorno, Dahlhaus, Greene, Kinderman, et al.) and disrupt the forward progress of thematic zones within a sonata form. In this essay, I tie this suspension of time to a specific formal space introduced by Hepokoski and Darcy (2006)—the "caesura-fill"—which serves as a venue for compositional exploration throughout Beethoven's sonata oeuvre. Because caesura-fill music occurs between two thematic zones (transition and secondary themes), it has the potential not only for expansion but also for establishing a state of transcendence. In part 1, I investigate the presence of expanded caesura-fill in the exposition of the "Hammerklavier", which enters a transcendental state and postpones the secondary theme zone; harmonic and textural effects in the music underscore this aesthetic. In part 2, I draw comparisons to early- and middle-period works, most significantly the Eroica Symphony, Op. 55, and the "Archduke" Piano Trio, Op. 97. Finally, in part 3, I illustrate how the exposition of the "Hammerklavier" provides a script for the development section to again enter a zone of transcendence, using sharp-side keys to postpone and ultimately undermine the recapitulation.

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