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Preserved a Culture Amid Indifference
In the first decades of this century Bartók
was already at the vanguard of so many concerns
with which we are familiar today. The preservation
of natural beauty and national heritage, the disappearance
of vital social structures, the salvaging of mementos
of man's pristine relationship with nature, were
to him matters of passionate attention and active
involvement. His efforts, however, went largely
unrecognized and unappreciated. Young people today
should find in him an ideal spiritual guide, a
force, an example to follow. He would certainly
feel great affinity towards their search for authenticity,
their nostalgia for homebaked bread, the countryside,
their taste for hand-made crafts, the care for
plants and animals. He would share their concern
for today's preoccupation with technology, the
debasement of language and would support the promotion
of "peace and brotherhood among nations".
He had witnessed the disappearance and destruction,
through progress and war, of certain rhythms and
forms of life, of certain natural forces finding
expression in the songs and dances of village
culture ("beautiful to both the ear and the
eye"), and he gave most of his energy to
the preservation of their memory in recordings
and transcriptions. When in 1935 Bartók
managed at last to publish out of his own meagre
resources the Rumanian Colinde he had collected
between 1909 and 1917, he expected musicians and
scholars the world over to marvel at the discovery,
for they were relics of pagan, shaman times. He
sold a few copies amid the general indifference.
Bartók's Prose Greatly Admired
The publication of Bartók's Essays
in English provides an invaluable introduction
to the full range of the composer's interests
and activities. It should enable musicians and
inquiring students, as well as the general reader,
to gain insight into his work, his opinions, tastes,
polemics and above all, into the world of folklore
which nourished his artistic imagination. The
selection brings together writings dating from
1904 to 1945, which were available in Hungarian
collections or were scattered in various foreign
language publications, some being published from
surviving manuscripts for the first time.
Dr. Benjamin Suchoff, Trustee of the Bartók
Archives in New York, has organized 89 items according
to eight categories: the first three dealing with
music folklore, the remainder with Book Reviews
and Polemics, Musical Instruments, the Relation
Between Folk Music and Art Music, the Life and
Music of B. Bartók, and On Music and Musicians.
The names of several translators are given in
the preface, but, except in regard to the essays
on Liszt, no specific indication is given as to
who translated which essay, nor as to which one
had been originally written in English by Bartók
himself. Translation from languages other than
Hungarian is mentioned without any specific information
as to whether the material was Bartók's
original writing or had been previously translated
from the Hungarian. Knowing the extreme care and
precision with which Bartók used words,
this is a crucial matter. His countrymen greatly
admire the clarity and simplicity of his style.
Obviously, shades of meaning, tone, and quality
of expression are lost in the best of translations,
but a few footnotes by the translators would have
helped the English reader to understand unfamiliar
references and allusions and would help clarify
ambiguities of expression. Some errors either
lack a "sic" or are misprints.
A Tax On Music?
The essays on folk music reveal Bartók's
perception of those "natural products"
which he looked upon as miniature models of the
highest artistic order. They also showed his struggle
against the stupidity of nationalism, when he
was accused of being either a traitor or a chauvin
(depending on the side from which the attacks
came), for his tracing of folk melodies in their
migrations across borders. But he kept exploring
and transcribing them until the second world war
stopped his field trips. He celebrated the living,
ever-changing material of folk music which draws
its vitality from, and is continually fertilized
by the foreign elements encountered on its course,
assimilated into its structure.
The Bartók humour is also present, as
in his description of suspicious peasants who
feared that the gentleman asking for songs may
have been sent "to burden them with another
tax ... on music!" It is moving to read in
his essay "Why and How do We Collect Folk
Music" his call for "spiritual co-operation"
among nations (in 1936), in order to unravel ancient
cultural connections, to observe relationships
or contrasts among different peoples, all through
folk song collecting, which he likens to its "sister
science", comparative linguistics. He writes
at the end: ". . . if the money spent in
one year on armaments all over the world were
allocated to musical folklore research, we could
collect the folk music of the entire world."
By 1940, he concludes another essay saying: ".
. . if we had at our disposal only one single
day's wasted war expenses, we . . . [could] save
a great deal of folk music for posterity."
Why? His answer is found in the previous essay:
"to offer pleasure to all those who still
have a taste for wild flowers."
Four Harvard Lectures
Because of the new sound spectrum Bartók
explored, Stockhausen has expressed his conviction
that, had he lived longer, he too would have adopted
electronic music. One may form all sorts of speculations
by reading the 1937 essay on Mechanical Music,
but it is clear that Bartók viewed machines
as tools, important only for their pedagogical
and scientific value, not as substitutes for live
music. Life, the ever recurring term: while today
Glenn Gould credits recording with a greater morality
than live performances, Bartók repeatedly
stressed the "perpetual variability"
which is life's own, as the essence of music making.
He feared that mechanical music would overtake
live music, "just as manufactured products
have done to the detriment of handicraft"
and that the human propensity to turn meaningful
discoveries into profit-making tools would result
in dissemination of trash. In objecting to radio
sound coming from open windows, he seems to have
foreseen the present sound pollution of rock and
Musak, with "the spread of these devices"
developing "into a calamity" ... He
concludes: "May God protect our offspring
from this plague!"
The most valuable essays, because they are published
for the first time in their entirety, are the
four Harvard Lectures of 1943. They represent
a most poignant document, being drafts of lectures
(eight had been scheduled) which Bartók
was unable to complete. No information is given
as to whether these drafts have been edited and
corrected, which would seem inevitable, since
Bartók's English was not faultless. His
style is laconic - the essential is conveyed in
the most direct manner. Unlike Stravinsky, he
wrote everything from his own pen. Although, like
Beethoven, Bartók lacked the skill for
aesthetic argument, the force of his thought is
compelling even when he writes in a foreign tongue.
The Bartók Industry
The editors wonder if the last of the four drafts
for the Harvard Lectures remained unfinished,
but according to A. Fassett's book on his American
Years, it would appear that Bartók did
give only three lectures at Cambridge. As maligned
as this latter work has been in the Hungarian
community, it was based on authentic events, and
although it confers an unfortunate verbosity to
someone who used words as sparingly as Bartók,
the scenes it describes come to mind when reading
the Harvard Lectures: the new hope and excitement
the experience and the contact with the student
body has provided to the ailing composer; the
new perspective he seemed to be gaining of the
country, the campus appearing to him like an old
European community centred around a court; his
pleasure in the presence of cats, to him a sign
of "real civilization"... Alas, it all
came too late.
What would Bartók have to say about having
become some sort of an industry? Two competing
Archives, in Budapest and New York, Bartók
Festivals, conventions and competitions, and now
the publication of his Essays in English
priced far more than a coffee-table book. Who
can disburse such a sum? "Certainly not a
musician" . . . wrote Bartók in 1920
("Musical Events in Budapest"), lamenting
the prohibitive price of music and books, ".
. . and all musicians are poor." However,
some British books are costly, and Faber &
Faber is known for the excellence of its printing.
It is a pity that it should be out of reach for
students and the general reader. But I urge music
libraries and also high school libraries to invest
in the purchase of this volume: teachers and students
alike will benefit from the exposure to the thoughts
of a great human being and to the wonders of folk
music, as he heard it and understood it, and tried
to preserve it for us all.
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Dr. Damiana Bratuz, a Fulbright Scholar,
received her Ph.D. from Indiana University.
Since 1967 she has been an Associate Professor
of Piano and Piano Literature at the University
of Western Ontario. A noted Bartók
specialist, Dr. Bratuz is soon to publish
a book in which she examines the folk element
in Bartók's piano music.
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