Bartókiana - Abstracts
Goldsmiths 20th-Century Conference
June 28 – July 1, 2001
Glodsmiths College, London UK
ABSTRACT:
The urtümliches Klangspektrum in
Bartók's Piano Music
By Damjana Bratuž
This contribution comes from the 'smithy' of a pianist's
studio, i.e, from the locus of a musical analysis that
has its origin in the inner ear, it proceeds by the
ear's verifications, modifications, and recognitions,
ending at, or rather, renewing the process at, the reception
of the listener's ear. The aim of this brief contribution
is that of a teacher: to call attention.
1.There
are aspects of the analyses of Bartok's scores by musicologists
as well as by performers, that still ignore Bartok's admonition regarding notation,
the only "really
true notations" being, according to him, "the
sound-tracks on the record itself" ([1943]
1951). It was at Indiana U. in the early 1960s that
I first heard Bartok's aboriginal sound-spectrum
(Uhde, 1959) in his recorded collections of peasant
music.
2.Awareness
of these recorded examples guides the ear of the performer
towards more than a simple evocation of sound; it determines the deciphering
of the dynamic relations, the distribution of dynamic layers, the choice of articulation,
of agogic, of speed.
3.
Whether in his folk transcriptions, or in his abstraction
of folk elements, Bartok's notation remains a point
of arrival, not the point of departure from which
current musicological analysis derives its (more and
more mathematized) results. The sign on the score only
permits a retrieval, does not, by itself, give
the implied formal context. Therefore, scholarly efforts
in oral tradition provide great insights to a performing
musician, especially on matters of conferred vs inherent
meaning (Foley, 1991)
Two examples are used to illustrate the argument, one
from the instrumental and one from the vocal peasant
tradition:
1. A 1907 duda (bagpipe) tune recorded by Bartok
on phonograph cylinders, and others taken from the
1937 Patria recordings are examined for those timbric
elements that make the bagpipe "the only peasant polyphonic
instrument" (Somfai, 1984). The search for
the intelligence contained in sound, the transposition
onto the piano keyboard of the nasal timbre [adopted
by Berio as a unique folk derivation (1981)] remind
one, to paraphrase Klee, of Bartok's desire not to
reflect traditional features, but to make them audible.Sections
of the third movement of the Piano Sonata are
examined and examples of Bartok's duda style
performances are presented, in a series of progressive
complexity, from transcriptions to abstractions.
2. The selection for the vocal parlando/rubato
style represents its most extreme peasant manifestation,
the funeral lament, a Rumanian bocet collected by Bartok.Contemporary
analysis of the second movement of the Piano Sonata departs
and calculates from the notation arrived at by the
composer (Wilson, 1992), ignoring the formal significance
of the 'puzzling' interruptions. In the chosen example, "Let the bell toll loudly,"
the peasant delivery reveals the nature of the Pesante
indication and of its articulation.
The aural corpus of the traditional sources
from which Bartok derived compositional properties is
today available, but is still awaiting the encounter
with the ear of the performer and of the (Western) musicologist.
The awareness of this silent partner (Foley,
1991) would widen to a much larger degree the entire
spectrum of the compositional elements touched
by the composer, and it would illuminate their endless
interweaving.
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