Bartókiana - Abstracts

Ninth International Congress on Musical Signification
"MUSIC, SENSES, BODY” “LA MUSICA, I SENSI, IL CORPO"
19-23 September 2006 – Università di Roma Tor Vergata

On the Shaman’s Trail: Béla Bartók’s Szabadban (OUTDOORS)

By Damjana Bratuž

This presentation grew out of the insights I first encountered in Massimo Mila’s essay LA NATURA E IL MISTERO NELL’ARTE DI BÉLA BARTÓK (1965). I examined some of those insights in my paper “un segno, un richiamo, un ammicco”  (IMS, Leuven, 2002) where I introduced a discussion of shamanic traces in Bartók’s music.

That paper’s title was borrowed from a page by Italo Calvino (in Mr. Palomar:1983), a meditation on coincidence, on things that “present themselves” and ask for attention and observation. Calvino’s three terms , “a sign, a summons, a wink,” remain the hidden thread that links the observations I develop in this paper, “On the Shaman’s Trail.“

Pianists are used to the summons of the composer’s indications as their guidance to the score. However, when the performer is ethnically and linguistically removed from the composer’s background, the task becomes one of observing what one does not know, rather than of applying familiar relationships.

By coincidence, the edition of Szabadban that came first into my hands was the old Universal  which gave the pieces' titles in three languages. The Hungarian title of the first piece,  Síppal, dobbal…[With Pipes and Drums], had three dots that were missing in the English edition with its translation of the title, With Drums and Pipes. A Hungarian child would have been familiar with the nursery rhyme referred to; I could only recall having encountered those foreign terms, Síppal, dobbal, during the preparation of my thesis on Bartók when at Indiana University I examined the collections of hundreds of Hungarian folk tunes (Bratuž, 1967). When later I did retrieve the text, I could sense its great mythical import and its 'healing' shamanic connotations, but it took another few years to find, by coincidence, also confirmation for it (Viski, 1932). The shamanic resonances of such Regös (winter solstice) songs were mentioned by Bartók himself when he tried to call the world’s attention to these “relics from pagan times!” (Colinde,1931].

Throughout the five pieces of the Out Doors suite, ancient kinetic and gestural patterns call the attention of a pianist's ear and hand. The aim of this presentation is to make them audible.

Equipment needed: Microsoft POWER POINT PRESENTATION with sound.