The Case of Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók is one of the best-known composers of the 20^th century, part of a small circle of well-accepted composers that includes Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Paul Hindemith, the Second Viennese School of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern and others. According to the usual litany, the Second Viennese School is so-called as a reference to the first circle of three composers associated with Vienna: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Alas, things did not quite work out as expected, as the Second School has not had nearly the impact and lasting importance that the first did. Indeed, in retrospect we can see the very use of the term “Second Viennese School” as a bit of propaganda. The trio of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern were intended to be the new ‘normal’, the center of musical thought, while people like Stravinsky, Messiaen and Bartók were arms extending from this center, each with their own flavor: Stravinsky was the Russian and brought the exotic colors of that frontier of European civilization; Messiaen was French and brought another whole palette of sound while Bartok was Hungarian and brought the textures and rhythms of Central European folk music to the table. But this model has some flaws. For one thing, the Second Viennese School has ceased to be the dominant influence as the atonal methods pioneered by Schoenberg have almost entirely disappeared from contemporary composition.

Instead, it is ideas found in those 'peripheral' composers that have proved more lasting. Stravinsky, for example, set out in a number of different directions after his initial Russian period. He is known for a style called ‘neo-classicism’ which uses structures from earlier musical periods. Messiaen developed his own set of influences including birdsong, religious references and theories of rhythm and modality owing little to the Viennese composers. And Bartók, apart from a host of influences from many kinds of folk music, used some interesting concepts from mathematics including the Fibonacci series. But as we move further into the 21^st century some of these composers, like Stravinsky, continue to be very important, while others, like Hindemith, seem less and less so. I think that the music of Bartók is starting to diminish in influence and importance. This is a personal view, of course, so let me lay out what it is based on. More and more, as I hear Bartók these days, I am less and less satisfied with his music. His string quartets, for example, were supposed to be the big revival of the genre in the 20^th century (his were composed between 1908 And 1939) after it became more and more shapeless and flabby during the 19^th century.

The Romantic Era, while succeeding magnificently in the areas of opera, piano and symphony, is notoriously weak in chamber music. You wouldn’t know it from string quartet programs these days which tend to feature large 19^th century quartets in the second half, but the truth is that Brahms, Mendelssohn and Dvorak cannot compare with Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven in the area of string quartets. Bartók brought a whole new energy to the string quartet with new rhythms, new harmonies and new effects like the so-called ‘Bartok’ pizzicato (which was anticipated by blues players like Robert Johnson, by the way). But his quartets, like the rest of his music, tend to the ugly. I’m sorry, but there is just no other way to say it: the melodies are grim, the harmonies are unpleasantly dissonant and the rhythms unrelenting. The music is dark-hued and glum—all the time!

Contrast Bartók’s quartets with those of a 20^th century composer I have not—intentionally—mentioned: Dmitri Shostakovich. Bartók famously satirized Shostakovich in his Concerto for Orchestra. All the members of the inner circle of the avant-garde looked down on Shostakovich for the unforgivable sin of writing music that was passé, that used obsolete forms like the symphony, that was written in keys, that was not fashionable according to their lights. But it was really Shostakovich that revived the string quartet, not Bartok. He wrote fifteen as opposed to Bartók’s six and they are performed more and more to great audience acclaim. Neither Bartok nor anyone else in the 20^th century wrote a quartet as powerful as Shostakovich’s eighth. Indeed, I heard a concert last summer where the quartet played the 8^th sandwiched between two particularly good quartets by Haydn and Beethoven and the audience’s most enthusiastic applause was for the Shostakovich. The Emerson Quartet made their name partly by giving concerts in which they played all the Bartok quartets in one evening and did a spectacular job. That is a good way to listen to them because it makes you really focus on them—but at the same time it avoids comparison with other composers like Shostakovich. It would be very interesting to program Bartok and Shostakovich side by side. Luckily, on the internet, we can do almost anything. First, the beginning movement of Bartók's 5th Quartet (1934) played by the Julliard Quartet:

 Now, the first two movements of Shostakovich's 8th Quartet (1960):

Theorists love analyzing Bartók, but have mostly avoided Shostakovich. There are a number of reasons for this, the first being, as I mentioned above, that Shostakovich was beyond the pale according to the Deuteronomy of 20th century composition: Schoenberg begat Berg and Webern who begat Boulez and Stockhausen and also in their tribe were Bartók and Ligeti, etc. Also, Bartók is beloved of theorists because of his methods. They have found beautiful symmetries and asymmetries, mathematical proportions, axes of pitches and so on--all stuff theorists love to get their teeth into. Just how Shostakovich wrote his music is a little less easy to uncover and most of the basic research has yet to be done.

My critique is not based on theoretical loveliness, but more on things like mood and beauty. Absurd, I know! Why, with the right theoretical toolbox you can prove that Bartók wrote great music, but beauty? That reminds me of a theorist of many years ago, whose name I forget, who spent a great deal of time pointing out all the contrapuntal options Bach did not choose and how unfortunate it was. Theory has its limitations and stops just at the point where aesthetics begins. In my rather non-progressive view, the end of art is beauty. This may be achieved in many, many ways, but art that ignores beauty completely is not of interest to me (nor most audiences). Both the Bartók and the Shostakovich quartets are highly-regarded. But I find the Bartók one to be not beautiful but grim, grey, gleamless, nearly unrelenting. I find the Shostakovich to be, while deeply emotional, also beautiful. This is achieved by sensitive nuances of harmony. We could do some analysis, mentioning the unification of the whole quartet with the D E flat, C, B motif that is a translation of Shostakovich's name into notes: DSCH, but theory doesn't prove aesthetic quality with either composer. You just have to listen. So listen a few times and tell me what you think...

UPDATE: Evaluations in my mind are never final. I always like to go back and have another look. So I listened to the Bartók Third Quartet again.

The last part, from 3:30 on is very cool. I love the glissandi. What do you think?