Bartók: Music for S, P & C, first movement

Béla Bartók (1881 - 1945)

When I was taking the graduate seminar 20th Century Theory and Analysis we spent some time with Bartók and I recall the professor recoiling in horror when I suggested that the first movement of Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (composed in 1936) was a fugue. Now of course he was right in that it is not a traditional or conventional fugue, but rather a piece written following Bartók's own unique system of melody and harmony (not to mention rhythm). But I was also right in that it presents all the traditional gestures of a fugue and the listener is meant to hear it in that sense, but with Bartók's re-envisioning and revitalizing of the conventional form. So what I am going to do is show how this movement is a fugue, with all the characteristic elements of a fugue including subjects, inversions of subjects, stretto, episodes and so on. And I am going to show how this all fits into Bartók's harmonic and melodic system.

Incidentally, the introductory note in the score on the structure of the first movement states quite clearly that it is a "fairly strictly executed form of a fugue." What the theory professor was demonstrating was his adherence to the modernist narrative of 20th century music and its avant-garde rejection of musical tradition. Bartók, being one of the founders of 20th century modernism in music, should not be tied to musical traditions such as the fugue in his view. Bartók was certainly a musical progressive, but his musical language has deep roots both in folk musics and past musical traditions.

Fugue from Another Planet

I choose this subtitle because what Bartók has done is give us what is identifiable, in whole and in parts, as a fugue in the Bachian sense, but at the same time he has managed to make it sound utterly unlike the sound of a Bach fugue. Let's look at how he accomplishes this. Here is the subject as first presented and it begins on A:

Click to enlarge

And here is the answer beginning on E (I'm not showing the entire answer so as to save space) which appears at the fifth, just as it should in a fugue:

Click to enlarge

Then there is an entry in the cellos on D (bass clef and again, I am not showing all the subject):

There follows an entry in the violins on B, an episode and then another entry in the violins on F# (treble clef):

I mentioned inversion and stretto as two other traditional fugal devices that Bartók uses. Here is an example. The first segment of the subject is inverted and layered on top of itself through all the strings from top to bottom:

Stated like that, this seems rather like a traditional fugue. But let's take a look at that subject. Apart from that C# it looks a lot like A Phrygian. But notice that the subject spans the space between A and E-flat in its first two segments. One of the main characteristics of Bartók's approach to pitch, both melodic and harmonic, is to create symmetries where traditional harmony uses asymmetries. The overall layout of this first movement displays different kinds of symmetries. First, this A to E-flat movement is the main structural feature of the movement: it begins on A and the climax is on E flat:

Of course, the main structural pitches in traditional harmony are the tonic, subdominant and dominant, which asymmetrically divide the octave. Using the tritone above A, the E-flat, symmetrically divides the octave in half. At the very end is a little coda that is a kind of summary of the overall structure (treble clef):

Antokoletz' fascinating book on Bartók includes this example that shows two other kinds of symmetries in this movement:

Click to enlarge

Here he shows two other ways Bartók structures the movement. Beginning on the initial A, the upper staff shows how he creates entries of the subject each a perfect fifth higher than the last: A, E, B, F#, C#, G# and finally E flat (enharmonic of D#). Interwoven with that is a movement down by perfect fifths: A, D, G, C, F, B-flat and finally E-flat. Two interlocking symmetries both arriving at E-flat!

Summary

The Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is a major classic of 20th century music. To my knowledge it was the first piece written using the "Music for ..." type of title that has been used by innumerable composers ever since. The composition owes its genealogy to both the sonata da chiesa of the Baroque in its slow-fast-slow-fast movement structure and to the 18th century Viennese symphony in its purely instrumental four movement layout ending with a quick dance-like movement. It is as close as Bartók got to writing a symphony, but he wanted to underline his status as a musical innovator so he chose a neutral title (and one that many other composers have found useful). Another major innovation is the division of the orchestra into two "choirs" or groups separated in space in order to make use of the very old 17th techniques of the Gabrielis in San Marco in Venice where the different instrumental groups answered and echoed one another--a technique that had fallen completely into disuse by the early 20th century.

Now let's have a listen to one of the greatest pieces of 20th century music. First the RIAS Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ferenc Fricsay with the score.

Next a performance by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada: