B. Bartok – Concerto for Orchestra

Concerto for Orchestra is Bela Bartok’s final work, it is an homage to Bach’s fugues, Schoeberg’s atonality, traditional Eastern European music and, in part (well, just in the fourth movement), his hatred of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 7.

Firstly, to explain the last point, When Bartok was writing the fourth movement he heard the 7^th Symphony come on the radio and was enraged at, what he believed to be was, trite and militaristic music being so popular. Bartok incorporated a bastardised part of the symphony in the 4^th movement, out of spite.

Bartok was in poor health when he wrote this, having just fled from the Nazi’s in Europe and leaving all his financial backers there he come to America quite paranoid, until he was commissioned by the Boston symphony Orchestra to write this piece, it revived him.

This is a 5 movement piece,

1. introduzione
2. guico delle Coppie (Game of Pairs)
3. Elegie
4. Intermezzo Interrotto (interrupted)
5. Finale

The First and fifth movements are both in Sonato form. The First movement also uses drone (found in folk musics) with a melody played by the higher register instruments over the top, Bartok also plays with atonality between the drone and the melody giving it a perverted Eastern European sound, it also creates a quiet, and subtle tension. The themes presented here are not so much melodic ideas as they are rhythmic idea, any melodic idiom they posses is overshadowed by the atonality. For me, the best thing about atonality is that it makes me stop searching for a melody (which is what I’m used to when listening to music) and makes me focus on other aspects, such as the discordance or sweetness of individual harmonies as snapshots, or rhythmic complexity, or the effect of register on a piece as a compositional tool independent from harmony and tonality.

- Jamie

Bela Bartok – Music For Percussion Strings and Celeste

A very intriguing piece of music. I have decided to analyse only the first movement.

It was interesting to note that the set up for this orchestra is to have two separate strings sections, set on opposite sides of the stage, with the pitched and un-pitched percussion placed in between. Another interesting bit of trivia, was that the name of the piece was supposed to just be the working title, but in the end stayed, as no other name seemed fit.

The opening movement, Andante tranquillo, is a slow fugue based on a chromatic melody of  five notes. Each successive phrase grows in length and elaborates on the one before. At this point, the two string orchestras begin to play together. As the string build up, the fugue’s texture becomes more intricate and the chromatic implications of the theme are brought to a very dissonant completion . The fugue climaxes at its peak with an ominous rumble from the timpani and a loud stroke on the tam-tam. As the fugue folds in upon itself, we hear the celeste for the first time with an arpeggiated chord, mysterious and remote.

It is form this movement that the rest of the work finds, uses and manipulates its melodic material.

Overall a very eerie and ethereal work that does a great job in building suspense.

Emma

Bartok – Concerto for Orchestra

I’ve previously looked at MVT IV of this piece, the Intermezzo. I will be looking, instead at the second movement, largely because of the unique historical

I’ll start by saying that Bartok is a fairly unusual composer. He was born in 1881 and only really composed in the 20th century. His sound, however, whilst definitely 20th century, started off very late romantic sounding, and often sounded neoromantic and neoclassical nearer the end of his life, but with a definite 20th century sparkle care of multi-tonality and general abandonment of classical harmony and tonality. Concerto for Orchestra was infact one of the last 4 pieces he wrote (of which he only completed 3) before he died of leukemia in 1945, and is rich in texture and harmony while still being easily accessible to a very wide range of audiences.

This next paragraph is a quote from Wiki.

The second movement, called Game of Pairs (but see note below), is in five sections, each thematically distinct from each other, with a different pair of instruments playing together in each section. In each passage a different interval separates the pair—bassoons are a minor sixth apart, oboes are in minor thirds, clarinets in minor sevenths, flutes in fifths and muted trumpets in major seconds. The movement prominently features a side drum which taps out a rhythm at the beginning and end of the movement.

What I enjoyed most about this piece was the range of the different styles that Bartok uses. In particular the sudden change to this almost military chorale at 123, with very evocative and stylistic voice leading in a brass quintet, with added side drum for emphasis. This is then carried over into the next section of the movement, and then it vanishes. I like this fairly sectional style of composing, as I think it’s very much the way that I work when composing (section by section – oh a nice chorale would sound awesome here), but what Bartok does, and I don’t, is to blend between the sections, creating one very smooth piece and sound, and it doesn’t make it seem so angular and sectional, but rather very naturally flowing. By carrying over the sound of the chorale just for a little while into the next section, over which a flute, oboe and clarinet do a little duet (well, as much as 3 instruments can do a duet… but is 3 instruments soloing together a triet?), it definitely makes a big difference and I’ll have to use this in my own composing.

Harmonically, the chorale is fairly interesting as well. I did a quick chord analysis on the section played by the brass quintet (well, I worked out what each chord was).

Interestingly, immediately after the chorale like section, which is a step away from the rest of the movement, we move straight into a recapitulation of the first section of the movement. It is almost an exact copy-paste, just slightly reorchestrated with additional instruments such as the harp. And finally, the movement ends with the side-drum solo from the start. It is almost palindromic, and works very well.

Rhythmically this movement is fairly boring. There are a couple of quintuplets again triplets, and a couple of instances of septuplets, but they appear very infrequently. There is an interesting offbeat semiquaver motif at 57-58 and again at 210-211 in the recapitulation, where the emphasis is of the offbeat semiquaver for two bars, so when we arrive at the next bar and the beat is suddenly on 1 again, there is a feeling almost as though the next bar arrived too early, even though everything lines up exactly.

So yeah, 500 words on Bartok. Enjoy.

Saska

Bartok, B. Mikrokosmos Vol. 1

He uses a strong sense of contrast to transform the character of the music throughout the short sections. In the first section there is a manic crazed feel, with a highly energized rhythmic line and staccato melodic line.  This then abruptly transforms to a more gentle, lyrical character with the melodic line suddenly being legato and sweeping with diatonic glissandi. This then transforms again back to the crazes manic character. The character is constantly changing and transforming throughout, mostly through the use of contrast.

- Sascha

Béla Bartók – Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm (Mikrokosmos Vol.6/148-153)

It's a bird... with the word "Beef?"... TRUE COMEDY!

Mikrokosmos is a series of six books, in which the pieces get progressively more difficult. The idea is that you could start from the beginning and get progressively better by learning the pieces in order. Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm, the last 6 pieces, are most difficult pieces in the series, and display have some very interesting rhymic ideas.

#148, featured a very interesting way of grouping the notes. Basically the time signature was 9/8, grouped into 4+2+3. The create a strong driving movement in the bars, and they seemed to speed up throughout the bar then return at the beginning of a new bar. On that note the tempo had to be written very interestingly due to the odd time, with a quaver at 350. The end was particularly interesting when he had the right hand play a descending octave melody leaving gaps for the left hand to accent the rhythm.

#149 was grouped into 2+2+3, so 7/8, and featured some very close melodic ideas. The main feature of this piece I think was the repeated notes being accented by a chord. Bartok has both the right and left hand play the same note alternating, with the left hand accenting with a chord. The melodies were all very close, in the sense of being very chromatic.

#150. Yes. I am going to tell you the time signature each time. 5/8 was this piece. (grouped general as 2+3)  The main idea in this piece was an ostinato in the right hand playing a straight quaver rhythm with a 2 chords in the left playing a 2+3 rhythm. This made it sound wonderfully awkward, and a nice little gesture is the conclusion of the phrase with a cheeky high register minor-second.

#151. 8/8… grouped as 3+2+3. This is probably the most fluent sounding of the 6 pieces, with the omission of an awkward time signature, despite the grouping being rather interesting. 3+2+3 as a structure was very strange for me to listen to, because I am much more used to 3+3+2, so I often got confused as to where the bars began. Very off-putting, but at the same time a very cool thing to listen to. I really liked a part near the end where the right hand played the rhythm 3+2+3 and the left did a straight quaver run, then in the next bar they came together. It was a very powerful gesture.

#152 9/8 again, this time in 2+2+2+3. And helllloooo tritones. This piece had a very dissonant feel to it, with many minor seconds and tritones throughout. It seemed to be a juxtaposition of consonance and dissonance, with harmonic ideas almost in stark contrast with each other, but retaining similiar rhythmic structures (and contour).

#153 Speaking of 3+3+2, yay! It finally came, and this is probably my favorite of the six pieces. Probably because I can relate to the rhythm. In fact this piece reminded me of some Final Fantasy pieces, with its really demanding and driving rhythmic focus. One of the interesting things that Bartok does right at the beginning that I almost didn’t notice was switch the chords and fast octave playing between registers. It is done so fluidly that I probably would have missed it without a score. I love how he sets a tonality in the driving octave bass quavers and changes it with a whole load of different chords in the RH.

.endtransmission

Nathan

Bela Bartok – Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

There’s a bit of a story behind my listening study for this piece. I originally booked the microscore out about two months ago, read through it, listened to it and made absolutely no sense of it, partially due to scheduling restraints and partially because I didn’t know where to start. Then I renewed the loan from the library for another two weeks to the same result. So, not being deterred, when I went to the library last week to catch up on this score study, I was determined to give this another try.

I’m going to focus on the first movement with a brief comment on the second, Andante Tranquillo and Allegro, respectively.

First, a comment on the piece as a whole. It explores stereoscopic sound effects (Bartok divides the strings into two groups which he directs should be placed antiphonally on opposite sides of the stage, and he makes use of antiphonal effects particularly in the second and fourth movements[1]) and the idea of symmetry as a compositional basis.

So, the first movement is a fugue which explores both the stereo principle mentioned above and the idea of symmetry. The fugal subject is based around the tone centre of A, but this section is written without key signature, using accidentaly. This makes it rather annoying to follow, but serves the purpose of the piece very well, which I’ll look at soon. The fugal subject goes from A to E, and explores all 12 semitones between the two notes at some stage. This is not 12-tone music, though, as the stress is still on A as the tone centre.

As the movement develops and what ultimately ends up being five voices plus small percussion parts steadily move in stereo away from the A that it begins on around the cycle of fifths, leading to a very large expansion of texture and sound.

As illustrated there.

This comes back together at the end of the movement with a lovely condensed version of this form played on the strings, the subject and its inversion played simultaneously.

Some other characteristics of note in this movement are the shifting time signatures and the beatiful arpeggiations on the Celesta, the well written percussion parts and of course the conventional (or perhaps tonal) harmony rule-breaking that goes on frequently. The second last note of the fugal entry (above) is, I believe, a diminished third, and intervals of this nature occure frequently throughout due to the nature of the music.

A brief note about movement 2 and beyond

This movement explores more obviously the stereo qualities of the sound, with the split string sections performing different parts.

As the piece unfolds through all four movements, the fugue subject is restated in different ways throughout the piece, which adds a high level of continuinity considering how much the piece itself changes.

References
[1] Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_for_Strings,_Percussion_and_Celesta

And…

http://solomonsmusic.net/diss7.htm (very useful, and the source of the images)

-VG

Bela Bartok: Mikrokosmos Vol. 1

This is not really a ‘piece’, but rather a collection of very short theoretical exercises in composition and should really have been one of the very first score studies I did. The note on the list mentioned transformation, or taking a musical idea and manipulating it in many different ways. In fact, throughout the whole book (which is not very long, at least Vol. 1 alone is not very long) there are only about three distinct musical ideas. In fact, looking back through the book, there is only one distinct musical idea, and everything else is either a modified version of that idea (starting an ascending, five note run on D (D C D E F) rather than C (C D E F G), for example) or utilizing the concept of transformation.
This volume covers Unisen Melodies, dotted notes, repetition, syncopation, with alternate hands, parallel motion, reflection, change of position, question and answer, ‘village song’, parallel motion and change of position, contrary motion, imitationand counterpoint, inversion and the forms of chorale and canon, plus some modal transposition in Dorian and Phrygian.

The short piece in Phrygian was my favourite, and that has everything to do with the mode. The other great thing about reading and listening to this work is the variation that comes from extremely simple ideas.

The whole work is kind of written as a guide to these aspects of composition, for solo piano, but what you could do with the knowledge is near limitless.

-VG

Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra

Hey guys,

This week I chose the afore-mentioned work for study. I haven’t listened to Bartok before, through a recording or by going to a live performance, and I’m suprised that I haven’t, because I rather liked this piece.

Bartok uses atonalism, and subsequently incorporates intervals such as major 7ths at cadences and also appears to use the tritone a fair bit. Yes, itervals such as major 3rds, etc, do appear, but I was particularly struck by how he uses intervals which I would normally regard as ‘dissonant’ for the basis for harmony and particularly at cadences.

Listening to the work, I noticed my ears took a little while to adjust, but once they did, I quite enjoyed it (and I’ve actually never been a fan of atonalism).  As you said, Saska, dissonance is thouroughly subjective and it appears to me that Bartok wanted his listeners to hear consonance it what was generally regarded as not. I think he achieves this through his orchestration and articulation; personally, I consider some of the chords in Stravinsky’s Rite Of Spring because they are heavily accented and are produced with a combination of metallic sounds (in the example I’m thinking of, they are played by strings and brass). By orchestrating his piece such that woodwinds play lyric melodies, strings sing waltzes, etc – all features of, say, the symphonies of Mozart and Haydn, Bartok’s music appears to be inclusive in its intention.

Perhaps the thing that I took away from it was that qualities we listen for to make the ideal melody – shape, balance – and also the use of contrast, can be applied to atonal music, which can really be quite beautiful.

Bela Bartok – The Miraculous Mandarin

The Miraculous Mandarin, The Wonderful Mandarin, A csodálatos mandarin;  Der Wunderbare Mandarin (Hungarian and German).

Part 1:

And click here for part two.
When you listen to Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin, you’re struck by how vivid the musical imagery is. Originally written as a Ballet performance, The Miraculous Mandarin‘s music is dramatic and full of contrast. Indeed, as you read the mini-score, you can almost see the phrases as if it were parts of a novel.

Bartok is somewhat famous for his use of additive and shifting metre, and this work is certainly no exception. I wanted to find out how a conductor would beat this piece, which led me to the Youtube links above. Unfortunately, they didn’t shed a lot of light on it. The search continued, leading me to another youtube video on the matter, this time the beating is clearly visible and some of the mystery becomes a little clearer: unless absolutely necessary, the conductor is not beating a down beat. In the first section, in 6/8, he is beating what looking like a two-beat feel, which breaks the 14 note sections into two lots of 7, which is a really nice rhythmic contrast against the regular 6/8 that accompanies this string part.

In this piece, Bartok uses repeating themes for character recognition, the use of which helps with the narrative quality of the music. For example, when the Mandarin bleeds, there is glissendo on the trombones, indicating the blood falling to the floor. This theme of falling is not only repeated when the Mandarin bleeds, but when the other two victims die and, eventually, when the Mandarin dies, which eventually ends the entire piece. The chaotic sebtuplet runs are also a recurring theme.

For tension, Bartok uses the tritone interval frequently, along with the minor 2nd/minor 9th, which, in some places according to Wikipedia (I tried to find them, but could not) this is notated as an augmented octave, ie. C – C#(8va).  Learning this led me to realise that there is no key signature at all on the score, Bartok preferred, it seems, to notate all the accidentals. Why? Perhaps it was easier than changing keys and then notating accidentals in that key. Perhaps it was the occasional use of quartertones on the violin.

I’ve listened to some of Bartok’s other work before, for String Quartet, and like Mahler, he shows an extremely mature understanding of how to arrange for an orchestra. Not only was he a very good composer, but also a great arranger. This piece shows exceptional musical, rhythmic and dynamic interplay between the various instruments and section.

I think that studying Bartok should banish any disbelief in the validity of the fields of Musicology and Ethnomusicology. But what did I learn about composition? First: to study a piece as complex as this and write about it, takes a few tries. It is fast and chaotic and ordered and beautiful, but trying to read through the score, when it changes page layout configurations, is very tough. This piece very much reinforced my belief in the imagery of music and in the ability to make alternating time signatures sound smooth. Sometimes composers don’t do this, either intentionally or unintentionally, and even more the case with modern rock musicians (and jazz, too) who want to make rhythmically complex music but can’t make it flow. The biggest lesson here, on reading the story of the piece on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra page listed below, was to run with inspiration. It turned out to be, by common consensus, one of Bartok’s best works.

On Bartok’s influence on Ethnomusicology: after trips to countries neighbouring his native Hungary, and also to Turkey and North Africa, Bartok catalogued and even recorded a large quantity of folk musics from these regions. This influenced his composition greatly, but it also helped start the study of ethnomusicology.

“Today we recognize his fascination with the music of other lands and other peoples not only as an important preface to the field of ethnomusicology, but also as the life-changing experience that made him a composer of substance, curiosity, and enduring stature.” (From the Chicago Symphony Orchestra page on The Miraculous Mandarin)

-VG