Béla Bartók - A (rather long) Short Biography

By Judith Eckelmeyer

(GRACE WOODS MUSIC SESSION JUNE 24, 2025)

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Béla Bartók in 1927

If one were to list a half-dozen of this century's most unique and influential composers, Béla Bartók's name would certainly be among them. Bartók's music contains an organic structural cohesiveness in some way akin to but quite distinct from the dodecaphonic serialism of Schoenberg and his successors; at the same time his music shows enormous rhythmic and harmonic vitality, the result of his lifelong conscious integration of characteristic folk elements, which he himself identified during years of research in remote districts of Eastern Europe and North Africa. Neither associated with a particular "school" of compositional style nor the "father" of a stylistic trend himself, Bartók nonetheless remains in our time a composer whose music contains its own kind of remarkable, strong beauty.

Born on March 25, 1881, in Nagyszentmiklós in the Torontál district of Hungary (now a part of Romania), Bartók very early displayed musical gifts. As a child having overcome a number of serious illnesses, he began his formal education and his musical training, principally studying piano with his mother. Shortly thereafter, his father died and Bartók's mother supported the family by teaching piano students. At the age of eleven Bartók presented a piano recital in which he performed one of his own dance pieces. Soon after this concert, the family moved to the active cultural city, Pozsony (now Bratislava), where Bartók completed his schooling and studied piano and harmony with pianist and conductor László Erkel. In Pozsony and later at the Academy of Music in Budapest, Bartók's keyboard skill was considered remarkable; and in spite of his acquaintance with the music of Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner, Liszt's dazzling virtuosic piano works and great technical display in performances interested him as an artist. ​

Bartók's signature on his high-school-graduation photograph, dated 9 September 1899.

László Erkel and wife.

Two concurrent events turned Bartók's early compositional life around. The easiest to document is his reaction to the first performance in Budapest of Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra in 1902. According to Bartók's 1921 autobiographical account of the event, translated by Eva Hajnol-Konyi in Béla Bartók: A Memorial Review (Boosey and Hawkes, New York, 1950), Strauss' music aroused him "as by a lightning stroke," showing him "a way of composing which seemed to hold the seeds of a new life." A year later he completed Kossuth, a symphonic poem modeled after Strauss' A Hero's Life.

Strauss' Thus Sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30
Conductor: Georg Solti & Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Bartók's Kossuth
BFO/FISCHER

Strauss' Ein Heldenleben - A Hero's Life, Op.40 (1898) 
​Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra | Manfred Honeck

The second impact on Bartók's composing at about the same time was the re-emergence of nationalism in Hungary. Looking back on this era in his life, Bartók wrote in his autobiographical note: "In my studies of folk-music I discovered that what we had known as Hungarian folk songs till then were more or less trivial songs by popular composers and did not contain much that was valuable. I felt an urge to go deeper into this question and set out in 1905 to collect and study Hungarian peasant music unknown until then. It was my great good luck to find a helpmate for this work in Zoltán Kodály, who, owning to his deep insight and sound judgement in all spheres of music, could give me many a hint and much advice that proved of immense value. I started these investigations on entirely musical grounds and pursued them in areas which linguistically were purely Hungarian. Later on I became fascinated by the scientific implications of my musical material and extended my work over territories which were linguistically Slovakian and Roumanian."

Zoltán Kodály in the 1930s.

Bartók's subsequent systematic treatment of the authentic Magyar peasant music distinguished him from his nationalistic predecessors, Ferenc (Franz) Liszt and Ferenc Erkel (László's father), whose "Hungarian" style reflected a westernized "verbunkos" gypsy music. In field research with Kodály, Bartók devised a means of collecting, transcribing, and codifying the peasants' songs and instrumental music, recording their performances on an Edison phonograph and wax cylinders. But Bartók, unlike Kodály, explored far beyond the Magyar region, eventually expanding his ethnomusicological studies to include the folk styles of the Arabs of North Africa and nomadic tribes of Turkey in his attempt to determine the cultural relationships between peoples whose music contained similar melodic, structural, and textual characteristics. The scientific thoroughness of his research and the precision with which he analyzed and presented his findings established a precedent for later ethnomusicologists.

Béla Bartók using a phonograph to record Slovak folk songs sung by peasants in Zobordarázs.

The importance of the folk studies is of paramount importance to Bartók's musical development. They provided a body of usable source material to be transplanted into his own compositions and t a data bank for re-evaluating the structural elements of his musical language. In his autobiographical note he wrote: "The outcome of these studies was of decisive influence upon my work, because it freed me from the tyrannical rule of the major and minor keys. The greater part of the collected treasure, and the more valuable part, was in old ecclesiastical or old Greek modes, or based on more primitive (pentatonic) scales, and the melodies were full of most free and varied rhythmic phrases and changes of tempi, played both rubato and giusto (strict). It became clear to me that the old modes, which had been forgotten in our music, had lost nothing of their vigor. Their new employment made new rhythmic combinations possible.  This new way of using the diatonic scale brought freedom from the rigid use of major and minor keys, and eventually led to a new conception of the chromatic scale, every tone of which came to be considered of equal value and could be used freely and independently."  ​

Bartók applied these insights only gradually to his compositions; the earliest mature works (from approximately 1903 to 1906) are principally under the influence of Beethoven, Liszt, Strauss, and Brahms; and outside of the Twenty Hungarian Folksongs of 1906, in which he collaborated with Kodály, very little of the new folk elements appear in his formal works of this time.

By 1905 Bartók was a formidable pianist as well as an aspiring composer. In 1907, however, he was appointed to head the piano faculty at the Academy of Music in Budapest, a position he retained for nearly thirty years. In the same year, through Kodály's influence, he began studying Debussy's music, seeing in the pentatonic devices a stylistic link with Eastern European peasant music.
From this time onward, Bartók's compositional maturation was evident in the First String Quartet (1908), the Allegro Barbaro (1911), Bluebeard's Castle (1911), and numerous works for piano. However, there was very little programming or public acceptance of his works, except through the determined efforts of Ferrucio Busoni in Berlin and the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet, who performed his First String Quartet in major cities in Hungary and throughout Western Europe.

Bartók String Quartet no 1
​Dale Barltrop, Violin I | Francesca Hiew, Violin II | Stephen King, Viola | Sharon Grigoryan, Cello

Bartók's Allegro Barbaro
Zoltan Kocsis, piano

The outbreak of World War I, coming on the heels of Bartók's 1913 research trip to North Africa, prohibited the composer's travel beyond Hungary. After the war, famine, political upheaval in Hungary, and Bartók's own illness became significant impediments to composition, yet he was able to complete one of his principal works, The Miraculous Mandarin, in 1919. ​

Béla Bartók: The Miraculous Mandarin / Zubin Mehta, conductor · Berliner Philharmoniker

A two-year cessation of composition followed. Bartók applied for a leave of absence from the Academy of Music because of his ill health, but decided to remain there after all, using the time to reassess his goals. In 1921 he entered a decade of active concert and compositional life, bringing out in the twenties a long list of new music and research articles, performing widely, and seeing his composition presented throughout Europe. By now his style had taken on severely dissonant and atonal characteristics arising from his construction of non-traditional scales, his use of intense "motor" rhythms with violent, irregular accents, and his increasing interest in effective exotic sonorities. Structural tightness and mathematical relationships in theme structures as well as canonic and fugal techniques reflected Bach's influence, but the unyielding hardness of sound and the severe architectonic construct in his music won little acclaim for him among the public. His works of this time were seen as assaults on the still commonly held stereotypes of "simple" folk music. Even during his visit to the United States in 1927, the focus of his public appearances was on his piano performances, while critics' opinions of his compositions remained conservatively unreceptive.

Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 1
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen
​Yuja Wang, piano

Bartók's Third String Quartet
Juilliard String Quartet
Areta Zhulla, violin | Ronald Copes, violin | Roger Tapping, viola | Astrid Schween, cello

Bartók's Fourth String Quartet
Quatuor Ebène

By 1930, having returned to Budapest, Bartók began to see more favorable public reaction to works such as Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, 1936). His publications on folk music continued. In 1934, he left his teaching position at the Academy of Music and intensified his systematic investigation of comparative folk sources. In 1937 he traveled to Turkey in what would be his last research trip on behalf of these studies.

By 1939, Nazi influence and control had spread throughout Germany and Austria and threatened to overcome Hungary. Bartók abhorred the German imposition on Hungary and resented acquiescence to it among his countrymen. When Germany invaded Austria, he sought protection for his manuscript scores, which he realized would probably be destroyed if Hungary were invaded. He sent some manuscripts to friends in Switzerland; he turned over the rights to others in preparation. After a brief concert tour in England in 1939, Bartók retired to Switzerland and began work on the Sixth String Quartet. His mother's death brought him back to Budapest, where he completed the quartet. The following year he embarked on a tour to America, seeking opportunities to enter the country on a more permanent basis. Returning briefly to Hungary in the summer of 1940, he reentered the United States with his (second) wife, Ditta, intending to remain until the war was over, if not permanently.

Bartók's Sixth String Quartet
The Juilliard String Quartet (Robert Mann - Isidore Cohen - Raphael Hillyer - Claus Adam)

Bartók's immediate acceptance in the U.S. by supporters and friends gave him access to performing opportunities, academic honors, and concert tours (one of which brought him to Cleveland). Eventually a position was created for him at Columbia University, where he began a study of Yugoslavian folk music collected on records by Harvard professor Milman Parry. The Columbia appointment was periodically jeopardized by its temporary status and lack of financial support; and in spite of the patchwork engagements largely instigated by Hungarian musicians such as Fritz Reiner, Joseph Szigeti, and Eugene Ormandy, Bartók's music was still hard to "sell" to the critics and the public. ​​

Fritz Reiner, conductor

Joseph Szigeti, violinist

Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra

The Bartóks lived in a small New York City apartment on the brink of financial disaster. In 1942 Bartók's younger son Peter joined them in New York, the one member of the family to do so. Despite the distress of insecure income, worry about the well-being of family and friends, and his own increasingly poor health, Bartók continued to compose. He completed his Sonata for Solo Violin and the Concerto for Orchestra in 1944 and saw them enthusiastically received by audiences at their first performances. He was given several commissions for new music, and with his son's assistance began work on the Viola Concerto. He never completed this concerto. 

Bartók's Sonata for Solo Violin
Yehudi Menuhin, violin

​His health, which had been especially fragile since the beginning of 1943, finally broke. A research fellowship from Columbia University and ASCAP provided support for his medical care during his last two years. In April 1944 he was diagnosed with leukemia. After only a few days in the hospital, he died of leukemia on September 26, 1945.

Statue of Bartók in Makó, Hungary.

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Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste (1936) was commissioned by Paul Sacher for the Basle Chamber Orchestra in Switzerland, which gave the first performance in January 1937, four months after it was completed in Budapest. There are a number of remarkable features to this 4-movement work.
First, its unconventional orchestration and location of the instruments on stage: strings divided into two orchestras on the conductor’s right and left; and between them the percussion consisting of pedal-tuned timpani (which can produced glissandos), bass drum, cymbals, side-drums with and without snares, celesta, xylophone, piano and harp. 
Second, the first movement (Adagio) is a fugue with a unique subject which is presented twelve times, once on every pitch at intervals of a fifth rather than the traditional tonic-dominant relationship; this exposition section ends in a fortissimo with percussion joining strings, then retreats with the subject upside-down; the celeste joins at the conclusion of the movement. 
Third, the second movement (Allegro) has varied meters and has the character of a vigorous, untamed dance.  
Fourth, Movement 3 (Adagio) exemplifies one of Bartók’s signature “inventions” in sonority—“Night Music”. Typically, Night Music is, according to David Schneider, characterized by “eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies” (Wikipedia). There are many different ways this feature is manifested across a large number of Bartók’s works. In one of the string quartets, for example, a melody representing a tárogató (a single-reed folk instrument similar to the clarinet family) sounds over a cluster of chords in the remaining string ensemble. In Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste, there are glissandos by celesta, harp and piano, unusual themes, a xylophone repeated pitch suggesting an insect, and so on.
Fifth, Bartók employs the ancient Lydian scale to recap the fugue melody of the first movement in a rondo.
Sixth, as you might have perceived by now, the music is highly structured—patterns, numerical relationships, architectonic structures of ascending and descending tones, and more. ​

Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Alan Gilbert

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Concerto for Orchestra (1943), commissioned by the Koussevitzky Foundation and premiered in 1944 by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Serge Koussevitzky’s direction, was one of the last works Bartók completed. The orchestration is large and colorful: 3 flutes/piccolo, 3 oboes/English horn, 3 clarinets/bass clarinet, 3 bassoons/contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, timpani, side drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, 2 harps and a full string section. The five movements of the work are: 
         Introduction
         Game of the Pairs: in the five sections, different pairs of instruments—bassoons, trumpets, etc.—present different themes; the pairs are different intervals apart. A rhythm tapped by the side drum introduces and ends the movement.
         Elegy: a slow movement, another instance of Night Music. 
         Interrupted Intermezzo: a lyrical melody with varying time signatures is interrupted rudely by a quotation of a banal tune from Franz Lehar’s Merry Widow, which Shostakovich used in his Seventh Symphony (“Leningrad”) to reference the German invasion of Russia in WWII. Bartók may have been parodying Lehar or Shostakovich, or both. In any case, the orchestra ridicules the theme with laughter.
         Finale: a perpetual motion with folk melodies and fugal moments, a tour de force for the orchestra. 
 
Herbert Glass provided the following quote of Bartók in the notes for the 2019 performance of the work by the L.A. Philharmonic:
         “The general mood of the work represents, apart from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death-song of the third, to the life-assertion of the last one… The title of the symphony-like orchestral work is explained by its tendency to treat the single orchestral instruments in a concertant or soloistic manner. The ‘virtuoso’ treatment appears, for instance, in the fugato sections of the development of the first movement (brass instruments), or in the perpetuum mobile-like passage of the principal theme in the last movement (strings), and especially in the second movement, in which pairs of instruments consecutively appear with brilliant passages.”
Audience and critical response to the work was overwhelming approval from the outset.

Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Serge Koussevitzky

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Judith Eckelmeyer ©2025