--- In belabartokclub@yahoogroups.com, Angela Jöbstl
<angela79at@y...> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I need some information on Allegro Barbaro and also on either Suite
> Op.14 Sz.62 or Piano sonata Sz.80. With information I mean
structur,
> harmony, ... I couldn't find any good homepage on Bartók.
>
> Best wishes,
> Angela


go to yahoo-advanced search and type in: allegro barbaro analysis

this willl bring up many sites among them:
www.hungary.com/hungq/no147/p.124.htm
www.precollege.juilliard.edu/pages/Composers/Bios/Bartok.htm

and:

Excerpt from Bartók and the Piano: A Performer's View
All rights reserved. Barbara Nissman, 2001
Introduction

I must state that all my music is determined by instinct and
sensibility; no one need ask me why I wrote this or that or did
something in this rather than in that way. I could not give any
explanation other than I felt this way, or I wrote it down this way.
I never created new theories in advance. This attitude does not mean
that I composed without set plans and without sufficient control. The
plans were concerned with the spirit of the new work and with
technical problems (for instance formal structure involved by the
spirit of the work) all more or less instinctively felt.

---Béla Bartók1

Bartók never believed in theories or trusted theorists, and he had
good reason, for his music defies pigeonholing. The more deeply one
explores his piano music, the more it resists categorization. In
other words, there are no easy solutions to tackling Bartók's piano
music. There are no sets of prescribed rules or formulas to follow
when studying each work. The performer must find and follow the path
the composer walked, discarding all preconceptions. Bartók forces the
pianist to approach his music with an open mind, a flexible soul, and
very good ears.

I am neither a music theorist, a historian, nor a
musicologist. I am a pianist and a performer. I did not set out to
write a book about Bartók's piano music. It would be more accurate
for me to say that the book found me. While preparing Bartók's piano
music for recording, I started exploring a wide range of literature
written about this difficult repertoire in hopes of clarifying my
task at the keyboard. (See the annotated bibliography at the
conclusion of the book.) I was looking for material from the Bartók
scholars, expert advice I could use to benefit my interpretations at
the piano. From some Bartók specialists, I gained an increased
understanding of his harmonic language; from others, a heightened
awareness of his ethnomusicological frame of reference. But it was
the performer's viewpoint I craved. I wanted to know how Bartók, the
pianist/performer, approached his music.

I was stunned to discover that Bartók's piano output-- a
total of over 300 works, including the 153 pieces from Mikrokosmos--
had never been discussed in print primarily from the place where the
music had been conceived, at the piano and from the point of view of
the performer. Himself a student of a Liszt pupil, Bartók was
primarily a pianist; he played, performed, and edited most of the
standard and early keyboard literature.2 Although he became well
known as an ethnomusicologist, Bartók never labeled himself a
theorist or musicologist. A formidable pianist, he was probably at
his most adventurous and most natural self when composing for the
keyboard.

What I gained from this exploration strengthened my
determination to return to the piano, to the printed score and the
words of the composer. In retrospect, I am delighted to have
approached Bartók's piano music without preconceptions, including
those of my teacher, pianist György Sándor, who was a pupil of
Bartók. The discipline I imposed on myself was to start with the
music, a fresh score without any pencil markings. As I studied this
repertoire, I became more comfortable with its new language. I began
to discover, and then I began to hear. Fortunately, Bartók has left a
vast pianistic legacy with detailed indications and keen observations
entered in the scores. The real authority on Bartók's piano music
remains Bartók, and the principal source materials are his music and
his words.

In trying to extract the composer's intent a performer
must find the way through vast amounts of instruction. Without
musical compromise, the performer must then reinterpret, using his or
her own voice at the piano and communicating as convincingly as
possible a personal interpretation of the composer's wishes. Any one
page of Bartók's piano writing is filled with meticulous dynamic,
articulation, and metronome markings, and timings calculated to the
exact second. This complex music requires intelligence and effort.
The brain must first decipher it and organize it; only then can the
task of learning begin. Bartók makes pianists learn another language--
his language-- and demands that they speak it as if it were their
mother tongue.

I have waded through the mass of details in each of
Bartók's scores and wrestled with each work's technical problems and
musical difficulties. Perhaps my observations will be helpful in
guiding the eye and ear during the initial learning process. At the
very least, my conclusions will provide a catalyst for discussion and
exchange of ideas. Isn't that why we want to hear different
interpretations of the same musical work and also want to hear the
same work performed by interesting artists more than once? A phrase
in the hands of one pianist sparks an idea, which is absorbed and
digested in a different manner by another. I have written this book
not to instruct but to give enabling guidelines to further an
understanding of Bartók's piano music.

My concentration is on the major piano works in the
repertoire, with separate chapters devoted to the most difficult and
challenging masterworks: the Out of Doors suite, the Sonata (1926),
and the three piano concertos. Each chapter also includes an overview
and more general discussion of Bartók's related minor works. The
decision to focus on the standard repertory of the advanced pianist
precluded my writing in depth about more than a selection of pieces
from Mikrokosmos.

I originally conceived this book chronologically, but I
found that the exploration of roots and influences necessary to an
understanding of Bartók's pianism did not always follow a
chronological order. Chapter I progresses from the youthful
unpublished 1898 Sonata to the transitional Elegies, works difficult
to pigeonhole because of their combination of romantic pianism and
new minimalism. This minimalism was further developed in the
Bagatelles, a revolutionary work that reflects Bartók's succinct new
style, discussed in Chapter II. The Ten Easy Pieces, written as a
complement to the Bagatelles, contain some early folk transcriptions;
the Csík songs were also part of this new approach to the piano. The
Seven Sketches, according to the composer, are more or less written
in the same style as the Bagatelles [except for no. 4, which could
have been included in a discussion of the romantic pianism of Chapter
l].

Because this is a book written by a pianist for other
performing pianists or lovers of the piano, a chapter on Bartók's
pianism and virtuosic music became a necessity, prompted by my
learning the difficult Etudes. The Rumanian Dances and Allegro
Barbaro also qualified as bravura compositions to be included in
Chapter III. In the chapter on folk music, I tried to show the
composer's progression from a simple transcription of a folk tune to
paraphrases using folk music, culminating with the Improvisations,
inspired by the folk song tradition but written in a completely
original language.

For me as a pianist, form and structure are the most
important ingredients in interpretation; the discussion of form in
Chapter V focuses on two major works: the 1926 Sonata and the Sonata
for two pianos and percussion. In Chapter VI, Bartók's piano
masterwork, the Out of Doors suite, is analyzed pianistically and
musically. Here I have tried to share with the reader what I
discovered as I prepared this work for performance.

The following chapter features the suite and explores
Bartók's relationship with the past. The oddly titled Chapter VIII,
Ten Plus Nine Plus Two Plus…includes many other Bartók works pianists
love to play. The rest of the book is devoted to a discussion of
Bartók's pedagogical works, including Mikrokosmos; an analysis of his
three piano concertos; and a survey of the piano/chamber repertoire.
Finally, going full circle, the book concludes where it began, with
the composer at the piano playing his own music. I believe that this
progression presents a logical picture for the pianist's enhanced
understanding of a unique composer.

A brief note about Bartók's relationship to detail:
Bartók was meticulous in all of his markings; even metronomic
markings and timings have been accurately noted. As an editor of
other composers' keyboard music, Bartók was very aware of the problem
of authenticity within editions, and the inclusion in many editions
of "arbitrary performing indications by unscrupulous editors."3 As in
Beethoven's works, the authority for Bartók's music rests with his
own manuscript. Whatever is indicated in the score reveals "precisely
his intentions,"4 unless there might have been copyist errors in the
publication process. While preparing this book, in addition to
studying Bartók's published scores, I have gone back whenever
possible to autograph sources to further confirm what appeared to be
errors. (Note: Currently in preparation by László Somfai at the
Budapest Bartók Archives is the forty-eight volume Béla Bartók
Complete Critical Edition. Several new editions whose revisions
benefit from the manuscripts in Peter Bartók's possession have
recently been issued by Boosey & Hawkes and Universal and are
discussed in the appropriate chapters.)

Bartók's piano music defies categorization. Like Picasso,
he developed his own language while retaining traditional formal
structures. Bartók built upon the foundations of romantic pianism,
allowing each piece to dictate its own form and style. What remains
constant, however, is the way any performer should approach each
composition. All elements-- tempos, rhythm, melodic line, dynamics,
mood, touch, color, technical demands, compositional technique,
harmonic language-- must be analyzed, evaluated, and then viewed
within the larger structure. Yet ultimately it is the individual
pianist/performer who must bring to all of Bartók's indications his
or her own intelligence and imagination. I wish you an interesting
and challenging voyage.


Barbara Nissman

Lewisburg, West Virginia



Notes

1. Béla Bartók, "Harvard Lectures" (1943) in Béla Bartók
Essays, ed. Benjamin Suchoff (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1976), 376.
2. Bartók was responsible for editions of Scarlatti
Sonatas; works of Couperin; The Well-Tempered Clavier and other works
of J.S. Bach; 19 Haydn Sonatas; 27 Beethoven Sonatas and other
miscellaneous works; 20 Mozart Sonatas, plus various pieces by
Schubert, Schumann, and Chopin among others; in addition to his piano
transcriptions from early Baroque keyboard music. (See Chapter VIII.)
3. Béla Bartók, "Motion in the Committee of
Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations" (1932) in Béla
Bartók Essays, 499.
4. Bartók, "Motion in the Committee of Intellectual
Co-operation of the League of Nations," 499.


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