MUSIC CHRONICLE
BelA BARTOK
When the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok died in New
York, September 1945, few even of his most ardent admirers would have
expected the rapid turnabout of reputation that has brought his music
during the succeeding three years to the forefront of attention. As indi–
cated by recent musical publications, musicologists and critics had for
the most part lost interest in him. A few of his piano pieces turned up
in the repertoire, but his larger works were consistently ignored. Bartok
died in poverty, his hospital bills and funeral expenses paid by ASCAP,
a charity this great organization has had to extend to few of its other
important members. Several of his friends had tried to seek out ways of
helping Bartok : to offer him assistance was to risk permanently losing
-his friendship. He would accept help only in the form of commissions
to do work, and the amount of work a man dying of leukemia can take
on is limited. Yet the three major compositions he completed during
these last years may be ranked with the masterpieces of twentieth century
music. These are the Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned by the
Koussevitzky Foundation for the Boston Symphony, the Suite for Un–
accompanied Violin, commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin, and the Third
Plano Concerto, written for his wife. He was also working on a university
project, transcribing American folk music from recordings. At the time
of his death Boosey
&
Hawkes was beginning to reissue the earlier Euro–
pean publications. A few scattered recordings of his music were avail–
able, but it was impossible for an interested listener to hear under any
circumstances more than a fragmentary portion of his works.
Shortly after his death the Philadelphia Symphony broadcast in
two successive weeks the Violin Concerto, played by Menuhin, and the
Third Piano Concerto, played by Gyorgy Sandor. On the intervening
Sunday the New York Philharmonic Symphony broadcast the Concerto
for O rchestra. Writing at that time, I remarked that that week would
be a turning point in the history of contemporary music.
