Bartók - The Miraculous Mandarin Suite

An Hungarian author by the name of Menyhért Lengyel wrote a piece in 1916 called The Miraculous Mandarin which was published in a Hungarian literary magazine in 1917.  Shortly after it was published, rumors began to float around that the work, called a pantomime grotesque by the author, was going to be set to music by a Hungarian composer who was not mentioned by name.  Whether or not the composer referred to in the article was indeed Béla Bartók is a matter of some debate among historians.

Bartók read Lengyel's piece and immediately wrote down some music inspired by the content of the work.  Bartók played his musical ideas to Lengyel, and the author was delighted with it. The two had not met before then, but became friends and collaborators.  While Bartók  worked on the score for the ballet, he wrote to his wife about the music:

It will be hellish music. The prelude before the curtain goes up will be very short and sound like pandemonium... the audience will be introduced to the den of thieves at the height of the hurly-burly of the metropolis.

The First World War delayed the completion of the score until 1919 with the orchestration taking yet another three years, and the first staging of the ballet had to wait until 1926. The premiere of what was now being called a dance pantomime occurred in Cologne, Germany. A short synopsis of the lurid story of the work in Bartók's own words:

Menyhért Lengyel

Just listen to how beautiful the story is. Three thugs force a beautiful young girl to seduce men and lure them into their den, where they will be robbed. The first turns out to be poor, the second likewise, but the third is a Chinese, a good catch, as it turns out. The girl entertains him with her dance. The Mandarin’s desire is aroused. His love flares up, but the girl recoils from him. The thugs attack the Mandarin, rob him, smother him with pillows, stab him with a sword, all in vain, because the Mandarin continues watching the girl with eyes full of yearning... the girl complies with the Mandarin’s wish, whereupon he drops dead.

 Not many who heard the premiere agreed with Bartók's beautiful story opinion, as the performance caused a huge scandal as reported in a German music journal:

Cologne, a city of churches, monasteries and chapels... has lived to see its first true  scandal. Catcalls, whistling, stamping, and booing... which did not subside even after the composer’s personal appearance, nor even after the safety curtain went down... The press, with the exception of the left, protests, the clergy of both denominations hold meetings, the mayor of the city intervenes dictatorially and bans the pantomime from the repertoire... Waves of moral outrage engulf the city...

Bartók prepared the suite of the ballet that uses roughly two-thirds of the music.  The suite was first performed in Hungary in 1928.

The suite begins with a depiction of the chaos and noise of the city. Three tramps are in a room. They have no money so they enlist the help of a girl to dance seductively in front of their window to try and lure men into the room so they can rob them. The girl's seductive dance is portrayed by the clarinet. The first man that is lured into the room is an old man. He pursues the girl, but once the tramps discover he has no money he is thrown out of the room. The clarinet again depicts the seductive dance of the girl and this time a  young man enters the room. He begins to dance with the girl, and his passion grows. But he also does not have any money so the tramps throw him out.  Again the girl dances, and this time she attracts a wealthy Chinese man, a Mandarin (portrayed by trombone glissandos) The tramps hide as they hear the Mandarin's footsteps up the stairs to the room. The Mandarin stands in the doorway and the tramps encourage the girl to keep dancing. The Mandarin makes a lunge for the girl and embraces her. She escapes and the Mandarin begins to chase her with the tramps close behind. The suite ends with the chase that takes the form of a fugue, and brash chords for full orchestra. The full ballet continues with the repeated efforts of the tramps to kill the Mandarin. They try to smother him with pillows and stab him three times with a rusty sword, but he still grabs the girl. They hang him from a light pole, but the pole falls and the Mandarin's body begins to glow eerily.  The girl finally submits to the Mandarin, and after his passion has been satisfied his wounds begin to bleed and he dies.

Bartók - Two Romanian Dances For Piano, Opus 8a

Along with his friend and fellow Hungarian  Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók explored and collected folk music of Hungary and the surrounding areas. He did this from 1908 until the First World War curtailed his ability to travel safely.  The two young composers were among a handful of musicians that laid the groundwork for the field of study that came to be called ethnomusicology.

The two young composers discovered that the so-called Hungarian music Liszt quoted in his Hungarian Rhapsodies were different than the Magyar music he heard in the small peasant villages. Bartók found that much of the old folk music he heard was based on the pentatonic scale, the scale used in Asian folk music, while the music liszt considerd Hungarian was popular tunes written by Romani (Gypsy) musicians that used different scales and structure.  For a time  Bartók was highly critical of Liszt's brand of Hungarian music, but later he came to appreciate the older composer's contributions to music.

Zoltán Kodály

 Bartók was influenced early on by the composers Strauss, Brahms and Debussy. Liszt was also an influence as well as Stravinsky. To this eclectic mix  Bartók  incorporated what he had learned from his study of authentic folk music into his compositions, and not just the folk music of his native Hungary as he writes:

I have collected Hungarian, as well as Slovak and Romanian folk music, and used it as models. And, before the world war, I even made a journey to North Africa in order to collect and study the Arab peasant music of the Sahara Desert.

The Two Romanian Dances were written in 1910 when  he was studying and collecting folk music.

Bartok recording folk songs early in the 20th century

Number 1, Allegro vivace -  The first dance begins with the pianist playing both theme and accompaniment deep within the bass registry . This theme is heard throughout the piece and is hinted at in a middle section marked lento.  The theme returns and makes its way to the end, which is a final utterance of a fragment of the theme.  Bartók manages to keep interest in the piece by frequent changes in time signature, dynamics and tempo.

Number 2, Poco allegretto - An odd mix of themes and moods that veer from humorous to violent. Bartók makes it difficult to know where the music is going, but there's no doubt it is going there with a vengence.

Bartók - Concerto For Orchestra

When his native Hungary went to the side of Nazi Germany as an ally, Béla Bartók left the country and came to New York.  He was a fine pianist, and he and his wife made ends meet by giving concerts and working on translating old Hungarian books into English for Columbia University and also got a grant from the University to work on a large collection of Serbian and Croatian folk songs.

There was little interest in Bartók's compositions in the U.S. and he had difficulty composing. When his health turned bad with what was eventually diagnosed as leukemia, he no longer could make his living giving concerts and doing research and had to depend on his friends to support him.  When Serge Koussevitzky commissioned Bartók for a piece for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, his inspiration returned and he composed the Concerto For Orchestra. 

Bartók said that he called it a concerto for orchestra rather than a symphony because he treated the instruments in each section of the orchestra in a virtuosic way. It is cast in 5 movements:

I. Introduzione. Andante non troppo - Allegro vivace -  Bartók was fond of writing what he called 'night music' as this movement begins with. It then goes through various fugal treatments of themes and it is cast in sonata form.
II. Giuoco Delle Coppie. Allegretto scherzando - The so-called 'game of pairs' begins with the side drum tapping out a rhythm and then each section of the orchestra has 2 instruments play in different intervals, bassoons are a minor sixth apart, oboes are in minor thirds, clarinets in minor sevenths, flutes in fifths and muted trumpets in major seconds.
III. Elegia. Andante non troppo - Another example of  Bartók's 'night music', this movement is based on themes first heard in the first movement.
IV. Intermezzo Interrotto. Allegretto - This movement has a melody that is interrupted by Bartók's parody of the march theme from the 7th Symphony 'Leningrad' of Shostakovich. This symphony had been secreted out of Russia on microfilm and a subsequent competition by conductors as to who would conduct the American premiere. The symphony was played over the radio when Bartók heard it.
V. Finale. Presto - This is written in sonata form, and also has some fugal moments along with snippets of folk songs added for good measure.

The Concerto For Orchestra is Bartók's most popular composition but Bartók didn't live long enough to see how popular it became. It is written in a more traditional style than many of his other works. After writing a Sonata For Solo Violin and the Piano Concerto No. 3,  Bartók succumbed to leukemia in 1945.