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148-417: Béla Viktor János Bartók ( / ˈ b eɪ l ə ˈ b ɑːr t ɒ k / ; Hungarian: [ˈbeːlɒ ˈbɒrtoːk] ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist . He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hungary's greatest composers. Through his collection and analytical study of folk music , he

296-543: A state funeral for him on 7 July 1988. He was re-interred at Budapest's Farkasréti Cemetery , next to the remains of Ditta, who died in 1982, one year after what would have been Béla Bartók's 100th birthday. The two unfinished works were later completed by his pupil Tibor Serly . György Sándor was the soloist in the first performance of the Third Piano Concerto on 8 February 1946. Ditta Pásztory-Bartók later played and recorded it. The Viola Concerto

444-428: A 1994 book, May it Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music , Timothy Rice uses enlightenment philosophy to substantiate his opinion that fieldwork cannot be used as fact. The philosophy he works with involves theorizing over the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity. In order to ground those debates in ethnomusicology, he equates musicology to objectivity and musical experience to subjectivity. Rice uses

592-498: A Hungarian resort in 1904. Bartók began to collect Magyar peasant melodies, later extending to the folk music of other peoples of the Carpathian Basin, Slovaks, Romanians, Rusyns, Serbs and Croatians. He used fewer and fewer romantic elements, in favour of an idiom that embodied folk music as intrinsic and essential to its style. Later in life he commented on the incorporation of folk and art music: The question is, what are

740-467: A blend of nationalist and late Romanticism elements. In 1909, at the age of 28, Bartók married Márta Ziegler (1893–1967), aged 16. Their son, Béla Bartók III, was born the next year. After nearly 15 years together, Bartók divorced Márta in June 1923. Two months after his divorce, he married Ditta Pásztory (1903–1982), a piano student, ten days after proposing to her. She was aged 19, he 42. Their son, Péter,

888-530: A classical and early romantic style touched with influences of popular and romani music. Between 1890 and 1894 (9 to 13 years of age) he wrote 31 piano pieces. Although most of these were simple dance pieces, in these early works Bartók began to tackle some more advanced forms, as in his ten-part programmatic A Duna folyása ("The Course of the Danube", 1890–1894), which he played in his first public recital in 1892. In Catholic grammar school Bartók took to studying

1036-481: A college student's personal letter, he recommended that potential students of ethnomusicology undertake substantial musical training in the field, a competency that he described as " bi-musicality ." This, he explained, is a measure intended to combat ethnocentrism and transcend problematic Western analytical conventions. Seeger also sought to transcend comparative practices by focusing on the music and how it impacted those in contact with it. Similar to Hood, Seeger valued

1184-420: A combination of a standardized, scientific approach and a more free-form analytical approach because the most fruitful work he has done has come from combining those two rather than separating them, as was the trend among his contemporaries. Even Merriam's once progressive notion of a balanced approach came into question as time passed. Specifically, the idea that ethnomusicology is or can be at all factual. In

1332-605: A condescending way, treating it as something quaint or exotic." Nettl recalls an angry young man from Nigeria who asked the researcher how he could rationalize the study of other cultures' music. Nettl couldn't come up with an easy answer, and posits that ethnomusicologists need to be careful to respect the cultures they study and avoid treating valuable pieces of culture and music as just one of many artifacts they study. Fritz Reiner Frederick Martin Reiner ( Hungarian : Reiner Frigyes ; December 19, 1888 – November 15, 1963)

1480-566: A fieldworker decides to use to conduct research, fieldworkers are expected to "show respect for their material and for the people with whom they work." As Nettl explains, ethnomusicology is a field that heavily relies on both the collection of data and the development of strong personal relationships, which often cannot be quantified by statistical data. He summarizes Bronisław Malinowski 's classification of anthropological data (or, as Nettl applies it, ethnomusicological data) by outlining it as three types of information: 1) texts, 2) structures, and 3)

1628-510: A form of serialism based on compound interval cycles, some of which are maximally distributed, multi-aggregate cycles. Ernő Lendvai analyses Bartók's works as being based on two opposing tonal systems, that of the acoustic scale and the axis system , as well as using the golden section as a structural principle. Milton Babbitt , in his 1949 review of Bartók's string quartets, criticized Bartók for using tonality and non-tonal methods unique to each piece. Babbitt noted that "Bartók's solution

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1776-436: A fusion between musicology and cultural anthropology. He focused on the scientific study of music and the interpretation of the cultural phenomena within. However, he called for a broader view that emphasizes "music as an emotional expression." This notion is highly similar to that of Merriam's 1960 extension of ethnomusicology, which views it as "the study of music in culture," that emphasized its pivotal role in human nature and

1924-582: A graceful and almost neo-classical work, as a surprise 42nd birthday present for Ditta, but he died just over a month before her birthday, with the scoring not quite finished. He had also sketched his Viola Concerto , but had barely started the scoring at his death, leaving completed only the viola part and sketches of the orchestral part. Béla Bartók died at age 64 in a hospital in New York City from complications of leukemia (specifically, of secondary polycythemia ) on 26 September 1945. His funeral

2072-559: A group of New York musicians in Haydn 's Symphony No. 101 in D major ; this was followed by September 18 and 20, 1963, sessions devoted to Haydn's Symphony No. 95 in C minor . He also appeared with members of the Chicago Symphony in a series of telecasts on Chicago's WGN-TV in 1953–54, and a later series of nationally syndicated programs called Music From Chicago . Some of these performances have been issued on DVD. Reiner

2220-580: A holistic investigation of music in its cultural contexts. The term ethnomusicology itself can be broken down as such: 'ethno' = people, and 'musicology' = the study of music. Thus, in the process of developing the study of music and people, the field of ethnomusicology combines perspectives from a wide variety of disciplines such as folklore, psychology, cultural anthropology, linguistics , comparative musicology, music theory , and history. This disciplinary variety has resulted in several distinct definitions of ethnomusicology. As follows, there has not often been

2368-427: A known whole according to a definite plan, whereas synthesis starts with small elements and combines them into one entity by tailoring the process to the musical material. Herndon also debated on the subjectivity and objectivity necessary for a proper analysis of a musical system. Kolinski, among those scholars critiqued by Herndon's push for a synthetic approach, defended the benefits of analysis, arguing in response for

2516-586: A model. Perhaps the first of these objective systems was the development of the cent as a definitive unit of pitch by phonetician and mathematician Alexander J. Ellis (1885). Ellis made notable contributions to the foundations of comparative musicology and ultimately ethnomusicology with the creation of the cents system; in fact, the ethnomusicologist Hornbostel "declared Ellis the 'true founder of comparative scientific musicology.'" Prior to this invention, pitches were described by using measurements of frequency , or vibrations per second. However, this method

2664-568: A musical and performative lens. Seeger's analysis exemplifies the inherent complexity of ethical practices in ethnomusicological fieldwork, implicating the importance for the continual development of effective fieldwork in the study of ethnomusicology. In his 2005 paper "Come Back and See Me Next Tuesday," Nettl asks whether ethnomusicologists can, or even should practice a unified field methodology as opposed to each scholar developing their own individual approach. Nettl considers several factors when sampling music from different cultures. The first thing

2812-415: A musical and performative lens. Seeger's analysis exemplifies the inherent complexity of ethical practices in ethnomusicological fieldwork, implicating the importance for the continual development of effective fieldwork in the study of ethnomusicology. In recent decades, ethnomusicologists have paid greater attention to ensuring that their fieldwork is both ethically conducted and provides a holistic sense of

2960-428: A myriad of factors, many of which exist beyond the researcher's comprehension, that prevent a precise and accurate representation of what one has experienced in the field. As Nettl notices, there is a current trend in ethnomusicology to no longer even attempt to capture a whole system or culture, but to focus on a very specific niche and try to explain it thoroughly. Nettl's question, however, still remains: should there be

3108-425: A native ensemble, or inclusion in a myriad of social customs. In the past, local musical transcription was required to study music globally, due to the lack of technology such as phonographs or videographing technology. Similarly, Alan Merriam defined ethnomusicology as "music as culture," and stated four goals of ethnomusicology: to help protect and explain non-Western music, to save "folk" music before it disappears in

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3256-710: A number of small piano pieces which showed his growing interest in folk music . The first piece to show clear signs of this new interest is the String Quartet No. 1 in A minor (1908), which contains folk-like elements. He began teaching as a piano professor at the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest. This position freed him from touring Europe as a pianist. Among his notable students were Fritz Reiner , Sir Georg Solti , György Sándor , Ernő Balogh , Gisela Selden-Goth , and Lili Kraus . After Bartók moved to

3404-410: A product of Western thinking, proclaiming that "ethnomusicology as western culture knows it is actually a western phenomenon." Later, in 1992, Jeff Todd Titon simply described ethnomusicology as the study of "people making music". While there still is not a unified, authoritative definition for ethnomusicology, a number of constants appear in the definitions frequently adopted by leading scholars in

3552-659: A psychologist and philosopher, founded the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, which became one of the first archives dedicated to the systematic collection and preservation of non-Western music. This archive enabled researchers to record and analyze diverse musical forms with scientific precision, marking a significant advancement in the field. Hornbostel, a student of Stumpf, expanded on this scientific approach by developing comparative musicology methods that emphasized objective analysis of elements such as pitch, rhythm, and timbre across musical traditions. His work promoted

3700-619: A real peasant melody but invents his own imitation of such melodies. There is no true difference between this method and the one described above. ... There is yet a third way ... Neither peasant melodies nor imitations of peasant melodies can be found in his music, but it is pervaded by the atmosphere of peasant music. In this case we may say, he has completely absorbed the idiom of peasant music which has become his musical mother tongue. Bartók became first acquainted with Debussy's music in 1907 and regarded his music highly. In an interview in 1939 Bartók said: Debussy's great service to music

3848-663: A recording of the 1952 Metropolitan Opera production of Bizet 's Carmen , starring Risë Stevens . The production was telecast on closed-circuit television that year. At the time of his death (in November 1963) he was preparing the Met's new production of Wagner 's Götterdämmerung . In 1947, Reiner appeared on camera in the film Carnegie Hall , in which he conducted the New York Philharmonic as they accompanied violinist Jascha Heifetz in an abbreviated version of

3996-440: A researcher's field work will always be personal because a field researcher in ethnomusicology, unlike a field researcher in a hard science, is inherently a participant in the group they are researching just by being there. To illustrate the disparity between those subjective, participatory experiences that ethnomusicological fieldworkers have and what typically gets published as ethnomusicological literature, Barz and Cooley point out

4144-622: A secular Jewish family that resided in the Pest area of the city. After preliminary studies in law at his father's urging, Reiner instead decided to pursue the study of piano, piano pedagogy, and composition at the Franz Liszt Academy . Between 1903 and 1905 he studied the piano with István Thomán . From 1905 to 1908 he was a member of the composition class of Hans Koessler . From 1907 until 1909 he studied piano pedagogy with Kálmán Chován. During his last two years there, his piano teacher

4292-484: A six-volume collection of graded piano pieces. Paul Wilson lists as the most prominent characteristics of Bartók's music from late 1920s onwards the influence of the Carpathian basin and European art music, and his changing attitude toward (and use of) tonality, but without the use of the traditional harmonic functions associated with major and minor scales. Although Bartók claimed in his writings that his music

4440-758: A steamer from Lisbon. After joining them in 1942, their younger son Péter Bartók enlisted in the United States Navy , where he served in the Pacific during the remainder of the war and later settled in Florida, where he became a recording and sound engineer. His elder son by his first marriage, Béla Bartók III, remained in Hungary and later worked as a railroad official until his retirement in the early 1980s. Although he became an American citizen in 1945 shortly before his death, Bartók never felt fully at home in

4588-539: A strong impression on him and became a lifelong friend and colleague. In 1903, Bartók wrote his first major orchestral work, Kossuth , a symphonic poem which honored Lajos Kossuth , hero of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 . The music of Richard Strauss , whom he met in 1902 at the Budapest premiere of Also sprach Zarathustra , strongly influenced his early work. When visiting a holiday resort in

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4736-461: A unified definition of ethnomusicology within the field itself. Attitudes and foci of ethnomusicologists have evolved since initial studies in the area of comparative musicology in the early 1900s. For example, in 1956, Willard Rhodes provided his perspective on the definition of ethnomusicology, stating that it is a theoretical and empirical study amalgamating both musicology and anthropology. Then, in 1983, Bruno Nettl characterized ethnomusicology as

4884-429: A uniform method for going about this type of fieldwork? Alan Merriam addresses issues that he found with ethnomusicological fieldwork in the third chapter of his 1964 book, The Anthropology of Music . One of his most pressing concerns is that, as of 1964 when he was writing, there had been insufficient discussion among ethnomusicologists about how to conduct proper fieldwork. That aside, Merriam proceeds to characterize

5032-470: A virtual community. Heightened awareness of the need to approach fieldwork in an ethical manner arose in the 1970s in response to a similar movement within the field of anthropology. Mark Slobin writes in detail about the application of ethics to fieldwork. Several potential ethical problems that arise during fieldwork relate to the rights of the music performers. To respect the rights of performers, fieldwork often includes attaining complete permission from

5180-592: A wide scope of musical genres, repertories, and styles, some scholars have favored an all-encompassing "objective" approach, while others argue for "native" or "subjective" methodologies tailored to the musical subject. Those in favor of "objective" analytical methods hold that certain perceptual or cognitive universals or laws exist in music, making it possible to construct an analytical framework or set of categories applicable across cultures. Proponents of "native" analysis argue that all analytical approaches inherently incorporate value judgments and that, to understand music it

5328-711: A year" (about $ 70,000 in 2024 dollars). The first symptoms of his health problems began late in 1940, when his right shoulder began to show signs of stiffening. In 1942, symptoms increased and he started having bouts of fever. Bartók's illness was at first thought to be a recurrence of the tuberculosis he had experienced as a young man, and one of his doctors in New York was Edgar Mayer, director of Will Rogers Memorial Hospital in Saranac Lake , but medical examinations found no underlying disease. Finally, in April 1944, leukemia

5476-530: Is Bartok's two volumes entitled For Children for solo piano, containing 80 folk tunes to which he wrote accompaniment. Bartók's style in his art music compositions was a synthesis of folk music, classicism, and modernism. His melodic and harmonic sense was influenced by the folk music of Hungary, Romania, and other nations. He was especially fond of the asymmetrical dance rhythms and pungent harmonies found in Bulgarian music . Most of his early compositions offer

5624-516: Is also worth seeing who a community recommends as informants. People may direct a fieldworker to the best musicians, or they may suggest many "simply good" musicians. This attitude is reflective of the culture's values. As technology advanced, researchers graduated from depending on wax cylinders and the phonograph to digital recordings and video cameras, allowing recordings to become more accurate representations of music studied. These technological advances have helped ethnomusicologists be more mobile in

5772-539: Is crucial to construct an analysis within cultural context. This debate is well exemplified by a series of articles between Mieczyslaw Kolinski and Marcia Herndon in the mid-1970s; these authors differed strongly on the style, nature, implementation, and advantages of analytical and synthetic models including their own. Herndon, backing "native categories" and inductive thinking, distinguishes between analysis and synthesis as two different methods for examining music. By her definition, analysis seeks to break down parts of

5920-470: Is his Night music , which he used mostly in slow movements of multi-movement ensemble or orchestral compositions in his mature period. It is characterised by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies". An example is the third movement (Adagio) of his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta . His music can be grouped roughly in accordance with the different periods in his life. The works of Bartók's youth were written in

6068-446: Is often a byproduct of another atonal procedure, the formation of chords from transpositionally related dyads. Atonal pitch-class theory also furnishes resources for exploring polymodal chromaticism , projected sets , privileged patterns , and large set types used as source sets such as the equal tempered twelve tone aggregate , octatonic scale (and alpha chord ), the diatonic and heptatonia secunda seven-note scales, and less often

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6216-474: Is present in the Fourteen Bagatelles (1908). These made Ferruccio Busoni exclaim: "At last something truly new!" Until 1911, Bartók composed widely differing works which ranged from adherence to romantic style, to folk song arrangements and to his modernist opera Bluebeard's Castle . The negative reception of his work led him to focus on folk music research after 1911 and abandon composition with

6364-588: Is some correlation between musical traits or approaches and the traits of the music's native culture. Cantometrics involved qualitative scoring based on several characteristics of a song, comparatively seeking commonalities between cultures and geographic regions. Mieczyslaw Kolinski measured the exact distance between the initial and final tones in melodic patterns. Kolinski refuted the early scholarly opposition of European and non-European kinds of music, choosing instead to focus on much-neglected similarities between them, what he saw as markers of "basic similarities in

6512-418: Is that in order to discover the best representation of any culture, it is important to be able to "discern between ordinary experience and ideal," all while considering the fact that "the 'ideal' musician may also know and do things completely outside the ken of the rest." Another factor is the process of selecting teachers, which depends on what the fieldworker wishes to accomplish. Regardless of whatever method

6660-661: The Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv at the Berlin school of comparative musicology , which was founded by Carl Stumpf , his student Erich M. von Hornbostel , and medical doctor Otto Abraham. Stumpf and Hornbostel studied and preserved these recordings in the Berlin Archiv, setting the foundation for contemporary ethnomusicology. But, the "armchair analysis" methods of Stumpf and Hornbostel required very little participation in fieldwork themselves, instead using

6808-517: The Concerto for Orchestra . Koussevitsky's Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered the work in December 1944 to highly positive reviews. The Concerto for Orchestra quickly became Bartók's most popular work, although he did not live to see its full impact. In 1944, he was also commissioned by Yehudi Menuhin to write a Sonata for Solo Violin . In 1945, Bartók composed his Piano Concerto No. 3 ,

6956-613: The Eight Improvisations . There, the primary theme is on the black keys in the left hand, while the right accompanies with triads from the white keys. In measures 50–51 in the third movement of the Fourth Quartet, the first violin and cello play black-key chords, while the second violin and viola play stepwise diatonic lines. On the other hand, from as early as the Suite for piano, Op. 14 (1914), he occasionally employed

7104-499: The Horthy regime to remove the name of librettist Béla Balázs from the opera, as Balázs was of Jewish origin, was blacklisted, and had left the country for Vienna. Bluebeard's Castle received only one revival, in 1936, before Bartók emigrated. For the remainder of his life, although devoted to Hungary, its people and its culture, he never felt much loyalty to the government or its official establishments. After his disappointment over

7252-704: The Nazis and Hungary's alliance with Germany and the Axis powers under the Tripartite Pact . After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Bartók refused to give concerts in Germany and broke away from his publisher there. His anti-fascist political views caused him a great deal of trouble with the establishment in Hungary. In his will recorded on 4 October 1940, he requested that no square or street be named after him until

7400-683: The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra from 1938-1948 and made a few recordings with them for Columbia Records . He then spent several years at the Metropolitan Opera , where he conducted a historic production of Richard Strauss's Salome in 1949, with the Bulgarian soprano Ljuba Welitsch in the title role, and the American premiere of Stravinsky 's The Rake's Progress in 1951. He also conducted and made

7548-699: The Rhapsody for piano Sz. 26 with the Orquestra Pau Casals at the Gran Teatre del Liceu . During the same stay, he attended a concert by the Cobla Barcelona at the Palau de la Música Catalana . According to the critic Joan Llongueras , "he was very interested in the sardanas , above all, the freshness, spontaneity and life of our music [...] he wanted to know the mechanism of

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7696-617: The University of Illinois , defines fieldwork as "direct inspection [of music, culture, etc] at the source," and states that "It is in the importance of fieldwork that anthropology and ethnomusicology are closest: It is a 'hallmark' of both fields, something like a union card." However, he mentions that ethnomusicological fieldwork differs from anthropological fieldwork because the former requires more "practical" information about "recording, filming, video-taping, [and] special problems of text-gathering." The experience of an ethnomusicologist in

7844-433: The tenoras and the tibles , and requested data on the composition of the cobla and extension and characteristics of each instrument". In 1927–1928, Bartók wrote his Third and Fourth String Quartets , after which his compositions demonstrated his mature style. Notable examples of this period are Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) and Divertimento for String Orchestra (1939). The Fifth String Quartet

7992-457: The 1950s, Jaap Kunst wrote about fieldwork for the purpose of recording and transcribing sound. Kunst lists various "phonogram-archives," collections of recorded sound. They include the archives founded by Stumpf. A pioneering study in fieldwork was conducted by David McAllester of Navajo music , particularly the music of the Enemy Way ceremony. In it, McAllester details the procedures of

8140-612: The 1950s. The new term aimed to emphasize a descriptive, culture-sensitive approach that respected each musical tradition on its own terms. Over time, the scope of ethnomusicology broadened to encompass the study of music from all cultural contexts, including Western traditions. This shift reflects a more human-centric approach, where music is seen not only as an art form but as a social and cultural phenomenon deeply connected to identity, tradition, and daily life. Folklorists , who began preserving and studying folklore music in Europe and

8288-404: The 1970s in response to a similar movement within the field of anthropology. Mark Slobin writes in detail about the application of ethics to fieldwork. Several potential ethical problems that arise during fieldwork relate to the rights of the music performers. To respect the rights of performers, fieldwork often includes attaining complete permission from the group or individual who is performing

8436-520: The Budapest squares Oktogon and Kodály körönd , or in fact any square or street in Hungary, no longer bore the names of Mussolini or Hitler , as they did at the time he wrote his will. Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, Bartók reluctantly emigrated to the US with his wife, Ditta Pásztory , in October 1940. They settled in New York City after arriving on the night of 29–30 October by

8584-740: The Fine Arts Commission competition, Bartók wrote little for two or three years, preferring to concentrate on collecting and arranging folk music. He found the phonograph an essential tool for collecting folk music for its accuracy, objectivity, and manipulability. He collected first in the Carpathian Basin (then the Kingdom of Hungary ), where he notated Hungarian , Slovak , Romanian , and Bulgarian folk music. The developmental breakthrough for Bartok arrived when he collaboratively collected folk music with Zoltán Kodály through

8732-580: The Hungarian Unitarian Church. In 1911, Bartók wrote what was to be his only opera, Bluebeard's Castle , dedicated to Márta. He entered it for a prize by the Hungarian Fine Arts Commission, but they rejected his work as not fit for the stage. In 1917 Bartók revised the score for the 1918 première and rewrote the ending. Following the 1919 revolution , in which he actively participated, he was pressured by

8880-527: The Musical Scales of Various Nations." Ellis’s approach provided a basis for the objective analysis of musical systems across different cultures, allowing for cross-cultural comparison and reducing subjective biases. The institutionalization of comparative musicology, a precursor to ethnomusicology, was largely driven by the efforts of early 20th-century scholars like Carl Stumpf and Erich M. von Hornbostel. As Dieter Christensen (1991) explains, Stumpf,

9028-485: The US in the 19th century, are considered the precursors of the field prior to the Second World War . Oskar Kolberg is regarded as one of the earliest European ethnomusicologists as he first began collecting Polish folk songs in 1839 (Nettl 2010, 33). The International Musical Society in Berlin in 1899 acted as one of the first centers for ethnomusicology. As the study of music across cultures developed in

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9176-689: The US; many of these recordings (some with Bartók's own spoken introductions) were later issued on LP and CD. Bartók was supported by a $ 3000-yearly research fellowship from Columbia University for several years (more than $ 50,000 in 2024 dollars). He and Ditta worked on a large collection of Serbian and Croatian folk songs in Columbia's libraries. Bartók's economic difficulties during his first years in America were mitigated by publication royalties, teaching and performance tours. While his finances were always precarious, he did not live and die in poverty as

9324-561: The United States, he taught Jack Beeson and Violet Archer . In 1908, Bartok and Kodály traveled into the countryside to collect and research old Magyar folk melodies. Their growing interest in folk music coincided with a contemporary social interest in traditional national culture. Magyar folk music had previously been categorised as Gypsy music. The classic example is Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies for piano, which he based on popular art songs performed by Romani bands of

9472-452: The United States. He initially found it difficult to compose in his new surroundings. Although he was well known in America as a pianist, ethnomusicologist and teacher, he was not well known as a composer. There was little American interest in his music during his final years. He and his wife Ditta gave some concerts, but demand for them was low. Bartók, who had made some recordings in Hungary, also recorded for Columbia Records after he came to

9620-517: The acknowledgment of musical facts and laws. As a result of the above debate and ongoing ones like it, ethnomusicology has yet to establish any standard method or methods of analysis. This is not to say that scholars have not attempted to establish universal or "objective" analytical systems. Bruno Nettl acknowledges the lack of a singular comparative model for ethnomusicological study, but describes methods by Mieczyslaw Kolinski, Béla Bartók , and Erich von Hornbostel as notable attempts to provide such

9768-457: The age of 74. Reiner and his compatriot Joseph Szigeti convinced Serge Koussevitzky to commission the Concerto for Orchestra from Bartók. Reiner's conducting technique was noted for its precision and economy, in the manner of Arthur Nikisch and Arturo Toscanini . Igor Stravinsky called the Chicago Symphony under Reiner "the most precise and flexible orchestra in the world"; it

9916-645: The age of four he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano, and his mother began formally teaching him the next year. In 1888, when he was seven, his father, the director of an agricultural school, died suddenly. His mother then took Béla and his sister, Erzsébet, to live in Nagyszőlős (present-day Vynohradiv , Ukraine) and then in Pressburg (present-day Bratislava , Slovakia). Béla gave his first public recital aged 11 in Nagyszőlős, to positive critical reception. Among

10064-431: The amateur field collector whose knowledge of its aims has been severely restricted. Such collectors operate under the assumption that the important point is simply to gather music sound, and that this sound–often taken without discrimination and without thought, for example, to problems of sampling–can then simply be turned over to the laboratory worker to do something about it." In the same work, Merriam states that "what

10212-424: The anthropological approach generally study music to learn about people and culture. Those who practice the musicological approach study people and cultures to learn about music. Charles Seeger differentiated between the two approaches, describing the anthropology of music as studying the way that music is a "part of culture and social life", while musical anthropology "studies social life as a performance," examining

10360-458: The case." He described McAllester's work as "[relating] music to culture and culture to music in terms of the value system of the Navaho [ sic ]." As of 1956, the time that Merriam published his review, the idea of such work "occurred to ethnomusicologists with surprising infrequency." In his work The Anthropology of Music , published in 1964, Merriam wrote that "ethnomusicology has suffered from

10508-402: The ceremony, as well as the music itself. Aside from Enemy Way music, McAllester sought Navajo cultural values based on analysis of attitudes toward music. To his interviewees, McAllester gave a questionnaire, which includes these items: The ethnomusicologist Alan Merriam reviewed McAllester's work, calling it "strange to speak of a work published in 1954 as 'pioneering,' but this is precisely

10656-419: The community or culture under study. As the demographic makeup of ethnomusicologists conducting research grows more diverse, the field has placed a renewed emphasis on a respectful approach to fieldwork that avoids stereotyping or assumptions about a particular culture. Rather than using European music as a baseline against which music from all other cultures is compared, researchers in the field often aim to place

10804-421: The difference between field research and field notes. While field research attempts to find the reality, field notes document a reality. The issue, according to Barz and Cooley, is that field notes, which capture the personal experience of the researcher, are often omitted from whatever final writing that researcher publishes. Heightened awareness of the need to approach fieldwork in an ethical manner arose in

10952-487: The discipline. The importance of fieldwork in the field of ethnomusicology has required the development of effective methods to pursue fieldwork. In the 19th century until the mid-20th century, European scholars ( folklorists , ethnographers , and some early ethnomusicologists) who were motivated to preserve disappearing music cultures (from both in and outside of Europe), collected transcriptions or audio recordings on wax cylinders . Many such recordings were then stored at

11100-411: The discovery of the music of Richard Strauss, whose tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra , according to Bartók, "stimulated the greatest enthusiasm in me; at last I saw the way that lay before me". Bartók also owned the score to A Hero's Life , which he transcribed for the piano and committed to memory. Under the influence of Strauss, Bartók composed in 1903 Kossuth , a symphonic poem in ten tableaux on

11248-490: The effects culture has on music, and about the impact music has on culture. The great diversity of types of music found across the world has necessitated an interdisciplinary approach to ethnomusicological study. Analytical and research methods have changed over time, as ethnomusicology has continued solidifying its disciplinary identity, and as scholars have become increasingly aware of issues involved in cultural study (see Theoretical Issues and Debates ). Among these issues are

11396-406: The ethnomusicologist does in the field is determined by his own formulation of method, taken in its broadest sense." Fieldwork can have multiple areas of inquiry, and Merriam lists six of these: Bruno Nettl describes early 20th-century fieldwork as extraction of music, which is analyzed elsewhere. Between 1920 and 1960, however, fieldworkers wished to map entire musical systems, and resided longer in

11544-529: The exception of folk music arrangements. His pessimistic attitude towards composing was lifted by the stormy and inspiring contact with Klára Gombossy in the summer of 1915. This interesting episode in Bartók's life remained hidden until it was researched by Denijs Dille between 1979 and 1989. Bartók started composing again, including the Suite for piano opus 14 (1916), and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919) and he completed The Wooden Prince (1917). Bartók felt

11692-631: The expeditions, but he returned to composing with a ballet called The Wooden Prince (1914–1916) and the String Quartet No. 2 in (1915–1917), both influenced by Debussy . Bartók's libretto for The Miraculous Mandarin , another ballet, was influenced by Igor Stravinsky , Arnold Schoenberg and Richard Strauss. Though started in 1918, the story's sexual content kept it from being performed until 1926. He next wrote his two violin sonatas (written in 1921 and 1922, respectively), which are among his most harmonically and structurally complex pieces. In March 1927, he visited Barcelona and performed

11840-459: The fact that musicology is primarily a human centric endeavour. Merriam's 1964 work redefined ethnomusicology and highlighted its importance in cultural anthropology in understanding music within different socio-cultural communities. He distinguished and showcased its distinct nature from that of comparative musicology by emphasizing the influence of social and cultural factors on music and how human centric it is. Hood's 1971 perspective, emphasized

11988-404: The field is his/her data; experience, texts (e.g. tales, myths, proverbs), structures (e.g. social organization), and "imponderabilia of everyday life" all contribute to an ethnomusicologist's study. He also notes how ethnomusicological fieldwork "principally involves interaction with other humans" and is primarily about "day-to-day personal relationships," and this shows the more "personal" side of

12136-535: The field work process. Emblematic of his ethical theories is a 1983 piece that describes the fundamental complexities of fieldwork through his relationship with the Suyá Indians of Brazil. To avoid ethnocentrism in his research, Seeger does not explore how singing has come to exist within Suyá culture, instead explaining how singing creates culture presently, and how aspects of Suyá social life can be seen through both

12284-514: The field, but have also let some ethnomusicologists shift back to the "armchair analysis" of Stumpf and Hornbostel. Since video recordings are now considered cultural texts, ethnomusicologists can conduct fieldwork by recording music performances and creating documentaries of the people behind the music, which can be accurately studied outside of the field. Additionally, the invention of the internet and forms of online communication could allow ethnomusicologists to develop new methods of fieldwork within

12432-492: The field. After the 1950s, some not only observed, but also participated in musical cultures. Mantle Hood wrote about this practice as well. Hood had learned from musicians in Indonesia about the intervals of sléndro scales, as well as how to play the rebab. He was interested in the characteristics of Indonesian music, as well as "social and economic valuations" of music. By the 1980s, participant-observer methodology became

12580-419: The field. It is agreed upon that ethnomusicologists look at music from beyond a purely theoretical, sonic, or historical perspective. Instead, these scholars look at music within culture, music as culture, and music as a reflection of culture. In other words, ethnomusicology was developed as the study of all music as a human social and cultural phenomenon. Rhodes, in 1956, had described ethnomusicology as

12728-458: The fieldwork of other scholars. This differentiates Stumpf and Hornbostel from their present-day contemporaries, who now use their fieldwork experience as a main component in their research. Ethnomusicology's transition from "armchair analysis" to fieldwork reflected ethnomusicologists trying to distance themselves from the field of comparative musicology in the period following World War II . Fieldwork emphasized face-to-face interaction to gather

12876-1016: The first movement of Tchaikovsky 's Violin Concerto . Ten years later, Heifetz and Reiner recorded the full Tchaikovsky concerto in stereo for RCA Victor in Chicago . Reiner's music-making had been largely American-focused since his arrival in Cincinnati. After the Second World War he began increasing his European activity. He became music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1953. He made recordings in Chicago's Orchestra Hall for RCA Victor from 1954 to 1963. The first of these — of Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben — occurred on March 6, 1954 and

13024-523: The folk and peasant melodies of Magyar , Slovak and Romanian language territories. At first they transcribed the melodies by hand, but later they began to use a wax cylinder recording machine invented by Thomas Edison . Compilations of Bartók's field recordings, interviews, and original piano playing have been released over the years, largely by the Hungarian record label Hungaroton : A compilation of field recordings and transcriptions for two violas

13172-450: The group or individual who is performing the music, as well as being sensitive to the rights and obligations related to the music in the context of the host society. Another ethical dilemma of ethnomusicological fieldwork is the inherent ethnocentrism (more commonly, eurocentrism) of ethnomusicology. Anthony Seeger has done seminal work on the notion of ethics within fieldwork, emphasizing the need to avoid ethnocentric remarks during or after

13320-402: The inevitable arguments that may arise in the future on the nature of ethnomusicological research. In addition, many ethnomusicological studies share common methodological approaches encapsulated in ethnographic fieldwork . Scholars of ethnomusicology often conduct their primary fieldwork among those who make the music, learning languages and the music itself. Ethnomusicologists also take on

13468-632: The juvenilia (Sz. 1–25) thematically, as DD numbers 1 to 77. The most recent catalogue is that of László Somfai ; this is a chronological index with works identified by BB numbers 1 to 129, incorporating corrections based on the Béla Bartók Thematic Catalogue. On 1 January 2016, Bartók's works entered the public domain in the European Union . Together with his like-minded contemporary Zoltán Kodály , Bartók embarked on an extensive programme of field research to capture

13616-602: The last movement of his Second Quartet, all notes gradually gather with the twelfth (G ♭ ) sounding for the first time on the last beat of measure 8, marking the end of the first section. The aggregate is partitioned in the opening of the Third String Quartet with C ♯ –D–D ♯ –E in the accompaniment (strings) while the remaining pitch classes are used in the melody (violin 1) and more often as 7–35 (diatonic or "white-key" collection) and 5–35 (pentatonic or "black-key" collection) such as in no. 6 of

13764-554: The last of these series ending with the Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, Op. 21 in 1921. He ended this practice because of the difficulty of distinguishing between original works and ethnographic arrangements, and between major and minor works. Since his death, three attempts—two full and one partial—have been made at cataloguing. The first, and still most widely used, is András Szőllősy 's chronological Sz. numbers, from 1 to 121. Denijs Dille  [ nl ] subsequently reorganised

13912-415: The late 19th and early 20th centuries, scholars began applying scientific methods to analyze musical structures systematically. While ethnomusicology had not yet emerged as a formal discipline, foundational work in this period established techniques that would later influence the field. One key figure, Alexander J. Ellis, introduced methods for measuring musical pitch and scale structures in his 1885 paper, "On

14060-780: The majority of Bartók's source material. In 1935, the journal American Anthropologist published an article titled "Plains Ghost Dance and Great Basin Music," authored by George Herzog. Herzog was an assistant to Hornbostel and Stumpf. Herzog draws from material "available to [him]" and "in the literature," including transcriptions by James Mooney for the Bureau of American Ethnology ; Natalie Curtis , and Alice C. Fletcher . Herzog analyzes structure and melodic contour of Ghost Dance songs. He notes that Ghost Dance music's "paired patterns" occur in many Native American tribes' music, and they may have migrated from tribe to tribe. Writing later in

14208-570: The medium of an Edison machine, on which they studied classification possibilities (for individual folk songs) and recorded hundreds of cylinders. Bartok's compositional command of folk elements is expressed in such an authentic and undiluted a manner because of the scales, sounds, and rhythms that were so much a part of his native Hungary that he automatically saw music in these terms. He also collected in Moldavia , Wallachia , and (in 1913) Algeria . The outbreak of World War I forced him to stop

14356-429: The modern world, to study music as a means of communication to further world understanding, and to provide an avenue for wider exploration and reflection for those who are interested in primitive studies. This approach emphasizes the cultural impact of music and how music can be used to further understand humanity. The two approaches to ethnomusicology bring unique perspectives to the field, providing knowledge both about

14504-752: The most accurate impression and meaning of music from the creators of the music, in contrast with "armchair analysis" that disconnected the ethnomusicologist from the individual or group of performers. Stumpf and Hornbostel were not the only scholars to use "armchair" analysis. Other scholars analyzed recordings and transcriptions that they did not make. For instance, in his work Hungarian Folk Music , Béla Bartók analyzes various traits of Hungarian folk songs. While drawing from recordings made by himself, Bartók also relies on transcriptions by other musicians; among them are Vikar Béla  [ Béla Vikar ; Vikar Béla ] , Zoltán Kodály , and Lászo Lajtha . These transcriptions came in recorded and printed format, and form

14652-510: The music of a certain society in the context only of the culture under study, without comparing it to European models. In this way, the field aims to avoid an "us vs. them" approach to music. Nettl and other scholars hope to avoid the perception of the "ugly ethnomusicologist," which carries with it the same negative connotations as the "ugly American" traveler. Many scholars, from Ravi Shankar to V. Kofi Agawu, have criticized ethnomusicology for, as Nettl puts it, "dealing with non-European music in

14800-402: The music, as well as being sensitive to the rights and obligations related to the music in the context of the host society. Another ethical dilemma of ethnomusicological fieldwork is the inherent ethnocentrism (more commonly, eurocentrism) of ethnomusicology. Anthony Seeger, Emeritus Professor of Ethnomusicology at UCLA, has done seminal work on the notion of ethics within fieldwork, emphasizing

14948-673: The musical experience of a whole culture, according to Rice's logic, is not possible. Another argument against the objectivity and standardization of fieldwork comes from Gregory Barz and Tim Cooley in the second chapter of their book, Shadows in the Field: New Perspectives for Fieldwork in Ethnomusicology . In this chapter, entitled "Confronting the Field(Note): In and Out of the Field," they claim that

15096-476: The nature of ethnomusicological fieldwork as being primarily concerned with the collection of facts. He describes ethnomusicology as both a field and a laboratory discipline. In these accounts of the nature of ethnomusicology, it seems to be closely related to a science. Because of that, one might argue that a standardized, agreed-upon field method would be beneficial to ethnomusicologists. Despite that apparent viewpoint, Merriam conclusively claims that there should be

15244-481: The need to avoid ethnocentric remarks during or after the field work process. Emblematic of his ethical theories is a 1983 piece that describes the fundamental complexities of fieldwork through his relationship with the Suyá Indians of Brazil. To avoid ethnocentrism in his research, Seeger does not explore how singing has come to exist within Suyá culture, instead explaining how singing creates culture presently, and how aspects of Suyá social life can be seen through both

15392-438: The non-ponderable aspects of everyday life. The third type of information, Nettl claims is the most important because it captures the ambiguity of experience that cannot be captured well through writing. He cites another attempt made by Morris Friedrich , an anthropologist, to classify field data into fourteen different categories in order to demonstrate the complexity that information gathered through fieldwork contains. There are

15540-544: The norm, at least in the North American tradition of ethnomusicology. Aside from this history of fieldwork, Nettl writes about informants: the people whom fieldworkers research and interview. Informants do not contain the entirety of a musical culture, and need not represent the ideal of the culture. According to Nettl, there is a bell-shaped curve of musical ability. In a community, the majority are "simply good" at their music. They are of greatest interest. However, it

15688-431: The performance component of ethnomusicology. Ethnomusicologists following the anthropological approach included scholars such as Steven Feld and Alan Merriam . The anthropological ethnomusicologists stress the importance of field work and using participant observation . This can include a variety of distinct fieldwork practices, including personal exposure to a performance tradition or musical technique, participation in

15836-463: The philosophical attitudes that Martin Heidegger , Hans-Georg Gadamer , and Paul Ricoeur take towards objectivity and subjectivity to state that human perception of the world is inherently subjective because the only way in which humans can interpret what goes on around them is through symbols. Human preconceptions of those symbols will always influence the ways in which an individual might process

15984-475: The pieces he played was his own first composition, written two years previously: a short piece called "The Course of the Danube". Shortly thereafter, László Erkel accepted him as a pupil. From 1899 to 1903, Bartók studied piano under István Thomán , a former student of Franz Liszt , and composition under János Koessler at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest . There he met Zoltán Kodály , who made

16132-653: The preparation for writing his first Piano Concerto , he wrote his Sonata, Out of Doors , and Nine Little Pieces , all for solo piano, and all of which prominently utilize clusters. He increasingly found his own voice in his maturity. The style of his last period – named "Synthesis of East and West" – is hard to define let alone to put under one term. In his mature period, Bartók wrote relatively few works but most of them are large-scale compositions for large settings. Only his voice works have programmatic titles and his late works often adhere to classical forms. Among Bartók's most important works are

16280-510: The previous two hundred years; and the revival of nationalism as a source for musical inspiration, a trend that began with Mikhail Glinka and Antonín Dvořák in the last half of the 19th century. In his search for new forms of tonality, Bartók turned to Hungarian folk music, as well as to other folk music of the Carpathian Basin and even of Algeria and Turkey; in so doing he became influential in that stream of modernism which used indigenous music and techniques. One characteristic style of music

16428-595: The psycho-physical constitution of mankind." Kolinski also employed his method to test, and disprove, Erich von Hornbostel's hypothesis that European music generally had ascending melodic lines, while non-European music featured descending melodic lines. Adopting a more anthropological analytical approach, Steven Feld conducted descriptive ethnographic studies regarding "sound as a cultural system." Specifically, his studies of Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea use sociomusical methods to draw conclusions about its culture. Bruno Nettl, Emeritus Professor of Musicology at

16576-585: The result of World War I as a personal tragedy. Many regions he loved were severed from Hungary : Transylvania , the Banat (where he was born), and Bratislava (Pozsony, where his mother had lived). Additionally, the political relations between Hungary and other successor states to the Austro-Hungarian empire prohibited his folk music research outside of Hungary. Bartók also wrote the noteworthy Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs in 1920 and

16724-561: The role of a participant observer in learning to perform in a musical tradition, a practice Mantle Hood termed "bi-musicality". Musical fieldworkers also collect recordings and contextual information about the music of interest. Thus, ethnomusicological studies do not rely on printed or manuscript sources as the primary source of epistemic authority, but rather, the focus is on qualitative practice-based research methods. When ethnomusicology first emerged in Western academic circles, its focus

16872-467: The scores of composers "from Bach to Wagner ", his compositions then advancing in style and taking on similarities to Schumann and Brahms . Following his matriculation into the Budapest Academy in 1890 he composed very little, though he began to work on exercises in orchestration and familiarized himself thoroughly with the operas of Wagner. In 1902 his creative energies were revitalized by

17020-437: The significance of direct engagement and performance of the intended music to be studied as a means of ethnomusicological research, having the realization that studying it academically was necessary but so was the direct act of performance. This came into direct opposition to some of his peers of the past. Hood addressed this by stressing the need to unlearn Western musical conventions when studying non-Western traditions showcasing

17168-565: The six string quartets (1909, 1917, 1927, 1928, 1934, and 1939), the Cantata Profana (1930), which Bartók declared was the work he felt and professed to be his most personal "credo", the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936), the Concerto for Orchestra (1943) and the Third Piano Concerto (1945). He made a lasting contribution to the literature for younger students: for his son Péter's music lessons, he composed Mikrokosmos ,

17316-418: The social sciences and humanities. Though some ethnomusicologists primarily conduct historical studies, the majority are involved in long-term participant observation. Therefore, ethnomusicological work can be characterized as featuring a substantial, intensive ethnographic component. Two approaches to ethnomusicological studies are common: the anthropological and the musicological . Ethnomusicologists using

17464-624: The study of music, later scholars recognized the need to balance objectivity with cultural interpretation. Although Hornbostel and Stumpf emphasized a scientific approach, subsequent ethnomusicologists integrated these methods with ethnographic practices to ensure that cultural contexts were not overshadowed by purely empirical analysis. This integration helped shape ethnomusicology into an interdisciplinary field that values both precision and cultural understanding. Ethnomusicologists often apply theories and methods from cultural anthropology , cultural studies and sociology as well as other disciplines in

17612-518: The subject of the 1848 Hungarian war of independence, reflecting the composers growing interest in musical nationalism. A year later he renewed his opus numbers with the Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra serving as Opus 1. Driven by nationalistic fervor and a desire to transcend the influence of prior composers, Bartók began a lifelong devotion to folk music, which was sparked by his overhearing nanny Lidi Dósa's singing of Transylvanian folk songs at

17760-507: The summer of 1904, Bartók overheard a young nanny, Lidi Dósa from Kibéd in Transylvania, sing folk songs to the children in her care. This sparked his lifelong dedication to folk music. Beginning in 1907, he came under the influence of French composer Claude Debussy , whose compositions Kodály had brought back from Paris. Bartók's large-scale orchestral works were still in the style of Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss, but he wrote

17908-508: The sunny Dance Suite in 1923, the year of his second marriage. In 1926, Bartók needed a significant piece for piano and orchestra with which he could tour in Europe and America. He was particularly inspired by American composer Henry Cowell 's controversial use of intense tone clusters on the piano while touring western Europe. Bartók happened to be present at one of these concerts and (to avoid causing offence) later requested Cowell's permission to use his technique, which Cowell granted. In

18056-501: The time. In contrast, Bartók and Kodály discovered that the old Magyar folk melodies were based on pentatonic scales , similar to those in Asian folk traditions , such as those of Central Asia, Anatolia and Siberia. Bartók and Kodály set about incorporating elements of such Magyar peasant music into their compositions. They both frequently quoted folk song melodies verbatim and wrote pieces derived entirely from authentic songs. An example

18204-481: The treatment of Western music in relation to music from "other," non-Western cultures and the cultural implications embedded in analytical methodologies. Kofi Agawu (see 2000s) noted that scholarship on African music seems to emphasize difference further by continually developing new systems of analysis; he proposes the use of Western notation to instead highlight similarity and bring African music into mainstream Western music scholarship. In seeking to analyze such

18352-417: The use of standardized transcription and recording techniques, which allowed for detailed comparisons of music from different cultural contexts. According to Christensen, Hornbostel’s methodologies were instrumental in formalizing comparative musicology as a recognized academic discipline, laying the groundwork for what would later evolve into ethnomusicology. While these scientific methods introduced rigor to

18500-513: The variations in scales across the locations, he concludes that "there is no practical way of arriving at the real pitch of a musical scale , when it cannot be heard as played by a native musician" and even then, "we only obtain that particular musician's tuning of the scale." Ellis's study is also an early example of comparative musicological fieldwork (see Fieldwork ). Alan Lomax's method of cantometrics employed analysis of songs to model human behavior in different cultures. He posited that there

18648-419: The way "music is part of the very construction and interpretation of social and conceptual relationships and processes." Charles Seeger and Mantle Hood were two ethnomusicologists that adopted the musicological approach. Hood started one of the first American university programs dedicated to ethnomusicology, often stressing that his students must learn how to play the music they studied. Further, prompted by

18796-417: The ways in which peasant music is taken over and becomes transmuted into modern music? We may, for instance, take over a peasant melody unchanged or only slightly varied, write an accompaniment to it and possibly some opening and concluding phrases. This kind of work would show a certain analogy with Bach's treatment of chorales. ... Another method ... is the following: the composer does not make use of

18944-416: The whole tone scale and the primary pentatonic collection. He rarely used the simple aggregate actively to shape musical structure, though there are notable examples such as the second theme from the first movement of his Second Violin Concerto , of which he commented that he "wanted to show Schoenberg that one can use all twelve tones and still remain tonal". More thoroughly, in the first eight measures of

19092-568: The world around them. Applying that theory to music and ethnomusicology, Rice brings back the terms of musicology and musical experience. Because one's experience of music is simply an interpretation of preconceived symbols, one cannot claim musical experience as factual. Thus, systematizing fieldwork like one would a scientific field is a futile endeavor. Instead, Rice asserts that any attempt to engage with someone else's musical experience, which cannot be truly understood by anyone except that person, must be confined to individual analysis. Characterizing

19240-578: The world, but rather "artifices" created by humans and their "organized preferences," and they differed in various locations. In his article in the Journal of the Society of Arts and Sciences , he mentions different countries such as India, Japan, and China, and notes how the pitch systems varied "not only [in] the absolute pitch of each note, but also necessarily the intervals between them." From his experiences with interviewing native musicians and observing

19388-460: Was a specific one, it cannot be duplicated". Bartók's use of "two organizational principles"—tonality for large scale relationships and the piece-specific method for moment to moment thematic elements—was a problem for Babbitt, who worried that the "highly attenuated tonality" requires extreme non-harmonic methods to create a feeling of closure. The cataloguing of Bartók's works is somewhat complex. Bartók assigned opus numbers to his works three times,

19536-439: Was also named Béla. Bartók's mother, Paula (née Voit) (1857–1939), spoke Hungarian fluently. A native of Turócszentmárton (present-day Martin , Slovakia), she had German, Hungarian and Slovak or Polish ancestry. Béla displayed notable musical talent very early in life. According to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano before he learned to speak in complete sentences. By

19684-447: Was also recently released by Tantara Records in 2014. On 18 March 2016 Decca Classics released Béla Bartók: The Complete Works , the first ever complete compilation of all of Bartók's compositions, including new recordings of never-before-recorded early piano and vocal works. However, none of the composer's own performances are included in this 32-disc set. Ethnomusicologist Stated broadly, ethnomusicology may be described as

19832-444: Was always tonal, he rarely used the chords or scales normally associated with tonality, and so the descriptive resources of tonal theory are of limited use. George Perle (1955) and Elliott Antokoletz (1984) focus on his alternative methods of signaling tonal centers, via axes of inversional symmetry . Others view Bartók's axes of symmetry in terms of atonal analytic protocols. Richard Cohn (1988) argues that inversional symmetry

19980-604: Was among RCA's first to use stereophonic sound . His last concerts in Chicago took place in the spring of 1963. One of his last recordings, released in a special Reader's Digest boxed set, was a performance of Brahms ' Symphony No. 4 , recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in October 1962 in London's Kingsway Hall . This recording was later reissued on LP by Quintessence and on CD by Chesky. On September 13 and 16, 1963, Reiner conducted

20128-406: Was an American conductor of opera and symphonic music in the twentieth century. Hungarian born and trained, he emigrated to the United States in 1922, where he rose to prominence as a conductor with several orchestras. He reached the pinnacle of his career while music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the 1950s and early 1960s. Reiner was born in Budapest , Austria-Hungary into

20276-563: Was attended by only ten people. Aside from his widow and their son, other attendees included György Sándor . Bartók's body was initially interred in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. During the final year of communist Hungary in the late 1980s, the Hungarian government, along with his two sons, Béla III and Péter, requested that his remains be exhumed and transferred back to Budapest for burial, where Hungary arranged

20424-492: Was born in 1924. Raised as a Catholic , by his early adulthood Bartók had become an atheist . He later became attracted to Unitarianism and publicly converted to the Unitarian faith in 1916. Although Bartók was not conventionally religious, according to his son Béla Bartók III, "he was a nature lover: he always mentioned the miraculous order of nature with great reverence". As an adult, Béla III later became lay president of

20572-536: Was composed in 1934, and the Sixth String Quartet (his last) in 1939. In 1936 he travelled to Turkey to collect and study Turkish folk music . He worked in collaboration with Turkish composer Ahmet Adnan Saygun mostly around Adana . In 1940, as the European political situation worsened after the outbreak of World War II , Bartók was increasingly tempted to flee Hungary. He strongly opposed

20720-593: Was diagnosed, but by this time, little could be done. As his body slowly failed, Bartók found more creative energy and produced a final set of masterpieces, partly thanks to the violinist Joseph Szigeti and the conductor Fritz Reiner (Reiner had been Bartók's friend and champion since his days as Bartók's student at the Royal Academy). Bartók's last work might well have been the String Quartet No. 6 but for Serge Koussevitzky 's commission for

20868-548: Was married three times (one of them to a daughter of Etelka Gerster ) and had three daughters. His health deteriorated after a heart attack in October 1960. On November 11, 1963, while preparing for performances of Götterdämmerung at the Metropolitan Opera, Reiner became afflicted by bronchitis, which developed into pneumonia. He died in Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City on November 15, 1963, at

21016-538: Was not reliable, "since the same interval has a different reading each time it occurs across the whole pitch spectrum ." On the other hand, the cents system allowed any interval to have a fixed numerical representation, regardless of its specific pitch level. Ellis used his system, which divided the octave into 1200 cents (100 cents in each Western semitone ), as a means of analyzing and comparing scale systems of different types of music. He had recognized that global pitch and scale systems were not naturally occurring in

21164-546: Was one of the founders of comparative musicology , which later became known as ethnomusicology. Bartók was born in the Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Sânnicolau Mare , Romania) on 25 March 1881. On his father's side, the Bartók family was a Hungarian lower noble family, originating from Borsodszirák , Borsod . His paternal grandmother was a Catholic of Bunjevci origin, but considered herself Hungarian. Bartók's father (1855–1888)

21312-516: Was primarily on non-Western music. This early approach often neglected European and Western musical traditions, creating a contrast with the field of conventional musicology, which centered on Western art music. Initially known as "comparative musicology," the field set Western music as a standard to which other musical traditions were compared. This approach led to criticism for imposing Western biases on non-Western music, which prompted scholars to shift from "comparative musicology" to "ethnomusicology" in

21460-453: Was revised and published in the 1990s by Bartók's son; this version may be closer to what Bartók intended. Concurrently, Peter Bartók, in association with Argentinian musician Nelson Dellamaggiore, worked to reprint and revise past editions of the Third Piano Concerto. Bartók's music reflects two trends that dramatically changed the sound of music in the 20th century: the breakdown of the diatonic system of harmony that had served composers for

21608-650: Was the common myth. He had enough friends and supporters to ensure that there was sufficient money and work available for him to live on. Bartók was a proud man and did not easily accept charity. Despite being short on cash at times, he often refused money that his friends offered him out of their own pockets. Although he was not a member of the ASCAP , the society paid for any medical care he needed during his last two years, to which Bartók reluctantly agreed. According to Edward Jablonski's 1963 article, "At no time during Bartok’s American years did his income amount to less than $ 4,000

21756-1036: Was the young Béla Bartók . After early engagements at opera houses in Budapest and Dresden (June 1914 to November 1921), where he worked closely with Richard Strauss , he moved to the United States in 1922 to take the post of Principal Conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra , where he remained until 1931. He became a naturalized citizen in 1928 and began to teach at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. Some of his pupils included Leonard Bernstein , Lukas Foss , Max Goberman , Boris Goldovsky , Walter Hendl , Sylvan Levin , Henry Mazer , Howard Mitchell , Vincent Persichetti , Ezra Rachlin , Nino Rota , Felix Slatkin , Ethel Stark , and Hugo Weisgall . Reiner dismissed composer Samuel Barber from his class. He resigned from his teaching position at Curtis in 1941. He conducted

21904-445: Was to reawaken among all musicians an awareness of harmony and its possibilities. In that, he was just as important as Beethoven, who revealed to us the possibilities of progressive form, or as Bach, who showed us the transcendent significance of counterpoint. Now, what I am always asking myself is this: is it possible to make a synthesis of these three great masters, a living synthesis that will be valid for our time? Debussy's influence

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