Bartock Bulgarian dances...

Abstract: Bartks Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm, the only formally self-con-tained set within the Mikrokosmos, is the crowning series of pieces in this huge com-pendium of the composers later piano music. Since Bartk recorded all six of them in1940, they are ideal for an investigation of performance issues. The recordings fromthe Mikrokosmos, although relatively late, are fortunately close to the composition ofmost of the pieces, which makes these recordings all the more authentic. The essay,however, focuses on the concept of the series as a series revisiting the compositionalmanuscripts, discussing the evolution of the individual pieces and the emergence ofthe idea of the set (first intended to comprise only five pieces) and Bulgarian rhythmas a pedagogical issue within the series. The Six Dances also bear a somewhat enig-matic dedication to the British pianist of Jewish descent, Harriet Cohen, obviously notan accidental choice. The dedication might be considered with what Bartk said in aninterview in 1940 about the hibridity of national musical types in his Bulgarianpieces as well as with his article Race Purity in Music (1942) in mind. The signifi-cance of order and ordering in Bartks creative work, a hitherto little discussed com-mon central element in the various fields of his activity, collecting, performing andcomposing, are also discussed.

Keywords: Bla Bartk, Mikrokosmos, Bulgarian rhythm, music pedagogy, Harriet Cohen

Studia Musicologica 53/13, 2012, pp. 5368DOI: 10.1556/SMus.53.2012.1-3.5

1788-6244/$ 20.00 2012 Akadmiai Kiad, Budapest

Bartks Bulgarian Dances and the Order of Things1

Lszl VIKRIUSBartk Archives, Institute of Musicology

Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Tncsics Mihly u. 7, H-1014 Budapest, Hungary

E-mail: [email protected]

(Received: July 2012; accepted: August 2012)

1. This essay is based on a paper read on 18 July 2011 at the International Bartk Colloquium at Szombat-hely. Research into the sources of Bartks compositions, including those of the Mikrokosmos discussed here,has been generously supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (OTKA).

1. Collecting and Ordering

Bartk was a passionate collector not only of folk music but also of as variegatedobjects as insects, picture postcards or dictionaries and grammar books in variouslanguages.2 In a sense the creation of an evolving and constantly renewing uvre,conspicuous in the young composers lists of his childhood compositions has alsoa lot to do with collecting.3 Collecting, however, inevitably involves ordering andorganizing, arrangement and classification. Ordering is perhaps one of the fewcentral common elements in each of Bartks professional activities as folklorist,pianist and composer. That a concert pianist is regularly faced with the need toprovide programmes for his appearances might appear obvious and although it isrevealing to study types of and periodic changes in Bartks principles in settingup programmes throughout his career this may not have been the most originalor the most important field of his contribution to ordering.4 More interesting isthe fact that he was repeatedly challenged by questions of ordering in his workas ethnomusicologist. He might even be considered obsessive in his endeavour toorder and classify all the material he collected. His achievement in this field isunique especially if one also considers his ambitious undertaking, worthy of afull-scale literary scholar, to present the folk texts of his Romanian vocal collec-tions, systematized independently of the musical characteristics of the tunes.5

It is even more interesting to realize that the problem of ordering also played asignificant role in his compositional uvre partly due to his penchant for creatingshorter pieces before or simultaneously with large-scale compositions, partly dueto his ability to express his musical ideas in very simple as well as very complexforms. The series For Children of 19081911 might be a good example.6 Its

Lszl Vikrius54

Studia Musicologica 53, 2012

2. On Bartks professional interest in insects, see Hugh Loxdale and Adalbert Balog, Bla BartkMusician, Musicologist, Composer and Entomologist!, Antenna 33/4 (2009), 175182. A few selecteditems from a large collection of picture postcards are reproduced in the most recent version of Ferenc Bnissvolume of Bartk iconography let-kpek: Bartk Bla [Life-pictures: Bla Bartk] (Budapest: Balassi, 2006).

3. Bartks childhood lists of compositions are described in Denijs Dille, Thematisches Verzeichnis derJugendwerke Bla Bartks. 18901904 (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1974), 1015. Some pages of the differentlists are also reproduced among the illustrations at the end of the book, 278281.

4. See Lszl Somfai, Bartk Bla klasszikusokat zongorzik / As Bla Bartk Played Classics. Exhibitionbooklet (Budapest: Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1986). As two interestingcase studies of Bartks Mozart and Liszt repertory, see Lszl Vikrius, Bartks Neo-Classical Reevaluationof Mozart, in The Past in the Present. Papers Read at the IMS Intercongressional Symposium and the 10thMeeting of the Cantus Planus. Budapest & Visegrd, 2000, ed. Lszl Dobszay et al. (Budapest: Liszt FerencAcademy of Music, 2003), vol. 1, 473498 and Lszl Somfai, Liszts Influence on Bartk Reconsidered, TheNew Hungarian Quarterly 27/102 (1986), 210219.

5. By the mid-1920s Bartk had already developed a system of classification for the texts of his colindcollection and later he also established a very detailed system of grouping all lyrical folk texts of hisRomanian collection. Cf. Bla Bartk, Rumanian Folk Music, ed. Benjamin Suchoff (The Hague: MartinusNijhof, 1967 and 1975), 5 vols. See especially the Introduction to vol. 3, Texts, and the Introduction to Part Twoin vol. 4, Carols and Christmas Songs (Colinde).

6. The commonly accepted date of composition of the series For Children is 19081909. An examinationof the publishing history of the work suggests, however, that Bartk probably composed the bulk of the Slovakpieces in 1910 and some even perhaps as late as 1911. In any case the final two books of the four-volume serieswere not published before 1911.

Slovak part was probably first conceived as a 25-piece series in one volume butthen enlarged to a 43-piece series in two volumes.7 The Mikrokosmos, a collec-tion of no less than 153 individual compositions (some of them with variants) and33 further exercises, represents the most complex problem of ordering.8 In thefollowing I am going to discuss just one group of compositions a group that canbe easily marked off from the rest the pieces employing what Bartk termed asBulgarian rhythm.9

2. The Study of Rhythm in an Ideal Piano Pedagogy

Considering the vast array of technical features appearing in the Mikrokosmos, themusic based on the continuous employment of a particular asymmetrical metrethroughout a piece, referred to by the Romanian folklorist Constantin Briloiusterm as aksak or lame rhythm, would not necessarily stand out so conspicu-ously, had Bartk not placed the Six Dances strategically at the end of the wholeseries. In a similar manner, Bartk frequently ended his concerts introducingthe series, or a selection from the Mikrokosmos in mixed programmes, with theBulgarian Dances. They first appear on a recital programme on 20 January 1938(see Facsimile 1), probably not very long after their actual composition.10 JohnVinton has already pointed out that the set at this stage only contained five piecesand that the Dances also appear under the title Five Dances in BulgarianRhythm (without the later fifth Dance) in the manuscript sources.11 That at aFlorence concert almost two years later on 9 December 1939 Bartk still only

Bartks Bulgarian Dances and the Order of Things 55


7. Cf. my article, Mourning Song and the Origins of Bartks Arrangements of Slovak Folk Songs forChildren, in Musicologica Istropolitana VIIIIX (Bartislava: Univerzita Komenskho, Filozofick fakulta,Katedra hudobnej vedy, 20092010 [2011]), 91120.

8. Literature on the Mikrokosmos is fairly extensive. After the present article was read at the Szombathelycolloquium, a major new study has been written on the early history of the whole series. See Yusuke Nakahara,Bartks Mikrokosmos: Genesis and Concepts of the Years 19321934 (MA thesis, Liszt Ferenc Academy ofMusic, Budapest, 2012). This study gives the best introduction and the fullest bibliography to the subject. Sinceits main focus is the first extended period of composition, 19331934, the Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythmare not discussed in detail there.

9. As a basic introduction to the subject, see Timothy Rice, Bla Bartk and Bulgarian Rhythm, inBartk Perspectives: Man, Composer, and Ethnomusicologist, ed. Elliott Antokoletz, Victoria Fischer, andBenjamin Suchoff (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 196210.

10. The pieces performed at this concert in three series were the following: I. no. 53 In Transylvanianmood, no. 106 Childrens Song, no. 94 Tale, no. 108 Wrestling, no. 132 Major Seconds Broken andTogether, no. 103 Minor and Major, no. 114 Theme and Inversion [Theme and invertation], no. 123Staccato and Legato [Staccato versus legato]; II. no. 125 Boating, no. 88 Duet for Pipes, no. 130Village Joke [Burlesque rustique], no. 138 Bagpipe Music, no. 120 Fifth Chords, no. 109 From theIsland of Bali, no. 139 Merry Andrew; III. nos 148151 and 153 Five Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm. Atanother mixed concert given with Andr Gertler on 8 November 1938 in Brussels Bartk again concluded hisselection from the Mikrokosmos with the Five Dances. Cf. Jnos Demny, Bartk Bla plyja deleljn(19261940) [Bla Bartk at the summit of his career], in Zenetudomnyi tanulmnyok Bartk Bla emlkreed. Bence Szabolcsi and Dnes Bartha (Budapest: Akadmiai Kiad, 1962) (= Zenetudomnyi Tanulmnyok 10),644 and 676.

11. John Vinton, Toward a Chronology of the Mikrokosmos, Studia Musicologica 8/1 (1966), 4170,here 42.

played five Dances might not necessarily mean that no. 5 had not been composedyet (Facsimile 2).12 On the contrary, as his letter written two days before the con-cert on 7 December 1939 to Erwin Stein of Boosey & Hawkes suggests that bythat time he might have considered a series of Seven Dances instead of six!13

In any event, the first known recital where Bartk played all six pieces as a set,again as closing bracket of a concert, was in New York on 1 May 1940 after theworks publication (Facsimile 3).14

The importance of the set is further underscored by the fact that Bartk alsocarefully introduces Bulgarian Rhythm in two pieces (nos. 113 and 115) in vol-ume IV, the last to contain exercises.15 Although the first of the altogether twoexercises in this volume, no. 32 is assigned to piece no. 98, Thumb under, thisstudy in diatonic (white-key) scales clearly has the added function of familiariz-ing the student with 7/8 time in the easiest and most natural way (Example 1). Thelast exercise, no. 33, handles an ostinato pattern again in 7/8 time (Example 2).16

The little studies are thus designed to help practice asymmetrical rhythm givinga special emphasis to the last technical difficulty to be introduced in the series.

Lszl Vikrius56


12. The single bracket with Bartks own music on the programme contained the following pieces from theMikrokosmos: no. 140 Free Variations, no. 142 From the Diary of a Fly, no. 132 Major Seconds Brokenand Together, no. 137 Unison, probably no. 133 Syncopation [A contretemps], no. 146 Ostinato, no.109 From the Island of Bali, nos. 148151 and 153 Five Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm.

13. See Bartks unpublished correspondence with Boosey & Hawkes, preserved mainly in Peter Bartkscollection and available in photocopies in the Budapest Bartk Archives. The Seven Dances, if it is not a mis-take in the only known typed copy of Bartks letter, would probably have included no. 113, Bulgarian Rhythm(1). Note that, apart from the Six Dances, Bartk also recorded this Bulgarian piece in 1940 in contrast tothe short no. 115, which he neither performed publicly nor recorded.

14. Bartk performed the following pieces from the Mikrokosmos at his Columbia University concert inNew York: no. 128 Stamping Dance, no. 126 Change of Time [Changing Bars], no. 102 Harmonics andnos. 14852 Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm.

15. In his preface to the Mikrokosmos, Bartk explains that the first four books are intended to serve as apiano method without technical and theoretical instructions. These volumes are also provided with exercises inprogressive order according to difficulty similar to the pieces themselves within these books.

16. Note that no. 113 which is provided with exercise 33, has also an additional note suggesting ways toderive two-piano versions from the piece as an essential exercise in learning the unusual 7/8 time.

FACSIMILE 1 Programme of a BBC radio concert on 20 January 1938



FACSIMILE 2 Page from the programme booklet for Bla Bartk and Ditta Bartk-Psztorysconcert on 9 December 1939 in Florence

Lszl Vikrius58


FAC

SIM

ILE

3 Pr

ogra

mm

e of

Bar

tk

s co

ncer

t on

1 M

ay 1

940

in N

ew Y

ork

If one looks at the manuscript sources, one will witness how the idea toinclude Bulgarian rhythm as a special feature gradually emerged.17 The two exer-cises just mentioned appear together with the first known notation of piece no.115 on a single transparency, page 71, one of the last pages of the 81-page-longintermediary draft.18 Also on the same page, immediately after exercise 33,exercise 31 appears, assigned to piece no. 85, Broken Chords, that togetherwith a related exercise ended the previous volume.19 Significantly, the exercisethat was to close volume III, is in 7/4 time (mistakenly printed as 7/8 time), whichmakes the connection with the other exercises in Bulgarian rhythm obvious.Apart from no. 115, the transparency page only contains exercises. One might



17. The crucial source for the investigation is MS 59PID1-ID2 (i.e. piano, intermediary draft 1 and 2) inPeter Bartks collection now deposited at the Sacher Foundation in Basel. All the sources for the Mikrokosmosare freshly described and evaluated in Nakahara, Bartks Mikrokosmos, 2736. Nakahara correctly mentionsthree types of sources: sketches and drafts, fair copies and working copies. He is also right in calling MS59PID1-ID2 a fair copy rather than a draft. I am only using the old designations of manuscripts, given tothem at the former New York Bla Bartk Archives, for easier reference.

18. Page 71 of MS 59PID1-ID2 contains no. 115, Bulgarian Rhythm (2), exercises 32, 33 and 31, andno. 134 (2), Studies in double notes (yet another exercise) the latter written on a slip of transparency paperattached to the bottom of the main transparency. Page numbers up to 74 are in the composers own hand whilethereafter they seem to be added in an alien hand. These pages are actually late additions on transparencies ofvarying size.

19. Peter Bartks New definitive edition 1987 (Editio Musica Budapest), following MS59PFC4, assignsthis exercise to piece no. 97, Notturno, and thus places it in the appendix of vol. 4.

EXAMPLE 1 Exercise no. 32, 7/8 time created through using the simple diatonic scale

EXAMPLE 2 Exercise no. 33, 7/8 time created through using an ostinato pattern

wonder whether Bartk could have intended no. 115 itself, a 23-second-longminiature, to be yet another exercise rather than a piece on its own right.

The music in Bulgarian rhythm on page 71 appears to be linked to two fur-ther notations on an earlier page of the same manuscript source.20 When copying(or first notating) two pieces, the later nos. 113 and 152, on page 68 of the inter-mediary draft, Bartks intention could have been to add two less difficult piecesin Bulgarian Rhythm as preparatory material for the Five Dances havingbeen composed earlier and already copied on pages 50 to 56 of the same manu-script. No. 113 was at some point the first while the longer and more complexfinal no. 152 was the second of the intended two Bulgarian Rhythm pieces.Figure (2) was, however, changed to figure (3) when the final no. 115 wasadded to the series and as a very short but diversified piece it was placed betweenthe two longer pieces composed earlier. It is possible, however, that before inte-grating no. 115 into the series, Bartk considered the two pieces on page 68,which probably still did not bear a title, to be additions to the Five Dances tomake up a cycle of seven. Then the curious hint to 7 Dances in his letter ofDecember 1939 could make sense. Finally, he chose to add only the more com-plex Bulgarian Rhythm piece as the last-but-one piece in A to the Dancesand this is how he ended up with two Bulgarian Rhythm pieces and two, orarguably three, exercises to prepare for the Six Dances (see Table 1).

John Vinton has already emphasised the chronological link between the com-position of the Five Bulgarian Dances, probably in 1937, and Bartks lecture(also published as an article) on The So-called Bulgarian Rhythm, which he

Lszl Vikrius60


20. I am not discussing now exercises 29ac (assigned to no. 82) which are also composed in 7/8 time.They make their appearance on page 74 of the intermediary draft.

21. The proposed stages on Table 1 are based on the following assumptions (1) that no. 115 was first com-posed as an exercise and (2) that its emancipation as a piece on its own right rather than an exercise was notquestioned later.

TABLE 1 Integration of Bulgarian Rhythm in the Mikrokosmos: proposed stages of composition and ordering21

read on 6 April 1938, barely two months after the first performance of the Dancesin London mentioned before. The lecture was addressed to music pedagoguesand this is why, in the final paragraphs, he expressly tackled the question of thepedagogical significance of Bulgarian type rhythm.22

If pupils studying music were to grow familiar with Bulgarian rhythms inchildhood, it would not happen that qualified orchestral players would gape atmuch simpler rhythmic formulas than these, as if one had placed at the veryleast Arabic writing before them.23

Earlier in the lecture he described the helplessness of orchestral musicians inFrankfurt when faced with some of his transcriptions of Rumanian peasant musicfor violin. Bartk actually refers here to two different transcriptions of the samerecording. He relates that when his earlier transcription in 5/8 time was given toGerman orchestra violinists, they tended to play the music in 6/8 time, (length-ening the final quarter note to a dotted quarter. Later Bartk had been able torefine his own transcription, turning the 3+2/8 into 2+2+2+3/16 (Example 3).24



22. Music pedagogues must have made up the audience at the seminar of the music pedagogical journal,neksz [Singing], a notated singing and music pedagogical journal, official journal of the National Associa-tion of Hungarian Singing Teachers edited by Gyrgy Kernyi, one of Bartks assistants at the Academy ofSciences, and Gyula Kertsz, who was also one of the founders of the Magyar Krus [Hungarian Chorus] pub-lishers.

23. Bla Bartk Essays, ed. Benjamin Suchoff (London: Faber and Faber, 1976), 49. 24. The original phonograph recording is preserved under the shelf number MH 1782c in the Museum of

Ethnography in Budapest.

EXAMPLE 3 Beginning of Ex. 3 and 4 from Bartks article The So-Called BulgarianRhythm, earlier and later transcriptions of RFM no. 493b

Lszl Vikrius62


FACSIMILE 4 Master sheet of RFM no. 493 (with the earlier ordering figure: 343a)

The early master sheet of the transcription, now in the Budapest Bartk Archivesclearly shows the two distinct stages of copying and revision (Facsimile 4).25

A further Romanian example in this article shows a regular 2+2+3+2/16time.26 To listen to these recordings is essential for the understanding of BartksBulgarian rhythm because, in contrast to the Bulgarian melodies which he onlystudied in notation, they represent actual hearing experience he identified withwhat he called Bulgarian rhythm.

In Bartks own music in Bulgarian rhythm, in contrast to the folkloristicexamples, the fast metrical unit within the bar, the eighth note, is almost con-stantly present. It happens rather seldom that the quick pulsation disappears andgives way to the exciting lame rhythm alone, like in the passage of the sixthDance shown in Example 4.27 In this particular case, the listener probably tendsto feel the shortening of the third note rather than the lengthening of the first twobeing irregular.28 Even this bridge passage quickly leads back to the recurringfast eighth-note pulsation.

A slight revision in the fifth Dance reveals what generally appears as a basicfeature of Bartks Bulgarian music. The middle section of the piece (whosefirst bar is included in Example 5) is an unexpectedly melodious, almost melan-cholic passage, which one can call the only thematic section of the piece. HereBartks own recorded performance differentiates between distinct kinds of touch



25. The master sheets in the Budapest collection of the Romanian instrumental melodies were orderedaccording to dance types as principal category of classification and according to formal criteria within dancetypes. Later Bartk classified the material the other way round giving the musical form the role of basic principalof classification.

26. Shelf number MH 3664c.27. It was the late Lszl Dobszay who called my attention to this particular feature of Bartks idiosyncratic

use of Bulgarian rhythms. 28. When interpreting Bartks use of Bulgarian rhythm, it is worth considering Csilla Pintrs recent

observation that the asymmetrical metres with their slightly distorted quality might have something to do withsuch traditional types of Western art music as the conventional rhythmic distortions in the Waltz. See herdissertation, Lnyegszer stlusjegyek Bartk ritmusrendszerben [Emblematic Stylistic Marks in Bartks Rhythm](PhD Dissertation, Liszt Ferenc University of Music, Budapest, 2011), 185. Accessible on the website of theLiszt Music Academy, http://lfze.hu/netfolder/public/PublicNet/Doktori%20dolgozatok/pinter_csilla/, with anEnglish summary.

EXAMPLE 4 Bars 4650 from Bulgarian Dance no. 6

for melodic, ornamental, and accompanying notes.29 In one of the revisions onthe page, the composer was concerned with finding the right length and effect toend the scherzo-like motor rhythm of the main section and so he substituted twobars for one. The music has not substantially changed. The two-bar version issimply a written-out ritardando (Example 5). In any other type of music, Bartkcould have made the extension through either marking rit. or changing the time.Not in this Bulgarian rhythm piece, whose single basic feature was the lack ofpossibility for change of time.30

3. The Enigma of a Dedication

Whatever the main reason for Bartk was to give a national name to the spe-cial type of rhythm he introduced into his own music from the mid-1930s on, itundoubtedly harmonized with other labelled titles like pentatonic Hungarianpeasant songs, Romanian Christmas songs and dance types, Slovak tunes.However, it was in connection with the Bulgarian pieces that the composer raisedthe idea of hybridity most clearly. In an interview he gave in 1940 he spoke ofHungarian [melodies] grafted onto Bulgarian rhythm. In his 1942 article,Race Purity in Music, Bartk endorsed the idea of racial impurity in musicwith emphatic political relevance, therefore one might argue that the Bulgarianseries had been intended to carry a similar message.31 In this case the dedicationof the Six Dances, to which little attention has been paid so far would be all themore intriguing.

Quite a number of pieces by Bartk bear dedication. Apart from friends andfamily members, dedicatees are sometimes fellow musicians like his early mentor,Ern Dohnnyi (for Four Piano Pieces no. 4) or Egisto Tango (for The WoodenPrince), conductor of the Budapest premires of his first two stage works. Morespecial are dedications such as that of the Romanian Folk Dances, phrased inRomanian, Domnului Ion Buiia, a Romanian friend and close associate dur-ing Bartks collecting trips in the 1910s or that of the Ady Songs to BlaReinitz with true affection and friendship a wording whose warmth was veryrare for Bartk and had obvious political significance as Reinitz, himself arenowned composer of chansonesque songs on the poems of Endre Ady was apolitical migr in Vienna at the time of the publication of the songs by the

Lszl Vikrius64


29. Bartks recording of the Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm is readily available on the CD seriesBartk at the Piano, ed. Zoltn Kocsis and Lszl Somfai HCD 12326-31 (Budapest: Hungaroton, 1991).

30. Five of the Six Dances have practically no change of tempo prescribed apart from the slight slowingdown at the final gesture in no. 2 (b. 54) and the very end of no. 3. There are, however, more significant changesof tempo in no. 1: at bar 32 Meno vivo for a new thematic material which is also introduced by a brief ritenutoand is followed by a poco a poco accelerando that leads back to Tempo I in bar 39 and there is a Calmo sec-tion between bars 46 and 52. In the two earlier shorter pieces, nos. 113 and 115, no tempo change is marked.Bartks own performance of the pieces, however, shows much greater flexibility in handling the tempo.

31. For Bartks article, Race Purity in Music, see Bla Bartk Essays, 2932.

Viennese Universal-Edition.32 In his letter of 7 December 1939 to Erwin SteinBartk gave instructions to include two dedications in the Mikrokosmos whichobviously had not born any dedication previously, not even in the printers copynow thought to be lost.

At the end of the I. and II. volume (after the last piece, not the exercises) thereshould be put this word: Pter [For Pter]And immediately after the 7 dances in bulgarian rhythm this dedication:Dedicated to Mrs. [written on the margin: or Miss] Harriet Cohen. (Thewell-known English pianist; is the spelling of her name all right?)

The composers acquaintanceship with Miss Harriet Cohen is little docu-mented. Passages in her book of reminiscences, A Bundle of Time, suggest thatshe might have got into closer contact with Zoltn Kodly first. In a recollection,she relates a Budapest concert on 21 February 192833 when Kodly met her at therailway station to take her to his home where she met Emma, Kodlys wife,about whose lack of beauty but irresistible charms she gives a rare vividdescription. No doubt, they had several mutual friends and colleagues as Cohenseems to have been present at some of the ISCM Festivals. She also performed



EXAMPLE 5 Original and revised versions of bars 2325 in the draft ofBulgarian Dance no. 5

32. According to Bla Bartk, Jr.s documentation, a newspaper polemic about the dedication to Reinitzemerged in early May 1923 when the Ady Songs came out. See Apm letnek krnikja [Chronicle of myfathers life] (Budapest: Helikon, 2006), 211.

33. Cohen mentions 28 February without giving the year. I am grateful to Dr. Veronika Kusz who checkedthe actual date of Cohens single concert in Budapest. Bartk could not attend this as he was just touring theUnited States.

with Jelly dArnyi and Joseph Szigeti. In A Bundle of Time, Cohen recalls anevent in Strasbourg on the occasion of which she met Bartk.34

Bla Bartk was there for part of the time and I must confess that this made allthe difference to me. Sometimes he and I would slip out in the early morningfor a stroll followed by a (first) breakfast together. In a meadow I made him adaisy-chain; with the shining summer beauty all around us he would talk onlyof music and, of course, of his dear friend (and mine) Zoltn Kodly. So frailand slender, so quiet that he could be overlooked in a crowd, nevertheless thepower of his impersonality was tremendous. Did I imagine, though, a fugi-tive look of fanaticism in the saintly face?

This unusual idyll most probably took place in early August 1935 whenBartk is documented to have been in Strasbourg for his only appearance thereas pianist.

Thanks to Malcolm Gilliess Bartk Remembered another passage fromA Bundle of Time is more easily available for Bartk scholars.35 Here Cohendescribes how she met Bartk and his publisher Ralph Hawkes in a New Yorkrestaurant before the composers recital, undoubtedly the concert on 1 May 1940,at which occasion selected pieces from the Mikrokosmos were performed.According to her story, it was then that Bartk presented her with a fresh copy ofthe sixth volume of Mikrokosmos containing the dedication of the BulgarianDances to her. Cohens belated return of this obliging act is in her sensitive prac-tical comments on the six pieces included in the revised edition of her MusicsHandmaid, a largely forgotten manual for pianists.36 They do show that Bartkwas right in choosing her as advocate of the series.

On a more technical level, Pierre Citron suggests in a passage quoted byCohen herself in A Bundle of Time that her deep feeling for rhythm must havestruck Bartk.37 According to her recollection of the presentation, however, thecomposer specifically referred to her tiny hands, obviously one of her epi-thets.38 The collection of arrangements for piano, A Bach Book for Harriet Cohenpublished by Oxford University Press in 1932, and her interest in Bach mightalso have had something to do with Bartks idea of referring to her in his peda-gogical work, although her exemplary interest in and support for modern pianomusic could have played a more decisive role. In an unpublished late letter to

Lszl Vikrius66


34. Harriet Cohen, A Bundle of Time (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), 120f.35. Malcolm Gillies, Bartk Remembered (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), 168f. and Cohen, A Bundle of

Time, 296f.36. Harriet Cohen, Musics Handmaid (London: Faber and Faber, rev. ed. 1950), 153163. I am grateful to

Vera Lampert for providing me with copies of all relevant sections from Cohens two books unavailable inBudapest.

37. Cf. Pierre Citron, Bla Bartk (Paris: ditions du Seuil, 1963, rev. ed. 1994), 156.38. Her tiny hands also come up in an anecdote Cohen herself retells in a 1929 interview in the Musical

Times.

Kodly, with whom she occasionally corresponded to the end of her life, Cohenwrote about my whole-hearted service and devotion to contemporary music my unswerving faith in contemporary composers.39 Apart from personal attrac-tion and sympathy on Bartks part, the selection of a British pianist as dedicateefor a cycle of pieces in his first important publication with his new British pub-lishers, Boosey & Hawkes, might also have had a tactical function. Furthermore,one might wonder whether the dedication might have a hidden connotation thatcould add to the understanding of the message of the concluding series of piecesin Bartks opus magnum.

Of course, Harriet Cohen was not just English, she was also Jewish. She evenhad Zionist connections at the time of the dedication. I might be wrong, but I donot believe that Bartk could have overlooked in 1939, that the inclusion of herunmistakably Jewish name in the Mikrokosmos would be a politically relevantchoice. He might also not have accidentally linked her name with the title of theonly self-contained series within the Mikrokosmos that emphasized, howeverintricately or perhaps even arcanely, the freedom to hybridity in art music. Sucha gesture would not only harmonize with his credo formulated in Race Purity inMusic but also with his former occasional strategy of letting a politically sensi-tive dedication be printed in seemingly innocent musical scores.



39. Cohens unpublished letters to Zoltn Kodly are in the Kodly Archive. I am grateful to SaroltaKodly-Pczely and the chief archivist Terz Kapronyi for allowing me to study these valuable documents.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited withoutpermission.

Bartock Bulgarian dances...

Documents

Transcript of Bartock Bulgarian dances...