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Béla Bartók– Musician, Musicologist,

Composer . . . and Entomologist!

Hugh D. Loxdale1,2*and Adalbert Balog1,2,3

1. Institute of Ecology, Friedrich Schiller University, DornburgerStrasse 159, D–07743 Jena, Germany;

2. Department of Entomology, Max Planck Institute for ChemicalEcology, Hans-Knoell-Strasse 8,

D-07745 Jena, Germany;3. Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Technical Science,

Sapientia University Tîrgu-Mure, Ro-540485, POB 9, Cp.4, Tg-Mures/Corunca, Sighisoara str. 1C. Romania.

* Author for correspondence(E–mail:Hugh.Loxdale@uni-jena.de)

ARTICLE

Adalbert Balog: I am an entomologist and currently AssociateProfessor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences, Sapientia -Hungarian University of Transylvania, Romania. I especially enjoy

working on the taxonomy and ecology of rove beetles(Staphylinidae) and have recently begun to submerge myself in the

fascinating world of aphid ecology and behaviour.

Hugh Loxdale: I am a long-time Fellow of the RES, havingserved as Editor of the Entomologist and as President. Mymain entomological interests concern aphid molecular

ecology, but I am also very interested in music and poetry. Ipresently hold a professorial position at the University of

Jena, Germany.

‘Animals would come to him with extraordinary confidence in his sympathy, and this sympathy was one and the sameas his feeling for human beings who were rooted in their land. The longing he felt for such natural societies isdemonstrated, I believe, in the greater simplicity of his last works, written in his race against death in the unfriendlyurban environment of New York. Despite what must have struck him as the inhumanity of the streets, Bartók closed hisears to the roar of traffic, but opened them with interest to the rhythms and tunes of that American-African-Europeansynthesis which is jazz; moreover, he incorporated some of what he heard into his Concerto for Orchestra.’

Yehudi Menuhin (1916-99), p. 186 in Bartók Remembered (Gillies, 1990)

Fig. 1: Bartók in the early 1920s

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I (H.D.L) remember years ago, back inthe late 1970s, attending a socialfunction at Court Place, Iffley,Oxfordshire (owned by LinacreCollege, Oxford), and an Americanpostgraduate guest there saying thathe would play some classical musicwritten in the USA in the 1940s toliven things up a bit...and that itwould “knock our socks off!”. He did –the final movement of Bartók’sfamous Concerto for Orchestra, writtenin 1943 – and it did on both counts,the latter figuratively speaking atleast! It was my first introduction tothe famous Hungarian composer’sworks (I was then in my latetwenties)...and I was hooked. True, onlistening to other Bartók pieces soonafterwards, I was initially baffled andsomewhat shocked by the strangesonorities and dissonances. However, Ialso realised that there was muchbeauty in the music too and that herewas a kindred spirit who loved natureand the natural world. For example, itwas clear that the slow movement(Adagio religioso) of the Piano ConcertNo. 3, written for his second wife, theconcert pianist Ditta Pásztory (1903-82) in 1945 and left unfinished at hisdeath of leukaemia in New York onSeptember 25th, 1945 (the last 17bars were finished by his student andfriend, Tibor Serly, 1901-78), was fullof the sounds of the living world –birds, frogs and crickets.

Béla Bartók (Fig. 1) was born inNagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now inwestern Romania), on 25th March,1881. He is surely one of the greatest- if not the greatest - classicalcomposer and musicologist of the20th century. This is a view confirmedby no other that Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), no slouch himself in terms ofthe production of numerous classicalmusical masterpieces in the lastcentury and like Bartók, a genius(Menuhin, 1977). Bartók’s father, BélaBartók senior (1855-88), a skilledcellist and director of the localorchestra as well as Principal of theAgricultural College inNagyszentmiklós, died of liver diseaseat the age of thirty three, when Bartókwas only seven. Prior to this familytragedy, his mother, Paula Bartók, néeVoit (1857-1939), like her husband,“highly educated and a great music-lover”, had started giving the youngBéla piano lessons….on his insistence(Lesznai, 1973). At the age of nine bebegan to compose melodies on the

piano, and gave his first recital at age11 in Pozsony (now Bratislava,Slovakia). He had his first orchestralwork, the Kossuth symphony (namedafter the great Hungarian patriotLajos Kossuth, 1802-94) performed inthe great hall of the BudapestRedoute in January 1904, and was aProfessor at the Royal Academy ofMusic, Budapest by 1907. Thereafter,his career, both as concert pianist andcomposer, proceeded in fits and starts.It was ultimately crowned withinternational success and recognitionduring the 1920s and 30s, and, afterleaving his native homeland ofHungary in 1940 and sailing to theUSA to escape Fascism, there also,although alas, to some large degreeposthumously (Lesnai, 1973; Gillies,1990; see also Péter Bartók’sbiography of his father’s life, MyFather, (2002), and the Wikipediaentry for the main events andachievements of Bartók’s life).

In terms of compositional output,Bartók is best remembered for aplethora of masterworks, e.g., thestage works, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle(1911) and The Wooden Prince (1916),the Music for Strings, Percussion andCelesta (1936), the three PianoConcertos (1926, 1930 and 1945), thechoral work Cantata profana (1930),the Concerto for Two Pianos andOrchestra (1937), the Violin ConcertNo. 2 (1939), the Viola Concerto(1945) and the aforementionedConcerto for Orchestra…as well as sixString Quartets (1908-39), with theirprofound and deeply personalmessage…perhaps the greatest oftheir genre since Beethoven(according to Schonberg (1998)…although doubtless, Shostakovich fansmight dispute this last statement).

In the early 1900s, Bartók teamedup with his musical compatriot andfellow Academician, Zoltán Kodály(1882-1967), a great Hungariancomposer in his own right, and touredthe more remote regions of Hungaryand Romania-Transylvania. There theygathered folksongs using an Edisoncylindrical phonograph machine,which they published over manyyears. Later, Bartók went on othercollecting trips, even up to the mid-1930s, and published scholarlyethnological works of greatsignificance on the folk music of manyother countries, including Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. Thus besidesbeing a composer and performer of

huge mesmerising presence and skill(and despite his own small physicalstature), he was also effectively ascientist, recording the rare andelusive folk melodies of manycountries before these pieces were(probably) lost to posterity (Ujfalussy,1971; Lesnai, 1973; Gillies, 1990;Schonberg, 1998). He was originallyburied in New York, but his body wasremoved to Hungary in 1988. Severalstatues of him exist, including at theBartók Memorial House, one of hisformer and indeed last residences inBudapest (Gillies, 1990), and strangeto report, outside South Kensingtontube station in London, on a narrowstrip of land planted with colourfulbedding plants, in effect, an island ofcolour and nature surrounded by busytraffic.

For sure Bartók loved nature andloved being in the countryside andabsorbing the sounds, smells andresonances of nature, even during hisfive year sojourn in America,especially near Saranac Lake, NewYork, where he composed theConcerto for Orchestra. He was a manof exquisite refinement and sensitivity,and like so many brilliant people, wasinterested in a wide variety of thingsabove and beyond his own speciality,in his case, a passion for music. Hecollected shells, plants, hand-madeHungarian furniture, amongst otherpursuits (Péter Bartók, 2002). He alsoactively collected and studied insects,hence the topic of this article.

I first became aware of this factwhen, in 1981, I purchased the newlypublished book Béla Bartók: His Lifein Pictures and Documents by FerencBónis (1981), produced in celebrationof the centenary of Bartók’s birth. Onpage 93 it shows an early watercolour(reproduced in b/w) of Bartók as avidadmirer and collector of insects (Fig.2a) and on p. 259, a b/w photographof Bartók crouching down (theoriginal caption of the second picturereads ‘Collecting Spanish flies onMount Vermont [= Mt. Wilson,Addison County, Vermont, NewEngland, USA], summer, 1941’) (Fig.2b). The plot thickened when Ibought and read a copy of My Father(2002) by Péter Bartók (b. 1924),Bartók’s son by Ditta Pásztory, whichincluded many letters between Péterand his parents, especially Béla. Péterjoined his parents in the States shortlyafter their arrival there and eventuallysigned up for the US Navy as an

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electrical engineer during WW2. Onp. 215, referring to his recent postingto Panama, where he sent his father alarge beetle that he found there(Fig.3), he says:

‘I had not chased after butterfliesor other insects in Panama, butone morning into the electricshop where I worked in walked,majestically, a beetle the size ofmy fist. Here was my opportunityto send to my father not just the(beetle’s) thigh he had asked for,but a full-fledged beetle,complete and assembled.Myrecall of his request resulted [ina] death sentence for the poorthing who, first executed inalcohol, and then dried out, madethe journey to New York in acardboard coffin lined withcotton wool. The package wentby surface mail, and when Ialready gave it up for lost,perhaps censored into oblivion,came the acknowledgement.’

‘The Bogarone [= bogár =Hungarian for beetle + Italianenlarging suffix] arrivedcompletely intact. A magnificentspecimen; did you catch ityourself? It was a surprise,because – I do not know why – Iexpected to find in the box somenautical contraption.’

Péter’s mother added a postscript:‘…I cannot find words to tell youwhat an effect your package evoked[in your father]… ’

Péter continues by saying:

‘My father probably believed thestudy of insect life to be universaland referred to it as an analogy inmaking a point about folk musiccollecting’:

‘…the collecting of songs asindividual objects…is not enough.That would be like a collector ofbeetles and butterflies who wassatisfied with just catching andpreserving the various kinds ofbeetles and butterflies. But, if heis satisfied with doing only that

much, then his collection will bea dead thing, unrelated to life. Forthis reason, the true naturalist willnot only collect and prepareanimals, but will study and writedown even the most hiddenaspects of their life. True, even themost thorough description will beunable to bring the dead into life,but will salvage at least some littlebit of life’s smell and flavour intothe dead collection. These samereasons dictate the folk musiccollector to also study thoroughlythe real life of the melodies.’

Fig. 2a,b: Watercolour by Bartók’s cousin Ervin Voit of the composer as passionate admirer and collector of insects, c. early 1900s; Bartókcollecting beetles at Mt. Vermont, New Jersey, USA, early 1940s, from an original photograph by Dr. Alexander Honig (from Bónis, 1981;pages 93 and 259, respectively).

Fig. 3: Large beetle sent by Péter Bartók from Panama to his father, photo early 1940s(from P. Bartók, 2002, p. 216, photograph entitled ‘The Bogarone’). This appears to be afemale of one of the subspecies of the Hercules beetle, Dynastes hercules L., native to therainforests of Central and South America.

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Péter concludes:

‘Any aspect of nature, be it thelife of animals, the growth oftrees, flowers, the formation ofmagnificent mountains, or themagic of the Universe, alwaysinterested my father and he neverceased wanting to learn more. Itwas so nice to be asked by myfather: “What is it like in Panama?Tell me what stars you see; sendme a beetle-thigh; then I willknow.” ’

But more was yet to be discoveredabout Bartók’s interest in insects.Following the arrival in March 2009

of Dr. Adalbert Balog from hisuniversity in Romania to continue hisentomological researches in Jena, Iasked him if he knew about theentomological endeavours of Bartók,more especially since a concert pianistfriend of mine had recently been tothe Béla Bartók Memorial House inBudapest and had seen collections ofinsects there purportedly made byBartók. Adalbert said that he wasgoing to Budapest in April and wouldcheck this out.

He duly went to the MemorialHouse as planned and indeed sawvarious artefacts belonging to the

composer, including two large, glazedcases of insects, mostly Coleoptera,neatly pinned and labelled inprofessional manner usingentomological pins (Fig. 4). Ondiscussing the matter with the museumarchivist, it transpired that there hadbeen around 30-40 such cases, but theremainder had – as far as was known –been lost during the turmoil at the endof the 2nd WW (including by attackingSoviet forces and Nazi and Hungariandefending troops, and Allied aerialbombing), and the terrible and bloodyHungarian uprising against Sovietoccupation of 1956. It was not knownwhere the material was collected, butprobably in Hungary and possibly alsoAustria and Switzerland where he oftenwent on holiday with his family andother countries in Europe and Africa(Egypt), rather than in the USA (seebelow).

Adalbert also visited the BartókArchives at the Institute ofMusicology of the HungarianAcademy of Sciences, Budapest, andbrought back reference to a book thatI had not seen before – BartókRemembered, by Malcolm Gillies(1990), a collection of remembrancesby various people who had personallymet or known Bartók. In oneremembrance dated 1966 and entitledWith Family by Mrs Béla Bartók, néeMárta Ziegler (1893-1967), Bartók’sfirst wife before his divorce from herin 1923, and also a musician in herown right, she says:

‘Bartók would exercise eachmorning according to Müller’sMein System, and would take thesun as early as possible. He couldstand the sun particularly well andwhile sunbathing he would go onworking, studying languages,scoring his compositions, etc. Eachday he took a walk, mostly withthe family but sometimes alone. Ifalone, he always broughtsomething home: a strange pebble,a small wildflower, etc. One of hishobbies was collecting beetles andbutterflies. He always carried asmall flask of alcohol with him forthe beetles and one of chloroformfor the butterflies. He never stuckpins into a living animal.’

Above the anecdote is a nice linedrawing by the composer which hedrew for his son Béla Bartók junior(1910-94) in 1915 (Fig. 5).

In the same book, Béla Balázs(1884-1949), who wrote the libretto

Fig. 4a,b: Photo of cases of insects (Coleoptera) collected by Bartók and now housed in theBartók Memorial House, Budapest, and (below) close-up of same.

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for Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, writesabout Bartók:

‘He studies the stars, huntsinsects, engages in ethnography,etc. This avidity is obviously to beexplained by the fact that so farhe has not studied much ofanything outside music.’

He later reflected on a holiday theBalázs spent with the Bartóks andKodálys at a mountain camp nearZürich, Switzerland in 1911, the timeBartók was completing the score ofDuke Bluebeard’s Castle:

‘Béla Bartók is a moving and mostmarvellous man. He, too,undressed to the skin. His frail,weak, delicate little body, evenwhen he ran after the ball,seemed as if it moved in robes infront of an altar. It hasunbelievable magical dignity andnobility. You could peel his skinoff him, but not his unconsciousdignity. The genius, in the mostromantic schoolboy sense. Hetravels with a knapsack and tencigar boxes, filled with insects andflies, which he gathers withscrupulous care and constantwonder. He will sit for hours onthe edge of a dirty pond and fishfor water insects with Edith

[Balázs’s wife]. And the mostawful thing is – he says in aplaintive childlike voice – thatwhen a person thinks he has gotone of every variety, he finds anew one. He gets up in the nightand brings in a ‘glow-worminsect’ as he says with carefulprecision, because it is not yet an[adult] beetle. He studies it for anhour, then he carefully takes itback into the grass, because hedoesn’t collect worms. And it is‘awful’ that it has wings, and onecan’t know whether it is a pupa, aworm, or what.’

Bartók’s friend Zoltán Kodálywrote:

‘Alongside such knowledge oflanguages and such musicalability, only the collector’s passionwas necessary to make a large-scale folklorist out of anyone. Andthat, too, was there: from earlychildhood Bartók loved to collectinsects and butterflies (laterbringing home such specimensfrom Africa). He often spent thesummer in the Swiss Alps. Onsuch occasions, he conscientiouslycollected and pressed themountain flowers and read thevarious plant identifications.Besides this he collected folk

embroidery, carvings, jugs andplates, and studied their literature.Such widely diverging interestswould have dissipated any otherperson’s energy. It was Bartók’sachievement that his variousactivities instead of obstructingeach other, helped each other.’

I especially liked the anecdote byIlona Rácz (1897-1985) who was aformer piano student of the composerand worked with him during his finalyears at the Academy of Sciences inBudapest:

‘. . . At 4 o’clock he took a break,got up from his place, [and] tookout from his coat pocket a littlebottle, in which was some whitecoffee, and a small slice of breadas well. This was his afternoontea. He never ate anything else(For example, I can’t think of himhaving ever eaten fruit). Duringthis break he would lean againstthe window or the table facingthe window – and this was histime of relaxation. On one suchoccasion, as he was standing thereby the window and looking outon the stormy Danube, hesuddenly began to speak in anunusually tender voice, saying“Look, it has fled here away fromthe storm!” A little butterfly had

Fig. 5: Drawing made by Bartók for his son Béla in c. 1915 entitled ‘A family excursion’ (from Gillies, 1990).

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Fig. 6: Entomological book (1901, in Hungarian) owned by Bartók.

fluttered between the twowindows. Bartók loved animalssuch a lot, even the smallestinsects…’

Back at the Bartók Archives,Adalbert also saw some of theentomological books used by Bartók,for example Das Tierreich. V. Insectenby Dr. J. Gross (1912) and Rovargyüjtöby Dr. Adolf Cserey (1901) (Fig. 6)and was shown photographs of ZoltánKodály and his second wife SaroltaPéczely (b. 1940), whom he marriedin 1959, and Béla Bartók Jnr.,inspecting Bartók’s remaining insectcollections, presumably also inBudapest, probably sometime in theearly 1960s (Fig 7a-d). There is also aprevious article written about Bartókthe entomologist, both in Hungarianand French, by Dr Barnabas Nagy(1962) of the Institute of Research forPlant Protection, Budapest, entitled‘De Béla Bartók Collectionneur desInsectes et ami de la nature’ andfeaturing close-up photographs ofsome of Bartók’s beetle specimens andshells, the former again professionallypinned and with handwritten datalabels (Fig. 8a,b). Clearly, at least oneother scientist realised the importanceof Bartók’s fascination with insectslong before our own independentdiscoveries. However, we have so farbeen unable to determine whetherBartók actually published anythingabout insects, other than of course, inmusical form. For example, as in theaforementioned Piano Concerto No. 3or From the Diary of a Fly (No.142…depicting the struggles of a fly to freeitself from a spider’s web) in thecollection of 153 progressivelytechnically and musically moredifficult piano pieces – theMikrokosmos (1926-39) – written forhis young son Péter who was learningto play the piano under his parents’tuition. Also, in the evocativeMosquito Dance, No. 26 (Book 2) inthe 44 Duos for Two Violins (1931)and the so-called ‘Night Music’ in theSecond Piano Concerto (1930) where,in the centrepiece of the entireconcerto, the composer ‘shifts ourgaze from the large-scale evocation ofnocturnal signalling to the small-scalescurrying of some insect hunt’(Bayley, 2001).

It is ironic that the behatted bronzestatue of Bartók by Imre Varga (Fig.9a) should be erected in 2004 inSouth Kensington (certainlyunbeknown to me until a few years

Fig. 7a,b: Bartók’s insects viewed by (l. to. r.) Zoltán Kodály and his wife Sarolta Péczelyand Bela Bartók jnr, c. early 1960s; enlargement of insects in photo (Photos: BartókArchives).

Fig. 7c,d: Further close up of Bartók’s insects photographed in the early 1960s and Kodályand his wife Sarolta on another Museum visit around the same time (Photos: BartókArchives).

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Fig. 8a,b: Close-up of Bartók’s beetles showing entomological pins, handwritten labels and (lower photo) preservative (naphthalene?) inpinned cloth bag (from Nagy, 1962, his Plates 1 and 2).

Fig. 9a: A view of Bartók’s former and last house in Budapest from 1932-40 (Csalán Road), now the Bartók Memorial House.

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ago when I visited it; Adalbert saw theoriginal bronze during his visit to theBartók Memorial House; Fig. 9b).South Kensington was of course thehome, until recently, of both theNatural History Museum’s hugecollection of insects (now mostly inWandsworth, although somecollections are currently beingtransferred to the Darwin Centre),including Coleoptera – apparentlyBartók’s favourite insect Order if hisrelatively few extant specimens areanything to go by – and home too,until 2007, of the RoyalEntomological Society’s headquarters,now in St. Albans. Perhaps he wouldhave been pleased to be surroundedby so may insect specimens,beautifully curated, and many

beautifully written and illustratedbooks about them too, with the RoyalCollege of Music and Royal AlbertHall just up the road.

It remains of considerable interestto look at the insect specimens now inthe possession of the Bartok MemorialHouse, Budapest, although accordingto Adalbert, the authorities there arereluctant for them to be disturbed lestthey be damaged in any way.However, without proper preservationthese specimens are likely todeteriorate further anyway, andwithout professional identificationand curation, they have little scientificinterest…other than the fact that theywere collected by Bartók. We are surethat Bartók, being the meticulousworker he was, would wish his

specimens to be professionallyidentified and preserved for futuregenerations, just as with the biologicalspecimens of other great figures of thepast, e.g. Carl Linnaeus (1707-78)(Fitton & Harman, 2007).

Acknowledgements

We thank the Bartók Memorial Housefor allowing us to use the picturesused in Figs. 4a,b, 8a,b, and Dr. LászlóVikárius, Head of the Budapest BartókArchives, for kindly providing some ofthe biographical material and showingus Bartók’s insect books, for allowingus to reproduce Figs. 6 and 7a-d, andfor his helpful comments on themanuscript.

ReferencesBartók, P. (2002) My Father. Published by Bartók Records, Homosassa, Florida. Pp. 331. Bartók Archives, Institute of Musicology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences http://www.zti.hu/bartok/index.htmBartók Memorial House http://www.bartokmuseum.hu/memorialhouse.htmlBayley, A. (ed.) (2001) The Cambridge Companion to Bartók. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (p. 126). Pp. 288. Bónis, F. (1981) Béla Bartók: His Life in Pictures and Documents. Corvina Kiadó Press, Budapest. Pp. 288. Cserey, A. (1901) Rovargyüjtö. (Stampfel-féle tudományos zseb-könyvtár 76.), Pozsony-Bupdapest.Fitton, M. & Harman, K. (2007) The ‘Linnaean’ insect collection. The Linnean Collections, The Linnean Special Issue No. 7, 47-58. Gillies, M. (1990) Bartók Remembered.W.W. Norton & Co. Ltd., London. Pp. 238. Gross, J. (1912) Das Tierreich. V. Insekten. Berlin & Leipzig, G.J. Göschen. (Sammlung Göschen), pp.134. Lesznai, L. (1973) Bartók. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London. Pp. 219. Menuhin, Y. (1977) Unfinished Journey, MacDonald and Jane’s, London. (p. 321). Pp. 393. Nagy, B. (1962) De Béla Bartók collectionneur des Insectes et ami de la nature. Rovartani Kozlemenyek, Folia EntomologicaHungarica, 15 (1), 10-15.

Schonberg, H. C. (1998) The Lives of the Great Composers. Abacus Books, London, Pp. 761. Ujfalussy J. (1971) Béla Bartók. Corvina Press, Budapest. Pp. 459.

Fig. 9b-c: Statue of Bartók in the garden of the Memorial House; and a copy of the same statue in South Kensington (He visited Londonseveral times for performances beginning 1922). Photos 9a,b by Adalbert Balog.