Béla Bartók (1881-1945)
The Six String Quartets
The string quartets of Béla Bartók occupy a central
position in the classical repertoire of the twentieth
century. Not only are they a milestone in the evolution
of the quartet literature, but, along with those by Haydn
and Beethoven, they provide an overview of their
composer’s output at all the main junctures of his
career. This might be thought surprising when one
remembers that Bartók was a pianist by training and,
latterly, by profession, though the store he set by the
medium is confirmed by the way in which each of the
quartets exemplifies those facets of his music which
preoccupied him prior to, and during the course of its
composition. It is this, coupled with the intrinsic quality
of each work, that gives the cycle its inclusiveness and
significance in the context of Western music as a whole.
Although he had written several quartets in his
adolescence, Bartók was 27 before he embarked on his
first acknowledged work in the medium. While the
pieces that precede it, notably the Rhapsody for Piano
and Orchestra (1904), the Second Orchestral Suite
(1907), the Bagatelles for piano (1908) and the First
Violin Concerto (1908), evince a gradually evolving
persona, only with the First Quartet (1909) did he
achieve a convincing amalgam of main influences,
notably Strauss and Debussy, such as allows his own
voice to come through. Moreover, for all that it recalls
these composers in its harmonic intricacy and
expressive license, the impact of folk-song, which
Bartók had been collecting for barely two years, is
already apparent in the rhythmic drive and cumulative
momentum that informs this music.
The three movements proceed without pause, such
that the second is in constant acceleration, in contrast to
the uniform tempo of the first, and with the generally
fast finale itself prefaced by a slow introduction. The
sighing motif which begins the Lento will permeate all
aspects of the piece: whether the expressive polyphony
to which it gives rise, or (beginning with reiterated cello
chords) the more melodic dialogue which forms the
central section. The Allegretto that follows is in constant
search of a stable tempo, keeping its material in a state
of flux, though with a repeated-note motif as an
important formal marker. Its uncertainty is decisively
countered by an Introduzione which, by means of
unison gestures and solo recitatives, leads to the Allegro
vivace, dominated by a folk-like theme initiated by the
cello. A more expansive passage divides off the two
main sections of this finale, which culminates in a
pungent reprise of the main theme and a powerful coda
uniting all of the salient ideas in affirmative accord.
The years that followed were among the most
difficult of Bartók’s career. With the opera Duke
Bluebeard’s Castle (1911) having been rejected by the
Budapest Opera as unperformable, and the stylistically
ambivalent ballet The Wooden Prince (1916) remaining
unorchestrated for several years, he largely withdrew
from active involvement in musical life to concentrate
on his folk-song researches. The length of time that he
worked on the Second Quartet (1915-17) is partly
explained by this enforced period of isolation, partly by
the overriding need to fashion a musical language in
which the ‘art’ and ‘folk’ music aspects of his creativity
were allowed to find their natural equilibrium. The
synthesis has been all but made in the present quartet,
which ranks among his most inward and personal
achievements.
There are again three movements, this time
following the slow-fast-slow format which frequently
found favour in the twentieth century. The opening
Moderato grows from a searching theme on viola,
which, after a modally-inflected idea has provided
contrast, propels the impassioned central climax. A
varied and intensified recall of the main material leads
into the pensively ambivalent close. If this movement
marks the limit of Bartók’s late-romantic leanings, the
scherzo that follows clearly points the way forward. The
motoric rhythms of its main theme and the yearning trio
section breathe the spirit of peasant culture, while the
scurrying coda anticipates the angular musical
expression to come. The finale returns to the inwardness
of hitherto, its terse initial motif spawning a freelyevolving
theme which together define the harmonic and
melodic content of the Lento as a whole. The closing
bars are not so much defeatist as fatalistic - as though
the composer’s solitude had afforded him a measure of
self-recognition.
The intensity of this piece was maintained in those
that followed, above all, the brutal pantomime The
Miraculous Mandarin (1919) and the two Violin
Sonatas (1921 and 1922), in which Bartók’s music
approaches a peak of chromatic intensity. Then, in the
unlikely guise of a Dance Suite (1923) written to
commemorate the founding of the modern Hungarian
capital, he broke through to a harmonically more clearcut
manner that was to have profound consequences for
the works to come. Three years of relative silence were
broken by music written for himself to play, namely the
First Piano Concerto, the Piano Sonata, and the Out of
Doors suite (all 1926). Then, in the Third Quartet
(1927), Bartók achieved an integration of folk idioms
with a Beethovenian contrapuntal resource such he as
not to surpass.
Although it unfolds as a seamless whole, the quartet
comprises two main parts which themselves divide into
four sections, the work thus following a sonata-form
layout in principle as well as in spirit. The Prima parte
presents the principal ideas, respectively ruminative and
malevolent, in the manner of an exposition, before an
acerbic climax and a modally-inflected codetta. The
Seconda parte is launched with a pizzicato idea, which
provides the motivation for a tumultuous development
of the material heard thus far: many of the playing
techniques synonymous with Bartók’s later quartet
writing are here used extensively for the first time. At its
apex, the music spills over into the Recapitulazione
della prima parte, a transformed and generally
restrained reprise of the main ideas, with which the
work seems to be heading for a muted close. The Coda
steals in, however, to draw the motivic threads into a
taut continuum, laying bare the music’s harmonic and
tonal premises with breathtaking conclusiveness.
While the Fourth Quartet (1928) was to follow
barely a year later, its formal precepts could hardly have
been more different from the preceding work. Although
he had made use of a five-movement ‘arch’ structure as
far back as the First Orchestral Suite (1905), it was only
in this piece that Bartók fully utilized its potential for
maximum expressive variety within a balanced and
symmetrical framework.
As in rhythm and harmony, so in tonal orientation
does the piece move, as in a palindrome, to the centre
and outwards again; though this will not be readily
perceived in the opening Allegro, whose vigorous
contrapuntal discourse partly conceals a regular sonataform
movement, with contrasting main themes, an
intensifying central development and an extended coda.
The first scherzo, played virtually con sordino
throughout, has a restless, spectral air which
complements its ceaseless momentum. The slow
movement is the epicentre: emerging out of a brooding
cello melody, heard against a static harmonic backdrop,
it reaches a peak of fervency before returning to its
pensive origins. The second scherzo, played pizzicato
throughout, is more overtly characterful than its
predecessor, an emotional ‘opening-out’ which is
pursued in the finale. This transforms the first
movement’s expressive territory with appreciably
greater zest, before bringing the work to a headlong and
exhilarating close.
The formal poise thus attained was to be put to
productive use in such subsequent works as the Cantata
Profana (1930) and the Second Piano Concerto (1931).
The pressures of performing and academic
commitments left Bartók little time for composition in
the three years that followed, and though the Fifth
Quartet (1934) might be thought to continue the
essential thinking of its predecessor, its formal aims and
expressive content make it an altogether different
proposition. At its centre is a scherzo, this time enclosed
by two slow movements, while the unwavering
emphasis on counterpoint that marks out the previous
quartet is here tempered by a harmonic lucidity and an
underlying tonal direction, qualities such as combine to
make it perhaps the most approachable quartet of
Bartók’s maturity.
This greater directness is immediately evident in the
opening Allegro, its formal divisions audible at first
hearing, and in which reiterated chords endow the music
with a more direct tonal trajectory. The contrast between
the vigorous and expressive main themes is itself more
pronounced, with the latter’s overt lyricism continued in
the first slow movement. This is an Adagio whose
ethereal beginning evolves into a dialogue of rapt
tenderness, only briefly ruffled by the agitated middle
section. Marked Alla bulgarese, the scherzo has a
distinctive gait as well as a robust humour and, in its
trio, a quixotic alternation of textures. The Andante
draws on its slow predecessor in a variation of earlier
ideas, given focus by the rhythmic devices of walking
motion and rapid-fire chords. A long-range developing
of material that is intensified in the finale, whose charge
through its sonata-form ground-plan is halted by the
distorted allusion to a popular song, one which offsets
the conclusiveness of the work’s ending to unsettling
effect.
Although it saw the emergence of such masterpieces
as the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936),
the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937) and the
Second Violin Concerto (1938), the second half of the
1930s was to be a time of intense soul-searching for
Bartók. Increasingly alienated by the deterioration of the
European political landscape in general, and by the
increasingly fascistic stance of the Hungarian government
in particular, he first banned all performances of his
music in his native country, before opting for selfimposed
exile in the United States. Understandable, then,
that a combined sense of dread and resignation in the face
of the inevitable, should permeate all aspects of the Sixth
Quartet (1939), composed in the months prior to the
outbreak of World War Two.
For all that it adopts the traditional four movements
and continues the drive towards a greater tonal and
harmonic lucidity of his final decade, the quartet is
among Bartók’s most equivocal statements. The first
three movements are prefaced by a Mesto theme, which
achieves fuller scoring and greater pathos at each return.
First, a solo viola presentation leads to a sonata
movement whose onward progress is questioned and
sidestepped at every formal juncture. Next, a cello
rendering with tremolo accompaniment leads to a march
whose rhythmic profile is the only stable element in a
movement of bitter irony and, in the central section,
wrenching emotional intensity. Then, a three-part
version leads to a burlesque which pointedly conflates
the popular and the grotesque, with the only solace
coming in a brief trio. Finally, a full quartet presentation
makes the Mesto theme into the subject of the entire last
movement, one which pursues an avowedly melancholic
path before a conclusion of poised uncertainty.
Even though he was, at length, able, in such works
as the Concerto for Orchestra (1943), the Solo Violin
Sonata (1944) and the Third Piano Concerto (1945), to
surmount the difficulties posed by financial hardship
and failing health, Bartók was not to return to the
medium of the string quartet. At his death a Viola
Concerto was left in semi-drafted form, while the
opening bars of a Seventh Quartet bear tantalizing
witness to the composer’s continuing commitment to,
and belief in the medium. What might have resulted is
impossible to guess. Better to focus attention instead on
what is left to us, a cycle of quartets whose consistency
of form and content is strikingly akin to the sets of six
that Haydn frequently composed, and a range and depth
of expression such as truly embodies a lifetime of
experience.
Richard Whitehouse