{"id":1546,"date":"2015-12-31T17:25:21","date_gmt":"2015-12-31T17:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hollerung.hu\/?page_id=1546"},"modified":"2016-06-30T15:35:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T15:35:37","slug":"the-demented-order","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hollerung.hu\/en\/the-demented-order\/","title":{"rendered":"THE DEMENTED ORDER"},"content":{"rendered":"

B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k: Concerto<\/span><\/p>\n

29 November 2009, Italian Cultural Institute of Budapest<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dohn\u00e1nyi Orchestra of Budafok<\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome, dear Ladies and Gentlemen,<\/p>\n

First of all, I have a confession to make: I think this is the piece (and, naturally, Bart\u00f3k\u2019s life work itself) that made me become a musician.
\nI learnt music from when I was a child, though I went to an ordinary \u201ccivilian\u201d secondary school specialized in mathematics and physics, to J\u00f3zsef Attila Secondary Grammar School. Still, I owe this school for having become a musician. The first Bart\u00f3k Cultural Competition was on the air when I was a third year student in the secondary school and I was excessively affected by it despite having relatively scarce musical knowledge and knowing especially little about music literature. Still, I was even the more blessed with love for music.<\/p>\n

Strangely enough, Bart\u00f3k\u2019s life work was the first big lot that I could truly take up. I was still fairly young when I began to become familiar with his entire life work. The Concerto<\/em> itself was such an immense experience that made me come to a decision then: I will be a music historian. Luckily enough, it \u201ccame off\u201d in a different way (or at least this is what I think now) as I became an active musician. (It\u2019s of course another story whether You or the musicians on the stage share my view…) So Bart\u00f3k is one of the personalities who determined my whole career and thinking and who (pity enough) doesn\u2019t yet mean an everyday bread for us all. Still, I can assure You that those who begin understanding music through Bart\u00f3k\u2019s pieces will consider this a certain natural, obvious and self-evident language that will endow them, when appropriate, with the capacity to turn young people to music for their whole lifetime.
\nI wish to dedicate this concert today to the memory of my unforgettable teacher L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Somogyi [1]<\/a> who was of determinative importance in my career as a conductor and who I\u2019m actually also linked to through the experience of a Concerto interpretation detailed during a seminar in Szombathely.
\nI\u2019d first like to introduce L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Somogyi in brief as he must be rather unknown to the younger generation, though may be well-known to those who lived in the fifties and paid attention to musical life. Alongside J\u00e1nos Ferencsik, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Somogyi was in those times certainly one of the determinative personalities in Hungarian musical life. But he was first of all a grandiose teacher who brought up generations of conductors including the world-famous conductor Istv\u00e1n Kert\u00e9sz.
\nL\u00e1szl\u00f3 Somogyi had a bad reputation of his frequent huffiness seemingly turning into discourtesy and austerity. His emotionalism was coupled with a special \u201cskill\u201d whereby he could grasp the others in their most sensitive and most vulnerable point. Still, he was one of the greatest music pedagogues I\u2019ve ever known. He never made a compromise, didn\u2019t tolerate contradiction, never agreed to any alternatives. He simply said \u201cthis is how you have to do it\u201d, explained the reasons and no excuse could be made afterwards. If someone didn\u2019t perform according to his expectations, he took fearsome offence.<\/p>\n

What I have here in my hands is a sheet of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s Concerto. I keep it as a requisite because a highly important moment of my life is attached to it. As You can see, it\u2019s glued together \u2013 simply because L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Somogyi tore it. He grasped it and threw it at my head with a strength that the sheet ripped into two. He did so because for the second or third time I \u201cdidn\u2019t do it so\u201d as he said and this was simply unacceptable for him. Just as one of my unforgettable history teachers who drilled the material in our heads as a dogma and claimed a word for word repetition of the lesson in the oral test. Lo and behold: I can still remember these sentences that met with a gradually deepening interpretation over my life.
\nLater on, I found day after day that these seemingly dogmatic truths can be profoundly relevant and could be converted to a lot of topics. Teachers who taught authoritatively had the deepest impression on me. Now I already dare say that, fortunately or unfortunately, most of the things will hold true in a single form only.
\nWe musicians frequently act (simply in our justification) as if the performance of a piece had several solutions (and then the critics can argue about who was right\u2026). In fact, if you know a piece very well, it will have a single correct solution only. But evidently, this has a certain ring, in the words of my other beloved teacher, Professor Pernye [2]<\/a>. For instance everything will remain identical within the limits of tempo and dynamics but originally there\u2019s a single correct solution only. It was L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Somogyi who in this regard claimed order with immeasurable rigidity and occasionally demented sanguineness; so the order was in fact created and could accompany you all over your life. This means that the attribute \u201cdemented\u201d is not by mere chance used in the title of our performance today.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve mentioned before, this piece is a very important one for me; moreover, it\u2019s a summary of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s life work which can open the door for those who\u2019re not really well-versed in music to understanding Bart\u00f3k.
\nWhen talking about Bart\u00f3k, the first we generally mention is that he\u2019s one of those who explored Hungarian folklore. He follows a very special method to integrate folk music into his own musical thinking. This means that his early pieces include folk songs, later he uses folk song-type melodies and even later we don\u2019t seem to hear either folk songs or folk song-type elements. Still, if you really do pay attention, you\u2019ll be astonished to recognize the folk song character in each of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s gestures. We Hungarians find it relatively simple to interpret the Hungarian folk song elements. But you should also understand that Bart\u00f3k\u2019s music uses not only Hungarian folk music but also from the neighbouring countries, so it includes mainly Romanian, Slovakian folk music, some from south of Hungary and sometimes even some Ruthenian elements. These are all crucial parts of the composer\u2019s entire life work.
\nAnother key to better understanding Bart\u00f3k is somewhat similar to how you should get a closer glimpse at Mozart. Both life works rely on certain basic characters, all linked to theatrical pieces. If you take almost any piano concerto or symphony from Mozart\u2019s life work (and wholly applicable to the big pieces), you\u2019ll certainly be able to pair it with an opera hero whose musical development in the opera uses similar musical characters. Just as if a character from an opera scene were to appear here. These few \u201cintonations\u201d (just to use this aesthetic expression) play a key role in interpreting Bart\u00f3k\u2019s art, as typically they regularly return upon representing the characters and should be known well to find our way in Bart\u00f3k\u2019s life work.<\/p>\n

One of the characters that Bart\u00f3k is mostly famed for is the Barbarian<\/em><\/strong>. It was quite unusual in its time and might still be such nowadays. This character can the most typically be linked with the piece The Miraculous Mandarin [A csod\u00e1latos mandarin]<\/em>, though the Barbarian<\/em> thought appears in a lot of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s other works; for instance in one of his best known and most popular pieces, in Allegro barbaro<\/em> where Bart\u00f3k calls this character by its name.
\nThe second, similarly basic character is the night music<\/em><\/strong>. These overnight images of nature are always a bit about loneliness and are the naked and dreadful expressions of our stranger-in-the-world existence. The key to these feelings is hidden in Bluebeard\u2019s Castle [A k\u00e9kszak\u00e1ll\u00fa herceg v\u00e1ra]<\/em>; that\u2019s where (in the Lake<\/em> of tears<\/em> movement) you can first hear this specific expression of loneliness, apprehension and anguish. A piece that calls the character by its name can likewise be coupled with this feature. This is the piano piece Music of the night [Az \u00e9jszaka zen\u00e9je]<\/em>.
\nThe third essential musical character, the grotesque<\/em><\/strong> is present in his life work from the playful to the demonic. Bart\u00f3k\u2019s third theatrical piece, the pantomime ballet The Wooden Prince [A f\u00e1b\u00f3l faragott kir\u00e1lyfi]<\/em> can be coupled with this feature, as the existence and figure of the wooden puppet itself expresses the extremes of this character. All this has a still valid philosophic message: man\u2019s toys that he produces for his own entertainment might even turn against him. The piano piece A Bit Drunk [Kicsit \u00e1zottan]<\/em>, which he instrumentalized in Hungarian sketches [Magyar k\u00e9pek]<\/em>, is yet another of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s pieces where he uses the grotesque<\/em>. The latter presents the lovely and sweet character of a bemused man.
\nFinally, the so-called folk dance finale<\/em><\/strong> also ranks among the basic characters: it represents Bart\u00f3k\u2019s credo in the brotherhood of nations on the one hand and is a dramaturgical unit related to the final sounds of the specific piece, on the other. Practically speaking, a basic question in almost each of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s pieces starting from Dance Suite [T\u00e1ncszvit]<\/em> is whether it comprises a folk dance finale. If it does, we\u2019ll go home with relative joy and optimism, or if it doesn\u2019t, this feeling will be lacking, joy and optimism, the real catharsis will have to be missed.
\nSo these are the intonations, the character types that interlace Bart\u00f3k\u2019s life work and offer a key to understanding a piece and following the musical flow. A precondition to understanding quite many musical pieces is our recognition of the characters appearing and our apprehension of their relationship and the dominance of a single character.<\/p>\n

Yet another essential element that helps us take in Bart\u00f3k\u2019s pieces is editing<\/em>. We actually inherited the four-movement structure from European musical culture: this was typical of each classical cyclic form including e.g. the symphony up to the turn of the century. Bart\u00f3k uses it in several of his pieces, though he creates a typical and unique Bart\u00f3k-style form, the so-called bridge form<\/em><\/strong> of five movements. The dramaturgical process, the musical action, the essence of the composer\u2019s message is in this form characteristically incorporated in the first, third and fifth movements, whereas the interim (i.e. second and fourth) movements provide a counterpoint, a sort of relaxation, sometimes even stop the process and represent a playful, spicy intermezzo in fitting into the elements with serious messages.<\/p>\n

The Concerto<\/em> follows this structure: it\u2019s a five-movement piece built up in a bridge form. The most important part, the centre of the piece is its third movement which itself was composed in a bridge form. From a dramaturgical point of view, the centre of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s bridge forms can equally be the emotional nadir or peak of the process. Moreover, the extreme movements might rhyme, thereby representing an identical mood and musical thought, or, as I\u2019ve mentioned regarding the folk dance finale, the closing movement may imply the elevated culmination of a rough start.<\/p>\n

Similar to several of his predecessors, one of the attributes of Bart\u00f3k as an inwards romantic composer is that he builds the process of creating the music in the musical piece. When I was explaining some other composers\u2019 musical compositions (just recall Haydn, Beethoven and several romantic composers) I described on many an occasion how they unravel the precedents of developing a certain theme or musical thought. Bart\u00f3k moves further on: he shows the phase of the musical process down to creation; the sort of fight for what develops and how, frequently from nothing. Bart\u00f3k\u2019s development technique (i.e. everything that happens with musical thoughts in musical processes) is a peculiarly 20th<\/sup> century phenomenon and one of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s unique endowments. For instance the way he utilizes the technique of changing the arch of a melody; if a melody tends upwards, Bart\u00f3k will show its inverse. This is called mirroring<\/em><\/strong>. But sometimes he would reverse<\/em><\/strong> the melodies. All these tools are a great help for us in our chances to interpret the piece.<\/p>\n

Now let me give You a lively example to illustrate my previous explanations.<\/p>\n

Right in the first beats of the first movement<\/em><\/strong> we immediately happen to find ourselves among the most important roots of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s ideology, the folklore.
\nThe trumpets play a theme that I don\u2019t think anyone, except well-trained musicians, would think of being folk music. But if you listen carefully to the arch of the melody, the four-line articulation, you\u2019ll recognize the ancient Hungarian descending type of folk song.<\/p>\n

     <\/span> <\/span><\/span><\/span>1. Concerto<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div><\/span>