Bela Bartok

The publication of this study of the music of Béla Bartók is an important event. Many descriptive analyses of particular works of his have appeared, but here for the first time is an authoritative and convincing exposition of the theoretical principles which the composer worked out for himself but refrained, as far as is known, from expounding it to anyone during his lifetime. Ernő Lendvai, one of Hungary’s leading musicologists, makes a vital contribution to the understanding of the work of one of the greatest composers of the last century. His research and analysis is liberally illustrated with music examples and diagrams. He discloses that Béla Bartók, in his early thirties, evolved for himself a method of integrating all the elements of music; the scales, the chordal structure with the melodic motifs appropriate to them, together with the proportions of length as between movements in a whole work, main divisions within a movement such as exposition, development and recapitulation and even balancing phrases within sections of movements, according to one single basic principle.