Notes for: July 12, 2011
Over the years Bartók extended his interest in Hungarian folk music to Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria – and even to Algeria. As he later recalled in a lecture at Harvard, he incorporated into his own compositional style “this newly-covered musical rural material of incomparable beauty and perfection.” He cited scores of ways this material exerted its influence on his music, tonally, rhythmically, and even structurally.
Generally speaking, Bartók used these folk influences in two ways. In some cases, he simply provided settings of existing folk music for performance by western singers or on western instruments. This category included, for example, the Six Romanian Folk Dances of 1915, essentially folk tunes set for the piano simple enough for competent children to play. In other cases, he produced completely original compositions exploring and exploiting folk melodic and rhythmic elements and requiring advanced musical skills for realization.
The Rhapsody we hear this evening falls into the second category. It was one of two rhapsodies composed in 1928 for friends who were concert violinists – the first for Joseph Szigeti, well known in the United States, and the second for Zoltán Székely, a mainly Hungarian musician. Bartók and Szigeti became frequent concert and recording colleagues, and for them and clarinetist Benny Goodman Bartók composed his popular concert piece Contrasts.
The two Rhapsodies won immediate attention and were both issued in other instrumental combinations. Thus the first Rhapsody, initially for violin and piano, is often heard for violin and orchestra and for cello and piano. However, the violin-and-piano version is still the most frequently performed.
The first Rhapsody uses mostly folk elements from Transylvania, an historic region in central Romania, with additional tunes from Hungary and Ruthenia, a border region partly in Hungary, Slovakia and the Ukraine. However, these melodies are extensively ornamented and elaborated beyond the capacity of most village musicians.
The structure is built on the csárdás, a term derived from the Hungarian for “country tavern”. Although originating in Hungary, the form is common throughout central Europe and was popularized in Western Europe by gypsy musicians. Liszt used the form in several of his Hungarian Rhapsodies, as did Brahms in several of his Hungarian Dances and Tchaikovsky in the ballet Swan Lake.
The csárdás has two distinct movements: a slow introduction, called the lassu, and a swift wild dance, called the friss. In this case, the lassu features a heavily accented rhythm and a melody initially based on the ascending scale of the medieval Lydian mode. A second section is dominated by the the characteristic short-long rhythm familiar in Hungarian folk music. The section ends with the return of the first material and a closing reference to the second.
The friss, after the a brief introduction, features a melody that may remind you of the Shaker melody Aaron Copland used in Appalachian Spring. The second section, with variations in speed, generates greater excitement, the metronome marks increasing from 100 to 120, 152, 160, 168 and 200. Bartók provided alternative endings: one abruptly assuming the pace and theme of the lassu, and the other reversing the acceleration, bringing back the friss theme, and closing with a brisk coda. Bartók always played the second.