Notes for: July 18, 2006
Bartók wrote Contrasts in 1938 at the request of clarinetist Benny Goodman and the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti. Two years later the three recorded the work in what quickly became a classic recording and is now available on CD.
Now recognized as a 20th century masterpiece, Contrasts had a difficult childbirth. When Goodman first proposed the work, he had in mind a light rhapsodic piece in Hungarian folk style with a slow introduction followed by a fast main section. However, Szigeti, to demonstrate Goodman’s skill on the clarinet, sent the composer some records of Goodman’s band. These spurred Bartók into expanding the introduction into a separate movement and producing music far more challenging and freer in style than Goodman’s original intention.
Further, Goodman, eager to build his name as a recording artist, had asked for a piece that could fit on the two sides of a 78 RPM record – that is, about six to seven minutes of music. Bartók was unaccustomed to the phonograph’s time restrictions, and now the two movements totaled about eleven and a half minutes, making a single 78 rpm record impossible.
In January, 1939, the two movements were performed under the title Two Dances in Carnegie Hall by Goodman and Szigeti with Egon Petri on the piano, but neither Goodman, Szigeti nor Bartók was happy with the results. Bartók, in particular, was persuaded that the work’s expanded two-movement structure needed a balancing slow movement. His solution was a new movement sandwiched between the two dances and aptly titled, “relaxation.” The first performance of the revised three-movement work, under its new title Contrasts, took place in April, 1940, in the recording studio.
Contrasts is Bartók’s only chamber-music score with a wind instrument. In his string quartets, he normally treated the strings as a homogeneous group – that is, he was concerned with finding novel ways of blending instruments of similar tonal quality. That approach, Mozart and Brahms had demonstrated in their quintets for clarinet and strings, was impossible with the reedy clarinet. In this work, consequently, Bartók sought instead to find novel ways of contrasting the instruments, thus giving the work its name.
Contrasts also reflects Bartók’s life-long effort to integrate into his own music the extensive research of his early years in central European folk music. Two of the work’s three movements are, in fact, highly sophisticated treatments of folk dances.
The first, Verbunkos, derives from an 18th century Magyar dance performed by soldiers in full uniform with swords and spurs. The dance was often used to attract new recruits, and is thus sometimes referred to as a “recruiting dance.” The richly ornamented figures characteristic of the dance were traditionally played on a primitive conical clarinet called the tarogato, which became a freedom symbol in the Hungarian struggle against Hapsburg oppression. The clarinet, consequently, presents the main theme of the movement and retains much of the interest, including a brilliant cadenza.
Piheno, the title of the second movement, means simply “relaxation.” The first section is a short and slow chorale for the clarinet and violin, punctuated by bass trills in the piano. A middle section is more agitated, and a closing section repeats the elements of the opening section but with the melodic interest assigned mainly to the piano.
Sebes is a fast dance, again in three sections. The movement requires two violins, one tuned normally and one with the G and E strings flatted a half step, and two clarinets, one in A and the other in B flat. The first section is opened by a series of bare fifths on the open strings of the mis-tuned violin, against which the clarinet states the main theme. The central section of the movement is in a characteristic Bulgarian rhythm of 8+5 over 8, with the 13 beats within each bar grouped 3+2+3+2+3. After the return of the first section, it is the violin’s turn to have a cadenza, and the work then accelerates to a hectic close.
Notes for: July 12, 2016
Bartók wrote Contrasts in 1938 at the request of clarinetist Benny Goodman and the great Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti. Two years later the three recorded the work in what quickly became a classic recording. Now recognized as a 20th century masterpiece, Contrasts had a difficult beginning. When Goodman first proposed the work, he had in mind a light rhapsodic piece in Hungarian gypsy style with a slow introduction followed by a fast main section. However, when Bartók realized Goodman’s skill on the clarinet, he expanded the introduction into a separate movement, thus producing music far more challenging and freer in style than Goodman’s original intention.
In January 1939, the two movements under the title Two Dances were performed in Carnegie Hall by Goodman and Szigeti with Egon Petri at the piano, but neither Goodman, Szigeti nor Bartók was happy with the results. Bartók, in particular, was persuaded that the work’s expanded two-movement structure needed a balancing slow movement. His solution was a new movement sandwiched between the two dances and aptly titled, “relaxation.” The first performance of the revised three-movement work, under its new title Contrasts, took place in April 1940.
Contrasts is Bartók’s only chamber-music score with a wind instrument. In his string quartets, he normally treated the strings as a homogeneous group – that is, he was concerned with finding novel ways of blending instruments of similar tonal quality. That approach, as Mozart and Brahms had demonstrated in their quintets for clarinet and strings, was impossible with the reedy clarinet. Therefore, Bartók sought instead to find novel ways of contrasting the instruments, thus giving the work its name. Contrasts also reflects Bartók’s lifelong effort to integrate his extensive research in central European folk music into his own music. Two of the work’s three movements are, in fact, highly sophisticated treatments of folk dances.
The first, Verbunkos, derives from an 18th century Magyar dance performed by soldiers in full uniform with swords and spurs. The dance was often used to attract new recruits, and is thus sometimes referred to as a “recruiting dance.” The ornamented figures characteristic of the dance were traditionally played on a primitive conical clarinet called the tarogato, which became a freedom symbol in the Hungarian struggle against Hapsburg oppression. The clarinet, consequently, presents the main theme of the movement and provides much of the interest, including a brilliant cadenza.
Piheno, the title of the second movement, simply means “relaxation.” The first section is a short and slow duet for the clarinet and violin, punctuated by bass trills in the piano. The middle section is more agitated, while the closing section repeats the theme of the opening section but with the melody mainly in the piano.
Sebes is a fast dance, again in three sections. The movement requires two violins, one tuned normally and one with the G and E strings flatted a half step, and two clarinets, one in A and the other in B-flat. The first section opens with a series of bare fifths on the open strings of the mis-tuned violin, against which the clarinet states the main theme. After a rhythmic central section, the first section returns; the violin has a cadenza, and the work then accelerates to a frantic close.
Notes for: July 30, 2024
Folk music meets jazz in Contrasts. The piece is an infectious example of the way in which Bartók assimilated Eastern European folk melodies, modes, and rhythms into his distinctive musical personality. It also swings.
Bartók was in Switzerland when he received a request from the Hungarian violinist Joseph Szigeti, a good friend. Szigeti, who had emigrated to the United States, had persuaded Benny Goodman – the jazz icon who was a patron of “serious” composers — to commission a work for clarinet, violin, and piano. It was to be in the lassú-friss (slow-fast) format that Bartók had used in an earlier Hungarian-style rhapsody for violin and piano. Szigeti specified: “If possible, the composition should consist of two independent parts…and, of course, we hope that it will also contain brilliant clarinet and violin cadenzas.” Goodman asked that each of the two parts be just a few minutes long – short enough to fit on the two sides of a 78 rpm record. As it turned out, the new work had three parts and ran around 17 minutes. Bartók joined Szigeti and Goodman in Contrasts’ Carnegie Hall premiere. The three also recorded the work in 1940.
Contrasts is aptly named. The very different timbres of the instruments make for a striking contrast, although not a unique one – this particular combination is one that composers from Mozart to Stravinsky have used. The performers themselves came from the two different worlds of classical music and jazz. Contrasting tempos shape the movements, which overflow with contrasting meters, moods, and styles. Stravinsky’s influence can be heard, and so can Gershwin’s.
The first movement (Verbunkos – recruiting dance) is based on a stately 18th-century Hungarian dance performed by uniformed officers to entice young men in villages to join the army. Bartok’s ingratiating verbunkos is introduced by the clarinet after some opening violin pizzicatos — an idea borrowed, according to Szigeti, from the blues movement of Ravel’s Violin Sonata. The movement includes a texturally dense second theme. It also includes, as requested, a clarinet cadenza near the end; the violin gets its cadenza in the middle of the last movement. The nocturne-like second movement (Pihenõ – relaxation) is a slow, atmospheric interlude, with a piano part that at times suggests a gamelan. The folk-inspired third movement (Sebes – fast dance) opens with an attention-getter: a second violin, retuned so that the violinist can play diminished fifths on open strings. These intervals — which were considered sinister in western music but found frequently in central European folk music as well as in jazz and blues — set the tone for a bouncy, jazz-inflected movement that includes a rhythmically complex middle section and ends flamboyantly with a raucous series of outbursts from the clarinet.