László Vikárius - Böcker

Hungarian composer Béla Bartók declared his Cantata profana, composed in 1930 and premièred in London in 1934, his "credo," the composition of which was inseparable from the history of his involvement with folklore. Not only was Bartók one of the twentieth century's most important composers, he was also one of the founders of comparative musicology, the precursor to the field of ethnomusicology. His collection and analytical studies of Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak folk musics shaped his distinctive musical style, as well as complex scholarly publications. In this volume of the Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation series, László Vikárius, a leading authority on Bartók, uncovers the many layers of ethnographic, historical, and personal meaning embedded in the Cantata profana. The work's libretto was based on a Romanian folk ballad from his collection, and the mystical story of a hunter's nine sons who turn into stags--never to return home--was close to the composer's heart. Vikárius analyzes the origins of the piece, rooted in one of Bartók's most intensive periods of collecting activities in Transylvania just before the outbreak of World War I. The multi-ethnic folkloric landscape of "historic" Hungary (part of Austro-Hungary at the time) is embodied by the source materials for Cantata profana that survive in full to be analyzed, from the sketches to the various translations of the libretto. As Vikárius demonstrates, the choice of a Romanian winter solstice ceremonial text as libretto for Cantata profana combines Bartók's folklorism with a markedly neoclassical allusion to J. S. Bach's St Matthew Passion and is necessarily underpinned by the severe criticism Bartók faced because of his interest in and work on Romanian folklore. Throughout the book, Vikárius reveals numerous hidden details that prove crucial to the concept of the work and explores how its ideologically charged text underlines the aesthetic concept behind the musical decisions.

This volume of essays celebrates Hungarian musicologist László Somfai (b. 1934), head of the Budapest Bartók Archives for more than three decades, past president of the International Musicological Society, and a leading authority on the music of Joseph Haydn and Béla Bartók. His complex approach to source material involves evaluating biographical data while examining compositional sketches, notation, and performance practice, leading him to an "authentic" understanding of music that reaches beyond the discussion of musical sources. This honorary volume is devoted to the topics and approaches he has pioneered, without limiting the discussion to any particular period or style of music history. With a natural emphasis on the Viennese classics and Bartók, the 34 essays in this volume cover a range of music study, from the Middle Ages through the second half of the 20th century. Contributions from younger scholars and leading musicologists alike have been collected, including Somfai's former students, friends, and colleagues from all over the globe. Complete with an up-to-date bibliography of Somfai's publications, this book presents new and in-depth analyses of source studies and performance practices of many great composers and musical styles.