The String Quartets Of Bela Bartok

At the centre of Bartók's œuvre are his string quartets, which are generally acknowledged as some of the most significant pieces of 20th century chamber music. This book examines these remarkable works from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives.

"Béla Bartók's string quartets are 'key works': in them is reflected the stylistic development not only of his own art but of the music of a whole age, the twentieth century, and also of the string quartet genre itself. Each of the six string quartets represents a milestone in Bartók's creative path. They offer a faithful and comprehensive picture of the various periods in the composer's creative development, each bears the characteristic marks of these periods, showing as they do the direction taken by Bartók's orientations, the various influences and his own individual original methods. János Kárpáti's monograph on the one hand sets these works against the background of the whole history of the string quartet as a genre, thus indicating their position as the direct continuation of the late Beethoven quartets, and on the other hand it presents an exposition of the factors involved in Bartók's art, the trace of the influence of art music and folk music, of predecessors and contemporaries--placing Bartók at the head of the twentieth century masters as the distillation and summary of all that preceded him."--Dust jacket.

Acclaimed as the most important quartets since Beethoven, the six string quartets of Bela Bartok offer a summation of the composer's compositional style and development, and they constitute one of the great monuments of twentieth-century music. This outstanding new volume unites the first two of Bartok's chamber masterpieces. The stirring first quartet, written in 1908, captures the composer's great stylistic rebirth, as the intense Romanticism of the opening movement gives way to a propulsive finale reflecting the composer's growing interest in Hungarian folk music. The second quartet, written during World War I, finds Bartok's creativity unimpeded by wartime privations. The three-movement work echoes the meditative qualities of the first quartet in its outer movements, but its lively central movement suggests the traditional music of North Africa. A combination of boldly disparate influences, it remains a work of astonishing force and originality."

(Boosey & Hawkes Scores/Books). HPS 77

(Boosey & Hawkes Scores/Books). Hardbound

With this brilliant and uncompromising work perhaps the most famous musical work of the twentieth century Stravinsky changed the course of modern music forever. Discarding conventional harmonies for bizarrely dissonant chords, and uniform metrics for harshly jarring beat patterns, he created a sensational theater piece that, at the work's 1931 premier, caused the music world's most talked-about riot. "Every law of musical syntax, every canon of harmony seems to have been violated, every limit of rhythmic perversity and eccentricity of orchestration exceeded in this tumultuous cataclysm of sound," says "Grove's"; "yet with all its deliberate crudity and violence the 'Rite' is a clearly planned and perfectly controlled and coordinated piece of music [that] has long been accepted universally as a masterpiece and is in the repertory of every large symphony orchestra." Reproduced here from an authoritative edition, the score is ideal for study in the classroom, at home, or in the concert hall. This affordable, durable, and portable volume will be the edition of choice for music students and music lovers alike."