Konferencia a 75 éves Kárpáti János tiszteletére
Köszöntõ : Kárpáti Jánoshoz a 75. születésnapja tiszteletére rendezett konferencián 3. - 5. o
Vikárius László
Tanulmány
Bartók és Scarlatti : oknyomozás és hatástanulmány 7. - 29. o
Mikusi Balázs abstract
Bartók and Scarlatti
A study of motives and influence
Balázs Mikusi

The long-held notion that Bartók’s style presents a unique synthesis of features derived from folk music, from the works of his best contemporaries as well as from the great classical masters has resulted in a certain asymmetry in Bartók studies. This article provides a short overview of the debate concerning the “Bartókian synthesis”, and presents a case study to illuminate how an ostensibly “lesser” historical figure like Domenico Scarlatti could have proved important for Bartók in several respects. I suggest that it must almost certainly have been Sándor Kovács who called Scarlatti’s music to Bartók’s attention around 1910, and so Kovács’s 1912 essay on the Italian composer may tell us much about Bartók’s Scarlatti reception as well. I argue that, while Scarlatti’s musical style may indeed have appealed to Bartók in more respects than one, he may also have identified with Scarlatti, the man, who (in Kovács’s interpretation) developed a thoroughly ironic style after he realized the unavoidable loneliness resulting from the impossibility of communicating human emotions (an idea that must have intrigued Bartók right around the time he composed his Duke Bluebeard’s castle).In conclusion I propose that Scarlatti’s E major sonata (L21/K162), which Bartók performed on stage and also edited for an instructive publication, may have inspired the curious structural model that found its most clear-cut realization in Bartók’s Third Quartet.
Bartók: „Medvetánc” 31. - 49. o
Vikárius László abstract
Bartók: »Bear Dance«
László Vikárius

The point of departure for the investigation in this article is a closer look at „Bear Dance” as a nineteenth-century character piece exemplified by Schumann’s two related compositions in A minor, Twelve Pieces for Four Hands, op. 85, no. 2 and its rudimentary early version, for piano solo, composed for the Album for the Young but only published posthumously, as well as Mendelssohn’s F major occasional piece (available only as a facsimile in the Musical Times of 1909). These pieces are all characterized by a very low ostinato-like tone-repetition in the base (recalling the clumsy movements of the bear in Schumann’s piece while imitating the leader’s drumming in the Mendelssohn) and melody with the range of an octave in high register, an obvious imitation of the leader’s pipe tune.
Bartók obviously had the same type of genre piece recalling the popular bear dance when he composed his closing piece for the Ten Easy Piano Pieces (1908), an early realization of his „ostinato” movements (see especially the „Ostinato” in Mikrokosmos) thereby turning the amusing topic to something more serious, even wild and eerie. „Bear Dance” is of course closely related to the compositions (such as Bagatelles nos. 13 and 14) coming out of the composer’s personal crisis due to his unrequited love to the violinist Stefi Geyer, and it also uses a version (D-F#-A#-C#) of the leitmotiv (D-F#-A-C# or D-F-A-C#), generally named after Geyer by theorists, as a central harmony to the piece. The employment of characteristics derived from folk music (kanásztánc [swinherd’s dance] or kolomeika rhythm, strophic structure, etc.) is analyzed as well as the composer’s modernist preference for harmonies integrating minor second/major seventh clash and large-scale tritonal tensions (e.g. D organ point in the first section and Ab pedal in the first trio).
The composition and publication history of the piece is reinvestigated on the basis of documents, letters and compositional manuscripts, partly unpublished so far. The piece, performed often at the composer’s recitals together with „Evening in Transylvania” from the same set, also proved to be a central point of reference for the most important Hungarian poet of the interwar period, Attila József, who not only wrote a significant poem in 1932 inspired by Bartók’s composition and entitled a volume of poetry after it but also collected his initial thoughts for a planned aesthetic discussion of Bartók’s music under the same title.
Bartók’s encounter with a distinctly different type of music for a ritual solo dance for peasant lads in Romanian villages of Transylvania is further touched upon, since he also called one of his arrangements of a violin piece, the second, middle, movement of the Sonatina (1915) a „Bear Dance”.
An English version of the article is due to be published in Studia Musicologica later this year.
Erdély találkozásai Schönberggel és iskolájával 51. - 60. o
László Ferenc abstract
Siebenbürgens Begegnungen mit Schönberg und seiner Schule
Ferenc László

Die erste siebenbürgische Aufführung eines Schönberg-Werkes fand in Kronstadt (rum.: Braşov, ung.: Brassó) am 18. September 1913 statt, als Helene und Emil Honigberger einen „Modernen Liederabend“ gaben, dessen Programm mit einem Brahms-Lied begann. Aus der Zwischenkriegszeit konnte bis dato auch nur eine einzige Schönberg-Aufführung dokumentarisch belegt werden: Am 14. November 1932 führte der Kronstädter Immanuel Bernfeld zwei Stücke aus dem op. 19 auf. In den Jahrzenten der Totalitarizmen wurde Schönberg – als Jude und Vertreter der „entarteten Kunst“, nachher als „dekadenter Formalist“, gleichzeitig aber auch wegen dem Konservativismus der (1920 von Rumänien einverleibten) historischen Provinz – nicht aufgeführt. Bemerkenswert ist, dass ist „fortschrittlich gesinnten“ Komponisten Siebenbürgens „emigriert“ sind: Zeno Vancea und Marţian Negrea haben sich in Bukarest niedergelassen, Heinrich Neugeboren ist nach Paris, Alexander Boskovits nach Israel, Rudolf Wagner-Régeny und Norbert von Hannenheim sind nach Berlin ausgewandert, wo Letzterer zu einem repräsentativen Vertreter der Schönberg-Schule wurde. Erst infolge des ideologischen Tauwetters konnte im Frühjahr 1964 ein Schönberg-Essay des Verfassers veröffentlicht werden, das vorwiegend auf János Kárpátis 1963 in Budapest erschienenen Monographie basierte. Ab 1964 waren auch Aufführungen symphonischer Werke der „Wiener Schule“ möglich. Schönberg, Berg und Webern sind seitdem in Siebenbürgen neben den kanonisierten Bartók und Enescu „angenommene“ – wann auch bis heute keine beliebte – Komponisten.
„Was die Wahrheit ist…” : Richard Strauss Elektrájának magyar sajtóvisszhangja 61. - 70. o
Mesterházi Máté
Kodály és a zenetörténet 71. - 92. o
Dalos Anna abstract
Kodály and Music History
Anna Dalos

The 20th century witnessed many composers turning to music of earlier ages, and some seeking the possibility of drawing afresh on their own musical past in their compositions too. One of the first writers on Zoltán Kodály, Bence Szabolcsi, argued that Kodály’s recourse to history was an attempt to compensate for missing links in Hungarian music history. The study here is based on analysis of Kodály’s compositions (Háry János, Dances of Galanta, Peacock Variations, Te Deum of Budavár, Huszt) and writings in order to illuminate the way that the citing of historical styles served as a device for evaluating the nation’s history, and for critiquing its present and future. The study marks out two turning points in Kodály’s oeuvre in this context. First, after 1920 when Kodály used music history to redefine Hungarianess, and second, after his neoromantic turn in 1936 when he looked at romanticism as a way out of the cul-de-sac he perceived in the contemporary situation.
Visszaemlékezés
Kurtág: 8 kórus Tandori Dezsõ verseire, op.23 (1981-84) (közr. Varga Bálint András) 93. - 95. o
Kalmár László
Commedia dell’arte és bábjáték : az „irrealitás-élmény” Lajtha Capriccio címû balettjében 97. - 108. o
Solymosi Tari Emõke abstract
Commedia dell’arte and Puppet Theatre
The „Experience of Irreality” in the Ballet Capriccio by Lajtha
Emõke Tari Solymosi

The ballet Capriccio (Farce dansée - Puppet theatre, op. 39, 1944) by the Hungarian composer László Lajtha (1892-1963) has not yet been the subject of research. The ballet was written with the purpose of providing an inner escape in an almost unbearable historical period. Its plot is a typical commedia dell’arte, placed in the 18th century and presented by puppets, and it is one of the most mysterious pieces of his oeuvre. There are only a few data about its formation, it has never been choreographed, nor premiered on stage, and its score has not been published. There are several versions of the libretto but it is not perfectly clear who wrote them. This is one of the two pieces by Lajtha which were originally composed for piano four hands. Is it possible that Lajtha intended this composition for a puppet theatre? If so, which one? In attempting to answer these questions, the study provides several new data on the Hungarian puppet theatre in the first half of the 20th century, mainly on the National Puppet Theatre directed by István Árpád Rév, and especially on its musical connections.
Recenzió
Talán mégsem marad torzó : megjelent Bartók Béla népzenei rendjének második kötete 109. - 112. o
Richter Pál
Egy vándor csepûrágó vidéki fellépései Franciaországban : Franz Liszt un saltimbanque en province 113. - 117. o
Hamburger Klára
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