Vikárius László

(13 találat)
# Cím Abstract Folyóirat Oldalszám
„Per introdurre” : a bartóki bevezetés megformálásának problematikája - 1994., 35. évf. 2. szám 190. - 203.o
A csodálatos mandarin átlényegülései : A műfajválasztás jelentősége Bartók pantomimjának keletkezéstörténetében - 2013., 51. évf. 4. szám 410. - 444.o
A zenetörténet antológiája vagy régi zenetörténet-írás? : megjegyzések Bartha Dénes munkájának eredeti kiadásához abs.
Anthology-Cum-History of Music: Remarks on Dénes Bartha's Historical Anthology of Early Music (1948)
László Vikárius

In 1940, Bence Szabolcsi (1899-1973) published the first edition of his full-length history of music (A zene története), a book that could justifiably be characterized as a work of Geisteswissenschaft or spiritual history by one of the author's closest Hungarian colleague Dénes Bartha (1908-1993). In his slim volume of Régi muzsika kertje (Garden of early music), published in 1947, Szabolcsi presented a selection of texts from the history of music and, in the same year, did his A magyar zenetörténet kézikönyve (in English: A Concise History of Hungarian Music, 1964) appear that, apart from the historical study - the main body of the book - included a large selection of musical compositions with commentaries. Bartha's A zenetörténet antológiája (A historical anthology of music) published in 1948, contained a series of 135 numbered items, entire compositions as well as selected movements or self-contained parts of musical works, to illustrate the history of music from what was understood as "primitive" music to Bach. Bartha's anthology, compiled almost simultaneously with, but independently of, the well-known Historical Anthology by Davison and Apel (vol. 1, 1946, vol. 2, 1950), had few models, such as Riemann's Musikgeschichte in Beispielen (1912), Einstein's little Beispielsammlung zur älteren Musikgeschichte (1917, and later editions) and Arnold Schering's Geschichte der Musik in Beispielen. Bartha, as it transpires from his own extensive philological and historical notes to the individual examples, also consulted the Anthologie sonore, a large series of 78 rpm records initiated by Curt Sachs in Paris in 1934. Bartha's anthology has since remained in use in Hungary, although mainly in its second revised edition of 1974, edited by Tibor Tallián, in which Bartha's very detailed descriptions and analyses of the individual pieces were significantly trimmed to update the collection both in references and in style. Interestingly, however, Bartha himself harboured the idea of issuing a new and completely revised, up-to-date collection. The somewhat compromised second printing, that now appears to have failed to represent the originality and pedagogical fervour of Bartha's original notes, was probably due to his unavailability for the task. After considering basic documents related to the planning, compilation and edition of the anthology, the article strives to retrieve Bartha's original intentions putting them in their historical context. The presentations of Binchois' De plus en plus by Schering and Bartha (no. 32 in the anthology) and the discussions of Perotin's four-voice clausula Mors and its three-voice motet version in the Bamberg Codex, Mors quae stimulo/Mors morsu/Mors (no. 17) in Szabolcsi's 1940 study and Bartha's notes are compared in some detail. The appendix presents Bartha's full commentary on no. 17 in the anthology as well as his fragmentary plan for a new edition of the collection, a hitherto unknown document preserved in the National Széchényi Library, Budapest.
2009., 47. évf. 1. szám 33. - 54.o
Adalékok az 1. bagatell recepciótörténetéhez abs.
On the Reception of Bartók’s Bagatelle No. 1
László Vikárius

The article revisits a number of documents related to the reception of Bartók’s allegedly “bitonal” early experiment, the first of his Fourteen Bagatelles (1908). All sources discussed and partially quoted (in the original French, German or English, as well as in Hungarian translation) once belonged to the composer’s library and are now kept in the Budapest Bartók Archives of the Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. They include mentions of Bartók as one of the forefathers of polytonality in published in La Revue Musicale and Musikblätter des Anbruch (by Jean Deroux and Paul Landormy) in 1921/22, Darius Milhaud’s “Polytonalité et Atonalité” of 1923, the article on “Harmony” in Eaglefield-Hull’s A Dictionary of Modern Music (1924), Henry Cowell’s “New Terms for New Music” in Modern Music (1928) and Edwin von der Nüll’s monograph on Bartók’s style based on a detailed investigation of his piano music (1930). The origin and early theoretical use of the polytonal concept en vogue from the early 1920s is also discussed in general. While the varying interpretations of his succinct piano composition significantly contributed to his acknowledgement as a pioneer of modernism after the First World War, the composer himself, in a late commentary on his Bagatelles (in “Introduction to Béla Bartók Masterpieces for the Piano”), denied any polytonal tendency in the piece and declared it to be in a “Phrygian coloured C major”. The designation C major, clearly formulated by von der Nüll, can be traced back to Bartók’s earliest references to the piece. However, despite his evidently consistent view of the piece as being in C, an as yet unpublished letter of 14 February 1909 to Emma Gruber (later Mrs. Kodály) proves that Bartók was fully aware of bitonality which he then called, for lack of a more specific term, “cacophony”. His late and vehement protest against the bitonal interpretation of the piece seems thus to have originated in the personal significance of Bagatelle no. 1, which was probably conceived as a paradigmatic expression of the Man/Woman problem. The article is a variant of “Backgrounds of Bartók’s ‘Bitonal’ Bagatelle” written for the Somfai Fs. Whereas the longer English version contains discussions of a number of more recent analyses of the piece and is more detailed on the compositional sources, this version gives fuller information about articles and studies of the 1920s.
2004., 42. évf. 3-4. szám 447. - 460.o
Bartók a népzene hatásáról - 1999., 37. évf. 2. szám 161. - 175.o
Bartók egy zenei poénjáról : az 5. kvartett Allegretto con indifferenza epizódjának értelmezéséhez abs.
On a Bartókian Joke
Interpreting the Allegretto con indifferenza Episode in the Fifth String Quartet
László Vikárius

An unexpected, ironic or sarcastic turn appears in several compositions by Bartók; if in multi-movement works, then it tends to appear before the final section of last movement. An especially memorable example is the Allegretto con indifferenza episode inserted in the recapitulation section in the finale of the Fifth String Quartet (1934). János Kárpáti interpreted the passage both thematically - within the last movement - and as a “key” to Bartók's tonality, polytonality and what he labelled “mistuning”. The sketches of the piece (in Peter Bartók's private collection) show how carefully the composer planned and polished the joke to achieve maximum effect. When interpreting the joke, the article raises the possibility of Schoenberg's similar ironic quote of ”O du lieber Augustin” in the second, Scherzo, movement of his Second String Quartet in F-sharp minor (1908) being either a “model” or a “reference”. A reinvestigation of Bartók's acquaintance with Schoenberg's music provides so far neglected evidence that he participated at the Salzburg Chamber Music Festival in August 1922 where Schoenberg's piece was also performed. In his seminal lecture, “The Influence of Peasant Music on Modern Music” (1931), Bartók himself seems to call attention to this parallel mentioning “O du lieber Augustin” as a typical example of German song that requires the alteration of simple tonic and dominant accompanying harmonies as opposed to East-European folksong that make unconventional settings possible. The Allegretto con indifferenza episode, while “revealing” how easily polytonality can be created, might also be regarded as a musical “commentary” to his verbal criticism of a mistakenly conventional approach to peasant songs.
2010., 48. évf. 1. szám 49. - 58.o
Bartók: „Medvetánc” abs.
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.
2008., 46. évf. 1. szám 31. - 49.o
Ecce nomen domini és Isti sunt due olive : Stílus és szimbolika Guillaume Du Fay két "koronázási" motettájában - 2012., 50. évf. 1. szám 5. - 29.o
Kodály: A rossz feleség balladája abs.
Zoltán Kodály: The Ballad of the Heartless Wife László Vikárius In 1925, Universal-Edition published the first two volumes of Zoltán Kodály's Hungarian Folk Music for voice and piano (Magyar népzene, 1917-1932), a series of folksong arrangements that occupied the composer for more than a decade. Vol. 2 included the arrangement of the "ballade of the heartless wife" (A rossz feleség balladája), an arrangement that, along with several other pieces, also became part of Székely fonó (The Spinning-Room), both in its early occasional version (1924) and in its later full-scale stage form (1932). The direct source of the folk melodies arranged for Székely fonó as well as most of the vocal compositions of the period was Transylvanian Hungarians: Folksongs, jointly edited by Bartók and Kodály (1923), a collection of 150 songs. Kodály following the advice of Emil Hertzka, director of the Viennese publisher Universal-Edition carefully selected songs that had not been arranged by Bartók yet. The difference between the respective approaches of the two composers is evident in the choice of folk genre as well as that of individual songs. Thus the first two volumes in Kodály's Hungarian Folk Music for voice and piano show a particular preference for ballads, a genre that is rarely represented in Bartók's folksong based compositions, the "Ballade" of the Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs for piano (1914-1918) being the major exception.
The melody of the "ballad of the heartless wife" itself is representative of a rare and particularly interesting folksong type, characterized by the combination of two pairs of phrases of strikingly different make-up: one with a descending parlando melody akin to the type of Hungarian folk dirges and the other, more lively in tempo, being built up of smaller units with dance-like giusto rhythm closely related to certain instrumental pieces. One melody belonging to the same type, although its text is not a ballad per se, "Asszonyok, asszonyok" ("Women, women") had been arranged by Bartók in Eight Hungarian Folksongs for voice and piano (1907-1917). The variant with the ballad text selected by Kodály, however, is unique because of the contrast between its two pairs of phrases that can be interpreted as an example of overt "madrigalism" or word-painting, the first pair of verses being sung by the daughter who keeps asking her mother to come home to her dying father while the second containing the mother's repeated refusal who prefers staying out dancing instead of returning home. As a punch-line just before the end of the song, the wife even sings a brief lament on the ruined bed-sheet instead of her now dead husband. Its dialogue form and dramatic character made this song particularly suitable as a basis for the kind of composition Kodály regarded as representative of the "missing national song type" that could be modelled on and measured against some of the great Schubert lieder.
Through an analysis of both the folksong and Kodály's "Lied" based on it, relying on the piece's few surviving manuscript sources as well as the composer's writings from the period of its composition, the article approaches Kodály's ideas and main endeavours behind the launching of his first important large-scale series of folksong arrangements, Hungarian Folk Music.
2008., 46. évf. 3. szám 261. - 272.o
Liszt és a „régi zene”: egy romantikus megközelítésmód - 1989., 30. évf. 1. szám 55. - 65.o
Ötös ritmika Bartók zenéjében abs.
Rhythmic and Metric Fifths in Bartók’s Composition
László Vikárius

The article explores Bartók’s conspicuous and varied use of rhythmic and metric units comprising fifths, which clearly contributed to his innovative and personal idiom. Fifths may appear as quintuplets on several rhythmic levels or as 5/8 and 5/4 time. Although at first sight a category like this may appear to be a rather mixed and heterogeneous collection of unrelated rhythmic phenomena, a closer view makes it possible to draw up a useful typology of significantly fewer groups of passages, related to one another, in works form different periods of Bartók’s career. At the same time, however questionable the inclusion of both rhythmic and metric fifths may appear, their joint examination is not only justified by their similar opposition to conventional means of the Western art music tradition but by a few cases as well where the occasional use of a quintuplet or a change into a five-beat time could be interchangeable. The typology set up in the article (see tables 1 & 2) consists of the following rubrics: (1) rhythmic fifths: (a) in accompaniment: Within accompanimental arpeggios; within passagework; repeated figurations; continuous accompanimental figure; (b) in the foreground: as folk-music based thematic material; as ornament (trill, Doppelschlag, etc.); upbeat figuration; figuration at phrase end; thematic arpeggio; as declamatory passage; as isolated gesture; as main motif; (2) metric fifths: (a) 5/4 time: connected to the sung text; distorted dance; expression of strangeness; other passages; (b) 5/8 time> connected to the sung words; as a result of rhythmic transformation (compression); within changing time (“colindā rhythm”); and fast passage in continuous 5/8 time. Most significant of all, and most personal in character, seems to be the use of a quintuplet motif combined with repeated notes and a minor third leap (e.g. Ex. 18, Sonata for two pianos and percussion, 2nd mvt., bb. 28-33 and Ex. 20a, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, beginning of the Seventh Door scene).
The article is introduced by a discussion of four passages in 5/4 time appearing in 19th century compositions (Chopin, Sonata for piano in C minor, 2nd movement; Tchaikowsky, 6th Symphony in B minor, 2nd movement; Dohnányi, Piano Quintet op. 1, Finale and Wagner, a passage in the 3rd Act of Tristan and Isolde), all mentioned by Bartók in either his lecture, “The So-called Bulgarian Rhythm” (1938) or in an early personal letter of 1907. In connection with these examples as well as both innovative and personal features of his use of rhythmic fifths, his employment of what he called “Bulgarian rhythm” is also discussed.
2003., 41. évf. 2. szám 181. - 208.o
Rec. Akinek nem térkép ama táj... : László Ferenc: Bartók markában. Tanulmányok és cikkek (1981-2005) - 2007., 45. évf. 1. szám 99. - 104.o
Köszöntõ : Kárpáti Jánoshoz a 75. születésnapja tiszteletére rendezett konferencián - 2008., 46. évf. 1. szám 3. - 5.o