Béla Bartok (20th Century Composers) [Paperback]

Kenneth Chalmers (Author)

Book Description

Series: 20th Century Composers | Publication Date: January 7, 1995

This biography of Bela Bartok includes a contextual study of his work. Illustrated with contemporary photographs of people and events, it show the links between his life, his music and the turbulence of two world wars. Born into the heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bartok became a fervent nationalist, setting off with his friend Zoltan Kodaly to record the folklore of his native Hungary before it was destroyed by the march of progress. He ventured further into Romania and North Africa in pursuit of original cultures. These sounds and experiences helped Bartok find his voice as a composer. Despite his nationalism, his distaste for authoritarian rule brought him into conflict with a crypto-fascist government in Hungary and with the Germany of Adolf Hitler. While composing some of his works, he felt increasingly pressured and in 1940, after the death of his mother, Bartok left Hungary for the United States. Homesick, short of money and stricken with leukaemia, he composed the "Concerto for Orchestra" and, on his deathbed in 1945, was completing a "Third Piano Concerto". This text is part of the 20th-century composers series, examining composers in a biographical context, and offering a comprehensive study of key figures in the creation of 20th-century music. None of the books in the series presume a knowledge of specialized terms or musical notation. Each book in the series features a list of works, a bibliography, and a discography.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The 19th century saw the flowering of modern nationalism as the various peoples of Europe who had previously been culturally silent began to make themselves heard. Along with the invigorating effects on art, nationalism also led to provincialism and occasional bigotry. Examining Bartók, author Kenneth Chalmers uncovers an intellectual whose research into folk music was genuinely nationalistic and, at the same time, broad-minded. Bartok's research covered not just Hungarian sources; it also reached out to other European ethnic groups--even as far as North Africa. Just as Bartok's nationalism managed to be cosmopolitan, his compositions served as a contemporary idiom that escaped the sterile orthodoxy of serialism. Chalmers's portrait of this proud and withdrawn man captures his single-minded commitment to his music and explains why Bartok's works are among the most accessible contemporary scores to enter the repertory after WWII.

About the Author

Kenneth Chalmers is an author, translator and composer who has written on Bartok, Berg, Stravinsky, Verdi and Weill, and collaborated on Decca's 20-volume Mozart Almanac --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press (January 7, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714831646
• ISBN-13: 978-0714831640
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,930,114 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An wonderful introduction to a complex composer, July 23, 2000

By 

Rebecca K. Ansel - See all my reviews

This review is from: Béla Bartok (20th Century Composers) (Paperback)

This book is a fabulous introduction to the music of a man whose compositions are often a bit difficult to understand. Kenneth Chalmers eloquently takes the reader on a journey through Bartok's life and music. In spite of the fact that there are some musical details, Chalmers did not get bogged down in alot of the compositional jargon that might dissuade one to read this particular biography.

All in all, this book gets my highest praise and I enthusiastically encourage anyone who wants to learn a little more about Bartok, one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th Century, to read it.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Information, Poor Delivery, July 16, 2004

By 

"shamrocklad" (Cambridge, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Béla Bartok (20th Century Composers) (Paperback)

This publication offers excellent biographical information on the life of Béla Bartók. Chalmers eloquently describes the composer's most famous compositions, concentrating on the aspects of his personal life that influenced their genesis rather than their fastidious technical complexities. If you are interested in the theoretical aspects of Bartók's music, I instead recommend Elliott Antokoletz's "The Music of Béla Bartók: A Study of Tonality and Progression in Twentieth-Century Music." The most unfortunate element of the book reviewed here is the authors prose. The publication is littered with incomplete, run-on and just plain terrible sentence structure. Overall, this is a quaint and interesting book, but Chalmers' prose is incredibly difficult to comprehend. I, personally, do not enjoy having to read a simple sentence two and three times to understand a simple thought that could have been portrayed in a straight-forward form.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A VALUABLE STUDY OF A GREAT MODERN COMPOSER, September 25, 2009

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Béla Bartok (20th Century Composers) (Paperback)

Bela Bartok (1881-1945) was a very important 20th century Hungarian composer; Chalmers has written the most extensive biography available of Bartok.

The book is filled with insights into Bartok's life and music; e.g., "In March 1906 Emma Gruber introduced him to the man who was to become his firmest friend and ally, Zoltan Kodaly."

Concerning his religious beliefs, "He expresses a faith in nature and science, and sees atheism as the natural successor to Christianity ('distorted into Catholicism'), which in turn ('with its splendid code of ethics') had taken over from the faiths of the ancient world." Nonetheless, "Bartok was still nominally Catholic, but when his son reached school age in 1917 he joined the Unitarian Church, to exempt the boy from Catholic religious instruction at school."

Concerning Bartok's famous invention of the "arch" form (i.e., of the form ABCBA), Chalmers states that this "characteristic Bartok structure was actually a late decision on the part of the composer." He notes that "after the Fourth Quartet, (it) was becoming Bartok's regular choice of construction."

Bartok's famous Mikrokosmos pieces for beginning pianists were actually written because he was "dissatisfied with the music his son Peter was being given to play at his lessons."

Bartok wrote his famous Concerto for Orchestra (which was "symphony-like"), although he felt that "the symphony was dead."

This book is an excellent reference for anyone interested in Bartok or his music.