Customer Reviews

Béla Bartok (20th Century Composers)

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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.

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.

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.

This product was in ideal condition when it arrived and it came in a very timely manner. I was extremely pleased and would definitely use the sender again!