Bela Bartok Essays [Paperback]

Bela Bartok (Author), Benjamin Suchoff (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1992

The world knows Béla Bartók as a composer. The essays contained in this voluminous compilation disclose a side of the great Hungarian previously known to relatively few persons: Bartók the man of letters. Theorist, performer, collector, scholar, and composer, Béla Bartók is internationally renowned as one of the most important and influential musicians of the twentieth century. Throughout his life he wrote lectures and essays that dealt with virtually every aspect of European music. These essays, previously scattered in specialized journals, deal with the wide range of interests and expertise: folk music and musical folklore, the music of his contemporaries and great predecessors, a brief autobiography, the structure and performance of his own music, the sale of sound recordings, and music education.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One must immediately thank Dr. Suchoff and his helpers for the excellence of the translations, the great majority from the primary versions in Bartok's Hungarian. So fluently they do justice to the composer's fierce, pithy, yet warmingly human personality."--Music and Letters. "A substantial collection ... and there are indeed riches... Musicians and many others have reason to be grateful."--JMLA Notes. "This fine, substantial, well-produced volume reveals that throughout his hardworking, music-dedicated life Bartok was a wonderful friend and a formidable enemy, equally impressive on both counts."--Wilfrid Mellers, The American Scholar

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Hungarian

Product Details

• Paperback: 567 pages
• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press (October 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080326108X
• ISBN-13: 978-0803261082
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,262,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #85 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Eastern European

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Batok is the man!, June 15, 2001

By 

"scifry78" (Lawrenceville, Georgia United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bela Bartok Essays (Paperback)

I am a music composer and I have found the essays by Bartok compiled in this book very interesting and helpful. For example, there are several essays describing how Bartok organized many of his compositions. There are also several essays describing different types of folk music such as American, Rumanian, and Hungarian. There is an essay on the 'So-called Bulgarian Rhythm.' I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in learing about different types of folk music or anything about Bela Bartok and is compositions.