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Final Project
Life and Music of Bela Bartok and His Collection of 44 Duos for Two Violins
Bela Bartok was born on March 25, 1881 in Eastern Hungary. When Bela Bartok was just a little child he started to have great interest in music. Young Bela reacted to certain favorite pieces of music even before he began to speak at the age of 2 and a half . ... His success with being a great composer was probably genetic; his father played the piano, composed minor dance pieces, founded the Nagyszentmiklos Music League and later learnt to play the cello so that he could take his place in the orchestra of the League. ... Unfortunately his father passed away in 1888, which traumatized Bela. Music ceased to stop after the tragic death of his father. ... In 1899, he was accepted by the Budapest Academy of Music by Istvan Thoman who agreed to take Bartok in as a student for the autumn term. Bartok passed his examinations with high honors. Throughout his early years of musical career and later on, Bartok was ill very often. ... In 1903, Bartok’s major career as a concert pianist began to develop and he started traveling around the world, visiting different cities.
In 1905, one of the turning points in his life took place. Bartok recognized the significance of peasant folk music and started to collect folk songs in Bekes County. Later on, Bartok started collecting Hungarian folk music as well as Slovakian and Romanian songs and dances. For Bartok, folk music became the soil in which his own work could thrive ;( Wolfgang Sandner from the description given with a CD) it was his mother language. He also recognized the extent which this interest in folk music represented some form of compensation for a lack of other musical traditions. He was among those who saw Eastern European folk music as a way out of the influential and very powerful harmonic crisis that had befallen twentieth-century music.
Also, Bartok turned to the world of children just like many composers before him. ... That’s what caused Bartok to write music for children as well. ... It was not very difficult to distinguish that type of music. In the beginning of his music career, Bartok wrote musical pieces mostly for piano, but in 1931 Erich Doflein changed his perspective and offered Bartok to try something new. The exclusive idea came to mind of a music teacher in Freiburg. He inspired Bartok to write musical pieces for violins instead of pianos which were later on called “44 Duos for Two Violins”. This piece of work seemed to include the life of music that Bartok once experienced throughout his lifetime but it was only expressed through another instrument-violin. Bartok included pieces of folk and peasant music such as Hungarian song, Slovak song, Rumanian song, Transylvanian song, Ruthenian song, Harvest song and etc. ... Bartok was a great composer and he was especially known for an amazing blend of discipline and imagination that he put in his music. It was interesting what Bartok had to go through before actually trying to write folk music himself. In order to create his pieces he had to do the research analysis and grouping of the folk music. ... After doing that he would absorb the knowledge of folk music from the eldest ones in the villages and the wise ones; in other words people that obviously had richer knowledge about folk music and had more experience with it. ...
Bartok was extremely creative in all of his master pieces. ... Those variations are reflected in Bartok’s 44 Duos for Two Violins. Those duos are not as well known as his other great works yet they prove a point and do reflect most of the Bartok’s life and nature. The only difference is that the unique way was chosen to express Bartok as he is, because he is well known for writing music for pianos and orchestras, but in this case he decided to try something new and dedicate his time to “two violins”.
There are many different ways in which Bartok expressed variations and change in moods in 44 Duos for Two Violins. For example, in Transylvanian Song which was the first one Bartok wrote for this collection, he was definitely in a good mood and full of energy.
Approximate Word count = 3495
Approximate Pages = 14
(250 words per page double spaced)
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