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The present paper is a preliminary study towards a deeper understanding of Bartók’s compositional process: how he filled in the manuscript paper even though the notation appears to be continuous. He did not always write the draft from the top left- hand corner to the bottom right- hand corner but occasionally omitted some bars or phrases that he intended to write down later. Thus, the continuity draft is not necessarily regarded as a continuity; it might have consisted of fragments but eventually they have been concealed in the final form of the draft. This may directly affect our interpretation of Bartók’s creative process. The present research takes the visual appearance of a draft as a clue to examining its hypothetical fragmentariness. Beginning with the examination of some actual blank spaces that were never filled, the paper deals with cases where the original existence of fragments is suggested by the unusual appearance of the draft, such as a blank space at the end of a system, notations in the margin, re- organization of barlines, etc. Besides systematic approaches to fragmentariness, the author offers some interpretation concerning the reasons why Bartók did not write the draft in an ordinary way. There might have been various differing explanations for why the linear compositional process was interrupted. One of the important findings of this paper is that Bartók’s bar- lines do not always mark metric accents but sometimes simply facilitate the performers’ orientation. Even though the occasional special function of some of his barlines as mere markers of orientation is explained by Bartók in a letter to Rudolf Kolisch, the existence of philological evidence to this effect may further underline its validity and importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Receiving his doctorate from Leipzig University in 1923, appointed professor of the Liszt Academy of Music (Budapest) in 1945, and elected member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS) in 1948, Bence Szabolcsi was one of the found ing fathers of modern Hungarian musicology. As head of the Musicology Department of the Liszt Academy, director of the Budapest Bartók Archives and president of the Committee of Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Szabolcsi became the single most influential figure of the professional field by 1968. In this paper, however, I focus on the central role of Szabolcsi in informal networking, in patron- client relations and in the mediations between the representatives of the political sphere and those of academia. I present three case studies here, examining simultaneous developments: Szabolcsi's effort to acquire a new building for the Bartók Archives, the invitation received by Szabolcsi to contribute a chapter to The New Oxford History of Music, and some aspects of the early relations between the New York and the Budapest Bartók Archives. Beyond synchronicity, the common denominator of these stories is an element of frustration. I interpret these cases in the context of on the one hand 'transsystemic' relations between East and West during the Cold War, and on the other the post-Stalinist cultural politics and the mechanisms of state socialist political adminis- tration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Felicie Fábián, three years younger than Bartók, studied piano and composition at the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest. Her name appears more and more frequently in Bartók's letters from the beginning of the 1899 academic year, and their intense relationship, lasting until 1903, is also evidenced by three compositions associated with Felicie. Liebeslieder is the earliest of these, written during 1900, lacking an opus number, and unpublished during Bartók's lifetime. Its lyrics and musical style suggest German Romantic models which, indeed, played a decisive role in the young composer's orientation. This is confirmed by an important source: until 1903, the composer kept detailed lists of all the works he had studied, heard or wanted to study in the future. Lieder appear in the list of pieces he had already known from the spring of 1898 onwards; before that, Bartók makes no mention of the genre, and from the end of 1900 the Lied almost disappears from the list. Since during this period the young composer studied a number of songs or song cycles by Schubert and Schumann, certain songs by Brahms, and even Wagner's Valkyrie, we can agree with scholars who compare Liebeslieder to these works. Although some others think that the influence of Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss and Franz Liszt can be traced in Liebeslieder, their names do not appear in Bartók's list yet, so we can rather speak of coincidental similarities or common stylistic bases. However, the analyses often disregard a no less important figure from the list: Beethoven, who was not only considered by Bartók to be an unavoidable figure in symphonic, chamber and piano works, but the young composer also studied his Lieder. In this paper, I explore the influence of Beethoven's only song cycle on Bartók's Liebeslieder, surfacing primarily in structural features, including the tonal plan, the use of other unifying elements, and the heightened significance of the piano part. We can also find shared phases in the compositional process, like the treatment of poetic texts, which may have remained hidden from Bartók at that time, but which are, perhaps, even more intriguing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The poetry of Paul Verlaine inspired several songs by Debussy. Il pleure dans mon coeur is no. 2 in the cycle Ariettes oubliées. The same poem is used as a motto for a short piano piece by Zoltán Kodály: no. 3 in the Seven Pieces for Piano, Op. 11 (Esik a városban). The paper describes the madrigalesque word painting of Kodály’s composition on the one hand, and analyzes the modes of its melodic material on the other. In a broader context, the influence of French art (the music of Debussy in particular) on the artistic development of the young Kodály is discussed, as well as the two composers’ mutual estimation of each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article traces two writings missing from the canon of Bartók's voluminous short texts first published and catalogued by András Szôllôsy in Hungarian and compiled and edited by Benjamin Suchoff in English. Bartók was invited to join the Committee of Arts and Letters of the League of Nations in 1931 and, as we know from his letter about the meeting, he had to deliver a proposal, which so far has appeared to be lost. This motion urging the establishment of a gramophone recording collection and initiating new recordings can be found both as published in the minutes of the session and also among Bartók's still unpublished papers. The Appendix of the article contains the newly found French and German text versions of his proposal, as well as Bartók's other proposal, which attempts to find support for the defence of the freedom of art and science, a text he had originally wished to present at the meeting but was discouraged from doing so because of its politically delicate nature. The surviving text, previously published in facsimile but not included in the list of Bartók's writings, clearly testifies to the composer's sense of responsibility and foresight. Finally, the identification of most of the twenty-seven members of the committee shown in a repeatedly reprinted photograph is also attempted for the first time. The article was published in a slightly different and earlier English version (together with a Romanian translation) entitled 'Béla Bartók as Public Figure: Tracing Two Missing Writings Linked to a League of Nations Committee Session in Geneva, 1931' in Lucr±ri de Musicologie / Musicology Papers in 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study seeks to deepen the generally accepted but rather superficial picture of the relationship between the Burgtheater and the regular opera seasons organised at Eszterháza between 1776 and 1790. It demonstrates that although the proportion in the Eszterháza repertory of those operas which had already been produced in Vienna was high (almost 50%), Eszterháza did have a very distinct profile and, what is more, it served as a 'haven' for Italian operas between 1776 and 1782 while they were strongly suppressed in Vienna, and for opera seria between 1783 and 1789 when it was almost completely neglected there. To some extent, Eszterháza's repertory functioned as a practical 'completion' of the one in Vienna if one considers the frequent Eszterháza visits of the members of the Austrian and Hungarian high aristocracy and of the foreign diplomats working in Vienna. The paper also disproves some urban legends like the one according to which the Eszterháza repertory reveals the provinciality and the amateurish and retrograde taste of Prince Nicolaus Esterházy 'The Magnificent' and that he had a penchant for opera buffa. From time to time, special retrospective productions conjured up the most important and memorable 'reform' works premiered in Vienna in the early 1760s, involving the names of Gluck, Traetta, Angiolini, Calzabigi, Guadagni and Count Durazzo. One of the influential reform works revived at Eszterháza in 1788 was Gluck and Angiolini's ballet Don Juan. The prince may well have been present at some of these performances, and as the personal relationship between Prince Esterházy and Count Durazzo must have been considerably closer and more continuous than had previously been thought, the latter had every opportunity to influence both the general shape of the opera programme and, more specifically, Nicolaus's choices for reviving earlier operas. This kind of retrospection, the preservation or presentation of past events was a general tendency in aristocratic circles. What is important, however, is to distinguish between retrospection and retrograde taste. Finally, the study examines the peculiarities of the last three Eszterháza seasons and evinces that the well- known speculation about a 1790 Eszterháza production of Mozart's Figaro is certainly false. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the documents of The Gramophone Company's Hungarian General Agency in 1911 from various perspectives. The extraordinary size of the document collection, kept at the EMI Archives in Hayes, provides an opportunity to examine the activities of the global company in Hungary over the course of a year. Moreover, the year 1911 brought changes in the life of the company and the Budapest branch in many respects. For the first time the company planned a museum in its headquarters, and for this purpose, souvenirs were requested from the agencies established all over the world. It was also the year in which the territory of the Budapest branch was reorganised, so that the representative, Heinrich Conrad, had to explore new areas. A plan to promote the gramophone in schools in Hungary was mooted, but ultimately not implemented. In the same year, the company began to standardise the design of its advertisements, placing a considerable burden on the general agencies. In 1911, the Budapest branch also had to organise four recording sessions, and recordings were made in Budapest, Zombor [Sombor], Eszék [Osijek], Zagreb, Belgrade and Sofia. A number of fascinating and unique documents have survived in the collection, including a somewhat depressing description of living conditions in Budapest by an English accountant, a letter from Franz Hampe about a recording session in Zombor [Sombor], and a description of Hungarian folk-inspired art songs [magyarnóta] by the Budapest representative of The Gramophone Company. A particularly significant document of discological research is a detailed letter by Heinrich Conrad, in which he not only criticises the recordings made in Budapest in July 1911, but also compares them in detail with earlier recordings made in Budapest. This letter gives us an insight into the recording aesthetics of the acoustic recording era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that Beethoven's Ninth was followed by a temporary crisis in the genre of the symphony: the next generation found it difficult to get away from the shadow of this monumental piece. The Ninth was first performed in Hungary in 1865, more than 40 years after the world-premiere. We should add, however, that during the first half of the nineteenth century, no professional symphony orchestra and choir existed in Pest-Buda that would have coped with the task. Although the Hungarian public was able to hear some of Beethoven's symphonies already by the 1830s - mainly thanks to the Musical Association of Pest-Buda - in many cases only fragments of symphonies were performed. The Orchestra of the Philharmonic Society, founded in 1853, was meant to compensate for the lack of symphony concerts. This paper is about the performances of Beethoven's symphonies in Pest-Buda in the nineteenth century, and it especially focuses on the reception of Symphony No. 9 in the Hungarian press, which cannot be understood without taking into consideration the influence of the Neudeutsche Schule (New German School). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, almost 40 years after it began, the 'dance house method' was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative Register of Good Safeguarding Practices. As an urban subculture rooted in the traditional peasant culture, the dance- house movement expanded independently from the centrally supervised cultural establishment, and participants acquired dance and musical knowledge from experienced members or bearers of tradition by direct observation and imitation, to the accompaniment of live music, while using their own individual level of creativity to develop their competence and dancing ability. Representatives of the movement believed that folk music was to be preserved and passed on to the next generations in its original condition, in this case by being connected to its initial function as dance music. At the time when it began Béla Halmos and Ferenc Sebő, the actual creators of the Táncház movement proper, sought to present the very same aesthetic qualities of folk music to society as Bartók and Kodály did in their art: by the restoration and re- learning of village folklore, they primarily aimed to achieve the idea (and they based their entire lifework on it) that folk music should offer an aesthetic experience to modern audiences. These aesthetic qualities represented by folk music have always been utterly different from the ones inherent in popular western, or urban art songs, in the so- called magyarnóta (urban folk- like song) repertoire, urban Gipsy music, or from today's fashionable World Music products. There are many diversified reasons for these differences, but one of the most important is that folk music has a local, small regional character; it is used by autochthonous communities as an orally formed, controlled, and transmitted musical culture. There- fore it shows an extraordinary richness both in its repertoire, the usage of tunes, and in its performing style. Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and their successors also referred to this as aesthetic value. Collecting their most important thoughts we can make an effort to determine the aesthetics of folk music, which could be the basis for the investigation and evaluation of its musical, or folk musical quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As already pointed out by László Somfai in the late 1980s, Béla Bartók's first fully developed five-movement realization of the so-called 'bridge' or 'palindrome' form was only an afterthought, a further development of a composition originally intended as a cycle of four movements only. As also discussed briefly by Somfai, the evolution of the Allegretto, pizzicato movement itself had distinct stages. A recently surfaced source further clarifies these compositional phases, among other things it confirms the existence of a 140 bars long version without a proper conclusion, which, at one point, the composer considered as a definitive version (for which only the ending needed to be composed) and tried out with the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet. The present article re-examines the compositional process of Bartók's String Quartet No. 4 with an emphasis on its additional fourth movement and discusses the different compositional phases of the Allegretto, pizzicato. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]