Book Description
Pantomime in One Act, after a Libretto by Menyhert Lengyel. ... Read more

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A collection of easy piano solos by Bela Bartok. ... Read more

Book Description
Volume two of this new series features 14 original compositions by the Hungarian born composer, Bela Bartok. These contemporary pieces are sure to sure to please students, offering them fresh material for their lessons and recitals. As with other books in this series, this volume features a composer biography, a variety of styles, and a progressive order throughout. ... Read more

Book Description
A collection of easy piano solos for children by Bela Bartok. ... Read more

Book Description
This second edition of Bela Bartok: A Guide to Research presents a concisely detailed history of Bartok's musical development, a catalogue of his compositions according to genre (including basic data on Bartok's publishers, achives, library collections, and catalogues), and 1200 annotated primary and secondary sources. A decade of scholarship since the first edition (1988) is included; over forty percent of the material in the second edition is new.Four indexes cover listings by author and title; Bartok's compositions and his editions and transcriptions of earlier keyboard works; proper names; and subjects.
Primary sources include: Bartok's own essays, articles, lectures on folk music and art music, letters, and other documents; his folk music collections; facsimilies, reprints, and revisions of his music; and his own editions and transcriptions of earlier keyboard music. Secondary sources include: biographical and historical studies, specialized studies of his personality, philiosophy, and political attitudes; theoretic, analytic, stylistic, and aesthetic studies of his music; discussions of folk music influences and art music influences; studies of his compositional process (based on autograph manuscripts, editions, and his own recordings); discussions of his orientation toward pedagogy; and discussions of insitutional sources for Bartok'sresearch (including archival and bibliographic sources, special issues, festivals, conferences, colloquia, concert programs, and computerized data bases for Bartok analysis and research.
This annotated, topically-organized Guide is the most extensive bibliographical research tool on Bartok. It is the first to draw together the most important primary and secondary bibliographic sources, which cover his varied activities as composer, ethnomusicologist, pianist, pedagogue, linguist, and editor. It is significant not only for those interested in musicological research into Bartok's compositional and scholarly activities but also for thoseinterested in ethnomusicological research methodology in general, and the study of Eastern European, North African Arab, and Turkish folk music in particular. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Notes, published by Music Library Association, Inc. on June 1, 2005. The length of the article is 1937 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Bela Bartok.(Critical Essay)
Author: Peter Laki
Publication: Notes (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2005
Publisher: Music Library Association, Inc.
Volume: 61Issue: 4Page: 1088(4)

Article Type: Critical Essay

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Product Description
Progressive Piano Pieces, Vol. II - The first four books of these piano pieces have been written for the purpose of giving material to beginners -- young or old -- which should embrace, as far as possible, all problems met with during the first steps. This book is designed for the second year. ... Read more

Book Description

Béla Bartók, who died in New York fifty years ago this September, is one of the most frequently performed twentieth-century composers. He is also the subject of a rapidly growing critical and analytical literature. Bartók was born in Hungary and made his home there for all but his last five years, when he resided in the United States. As a result, many aspects of his life and work have been accessible only to readers of Hungarian. The main goal of this volume is to provide English-speaking audiences with new insights into the life and reception of this musician, especially in Hungary.

Part I begins with an essay by Leon Botstein that places Bartók in a large historical and cultural context. László Somfai reports on the catalog of Bartók's works that is currently in progress. Peter Laki shows the extremes of the composer's reception in Hungary, while Tibor Tallián surveys the often mixed reviews from the American years. The essays of Carl Leafstedt and Vera Lampert deal with his librettists Béla Balázs and Melchior Lengyel respectively. David Schneider addresses the artistic relationship between Bartók and Stravinsky.

Most of the letters and interviews in Part II concern Bartók's travels and emigration as they reflected on his personal life and artistic evolution. Part III presents early critical assessments of Bartók's work as well as literary and poetic responses to his music and personality.

Book Description
When Bela Bartok died in September of 1945, he left a partially completed viola concerto commissioned by the virtuoso violist William Primrose. Yet, while no definitive version of the work exists, this concerto has become arguably the most-performed viola concerto in the world. The story of how the concerto came to be, from its commissioning by Primrose to its first performance to the several completions that are performed today is told here in Bartok's Viola Concerto:The Remarkable Story of His Swansong. After Bartok's death, his family asked the composer's friend Tibor Serly to look over the sketches of the concerto and to prepare it for publication. While a draft was ready, it took Serly years to assemble the sketches into a complete piece. In 1949, Primrose finally unveiled it, at a premiere performance with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. For almost half a century, the Serly version enjoyed great popularity among the viola community, even while it faced charges of inauthenticity. In the 1990s, several revisions appeared and, in 1995, the composer's son, Peter Bartok, released a revision, opening the way or an intensified debate on the authenticity of the multiple versions. This debate continues as violists and Bartok scholars seek the definitive version of this final work of Hungary's greatest composer.Bartok's Viola Concerto tells the story of the genesis and completion of Bartok's viola concerto, its reception over the second half of the twentieth century, its revisions, and future possibilities. ... Read more

Amazon.com
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.Product Description
This biography covers the full range of the work of Béla Bartók (1881-1945), from his early explorations of Hungarian folklore to his Third Piano Concerto, composed on his deathbed in the United States. Illustrated throughout with contemporary photographs of people and events, the book brings a reclusive creator strikingly to life and explores inextricable links between Bartók's life, his music, and the turbulence of two world wars.


Béla Bartók is part of Phaidon s successful 20th Century Composers series, which presents authoritative and engaging biographies of the great creative musicians of our time, augmented by striking visual material and essential reference information. This edition of the book features a whimsical new cover by Jean-Jacques Sempé, the world-renowned illustrator and cartoonist. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent Information, Poor Delivery
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.

An wonderful introduction to a complex composer
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 notget bogged down in alot of the compositional jargon that might dissuade oneto read this particular biography.

All in all, this book gets my highestpraise and I enthusiastically encourage anyone who wants to learn a littlemore about Bartok, one of the most celebrated composers of the 20thCentury, to read it. ... Read more