Bartok Concerto for Orchestra
While still in Hungary, Bartok was the respected elder statesman of music at the Franz Lizst Academy in Budapest, an institution that also boasted Zoltan Kodály, Ernst von Dohnányi, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy, Georg Solti and Antal Dorati as graduates. The younger Fritz Reiner was a student at the Academy, and an aspiring conductor. It was Bartok's signature on Reiner's diploma that launched his career.
The Concerto for Orchestra gets its name from the fact that Bartók uses different groups of instruments as solo elements, similar to the Baroque concept of the concerto grosso. In all other respects, however, it is a symphony, and Bartók's largest orchestral work.
It brings together everything that is Bartók - his love of orchestral colour, his abrassive rhythms interspersed with beautiful melodies, and above all, his use of Hungarian folk motifs within a formal framework.
The first, third and fifth movements are symphonic explorations of simple musical themes, while the second and fourth movements are interludes. The fourth movement is a rather savage attack on Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. That symphony, known as the “Leningrad” included a bombastic, crescendo march, and was incredibly popular. Bartók regarded it as vulgar trash, and could not understand why it was so popular when his own music largely ignored. In his version, the sudden entry of a banal march tune is quickly suppressed by a beautiful tranquil Hungarian melody.
Should teachers require insight into a culture's songs, rituals and dance, a conceptual framework of questions allows one to approach that culture constructively. In my research I normally begin by asking very general questions about when and how people make music and dance. Questions are framed around stages of life or functions that musical practices have within that particular culture, because these are common frames in African contexts. From this general background, one can move towards more specific observations in terms of the musical performance with questions that normally refer to structural organization, tonal organization, rhythmic organization and quality of sound (Arom, 1989, 1991; Chernoff 1979; Kubik, 1990, 1993; Tracey 1990).
Based on the work of Adshead (1988), Bartinieff (in Royce 1977), Hanna (1979), Thompson (1974) and Keali'nohomoku (1997), the following are salient features of an observation and description of dance:
- the context, that is the background and purpose of the dance
- the movements, in terms of characteristic use of the body, components, design, elements, and group relations;
- the dancers themselves—age, gender, personality, artistry;
- the music or sound accompaniment and the relation of the dance to the aural aspects including time and flow;
all the additional material and non-material traits associated with the dance.I generally use the above as a general framework to guide my personal observation and the questions I ask people or myself.
Minette Mans: Using Namibian Music/Dance Traditions as a Basis for Reforming Arts Education
Ways & MeansA Spatial Theory of Rhythmic Resolution
Neil McLachlan
Abstract: Cyclic arrays, such as clock faces, have advantages over linear arrays for conceptualizing repetitive rhythmic structures. The author maps rhythms from African and Indonesian musics into cyclic arrays and analyzes them using concepts from Gestalt psychology, mathematical group theory and psycho-acoustics. The perceptual structures thus revealed exist between the different musical parts played on various instruments and contradict the usual processes of auditory segregation according to the physical locations of instrumentation. This prompts a proposal for a theory of musical despatialization to explain the psychological efficacy of these rhythms.
In a lecture at Harvard University in 1943, Bartók acknowledged his discovery and use of a transformation that maps musical entities back and forth between diatonic and chromatic modular systems. But Bartók's transformation need not be limited to these; one can find examples of mappings to and from other modular spaces in Bartók's own music.
A1. Joseph Giovinazzo
AUTHOR: Giovinazzo, Joseph
TITLE: "Timbral Design of Primary Melody in the First Movement of
Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra"
INSTITUTION: La Trobe University, Music Department,
BUNDOORA Victoria, Australia 3083
BEGUN: March, 1988
COMPLETION: June, 1992
ABSTRACT:
This dissertation investigates the timbral design of primary melody in
the first movement of Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra, noting how timbre
is used to shape formal events. Two analytical devices have been adopted:
layer analysis and set theoretical ideas regarding collections.
Translated into notes:
C - Db - E - F - G# - A, containing the major triads of Db, F and A;
C# - D - F - F# - A - Bb, containing the major triads of D, F# and Bb;
D - Eb - F# - G - Bb - B, containing the major triads of Eb, G and B;
Eb - E - G - G# - B C, containing the major triads of E, Ab and C;
are the collections you mean (Sorry, but I can't think in numbers).
I see it as follows:
As the octatonic collection contains major triads at the distance of a minor
third, this hexatonic collection has them at a major third's distance.
Just as the whole-half-octatonic scale can be seen as a diminished
7th-chord with leading tones, and is therefore also called (by jazz
musicians only?) the 'diminished scale', this hexatonc scale can be seen as
a augmented triad with leading tones, and is therefore also called (by jazz
musicians only?) the 'augmented scale' (see the internet for numerous jazz
expanations)....For myself I discovered it incidentally while teaching Debussy ('Ondine',
closing chord of D major mixed with F# major, and jazz (Herbie Hancock's
'Dolphin Dance', m. 37, a mix of Ab and C over an Eb-pedal, a chord that is
too much for most fake books), and I heard it on hindsight in Bartók
(Concerto for Orchestra, mvt. III, Elegia, m. 10 etc.).Clemens Kemme on discussion list of the Society for Music Theory
Bartók | Stravinsky | Debussy