Bartók Viola Concerto

Circumstances during the composing process

In 1938 it was already clear that Europe is in a state of war. Germany has annexed Austria, from the east the USSR was threatening the region. Bartók as many of his colleagues in the art life felt the situation hard pressed as a result he was unable to work properly. In the spring of 1940 during one of his concert tour he was obtaining information about the circumstances in the USA. After his farewell concert that was on the 8th of October in 1940, he travelled to Lissabon with his wife and aborded on a ship. At the end of October they arrived to New York. After they arrived the circumstances didn't get much better. On the way all there packages disappeared. Part of the contracts that were offered to him was not current anymore and the rest was not as beneficial as they looked for the first time. The concerts that he gave together with his wife were also not as successful as they have hoped. The family could count only one sure income. The University of Columbia offered a contract that could be renewed in every half year. The work was to notate south-Slavic folk tunes. The nadir was in 1943. From this time a few things got a bit better. The Association of the American Composers assumed the medical costs of Bartók which was a great help because at that time Bartók was constantly fighting with some disease. Also they granted recreation for him in Saranac Lake. At this time the most important was that Serge Koussevitzky, the conductor of the Boston Symphonic Orchestra ordered a piece and he got the payment immediately. Bartók forthwith started to compose and in less than two months he finished the piece. This was the Concerto for Orchestra. From that time on the circumstances were more or less given for the proper work. Only his illnesses held him back sometimes more, sometimes less. Bartók got the request in this life situation to compose the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra. The costumer was the Scottish origin William Primrose. Primrose's main guiding principle was that he heard the violin concerto of Bartók on a recording, performed by Menuhin. In the mean time Bartók had been asked to compose a concerto for two pianos as well. Before he started to compose the viola concerto he definitely wanted to study the score of the Harold in Italy by Berlioz. Also he heard the viola concerto by Walton in the radio. Because he had to work not only one piece in the same time he had to decide an order. For him the most important was the third piano concerto. Because of this he rejected a few request. "Szeretnék anyu számára egy zongorakoncertet írni, ez a terv már régóta a levegoben lóg."- inaugurated in his son Peter-"Ha ezt 3-4 helyen eljátszhatná, az már annyi pénzt jelentene, mint az egyik elhárított megrendelés" (I would like to compose a piano concerto to mum, I have this plan since a long time) (If she could play it three four times, it would be as much money as one of the cancelled request) Till this time he was already collecting material since half year. In the beginning he wanted to cancel the request for the viola concerto. He didn't have any useful idea also he didn't consider the viola as a solo instrument. After the piano concerto got in a state where he started the notation (he called mechanic work) he could start to think about the viola concerto seriously. He got an idea. Inter alia Bartók was interested in the Scottish pipe music a lot. As Primrose was Scottish he composed a tune in Scottish style. After this he got very enthusiastic and started to work on the piece with optimism in 1945 in Saranac Lake.

Information about the composition

We know the most about the composition from a letter that was written but not sent to Primrose on the 5th of August in 1945. "Bármilyen embrionális állapotban is van a mu, az Általános terv és elképzelések már rögzítettek. Így közölhetem önnel, hogy 4 tételbol fog állni: egy komoly Allegro-ból, egy Scherzo-ból, egy (meglehetosen rövid) lassú tételbol, és egy fináléból, amely Allegretto-val kezdodik és a tempót Allegro molto-vá gyorsítja. Minden tételt, vagy legalább is hármat közülük (roved) visszatéro bevezetés fog megelozni (többnyire brácsaszóló), egyfajta ritornell" On the picture we can see a not used theme for the Scherzo that finally was not being composed. Bartók didn't mention anything about the tempo-s or the structures in the letter what he finally sent to Primrose on the 8th of September. There is no concrete information about the piece. He writes that he has finished the draft, what has left is to complete the score and that is "only mechanic work". He was talking about difficult passages, what needs reconciliation. He also mentioned some specificity, that because of the properties of the viola the orchestration needs to be more translucent like a violin concerto, and he uses the deeper registers more often to emphasize the male like character of the instrument. Also he mentions that the piece is composed in a virtuoso stile. On the 30th of August Bartók travelled back to New York. From then, his health got worse and worse. He decided that he put aside the viola concerto and he focuses on the piano concerto. On the 21st of September he got into the West Side Hospital where he died on the 26th. On the last day he woke up and he just said to doctor Lax: " the problem is that I have to leave with a full suitcase". Primrose got the letter of Bartók -what he sent on the 8th of September- in Philadelphia. Unfortunately he could not meet anymore with Bartók. The reason was that he was travelling by car. When he arrived to New York it was raining and as he didn't find any park place, he decided not to stop. He heard about the dead of Bartók from the New York Times, so they could never discuss the problem of the viola concerto anymore. After the dead of the Bartók, Kodály was the one who could give advice about the unfinished pieces, but he could not be reached so the widow of Bartók gave all the scores and sketches to Tibor Serly. Apparently he didn't know about the not sent letter from august as a result of the idea of the four movement conception with the ritornelles.

Connection with the folk music:

The Scottish tune Bartók built the folk tunes in his music in three different ways. Either he took an original folk tune and he harmonised it sometimes with little changes (for Children series), or he composed a tune that sounds exactly same like a folk song (night at the Székely's), or he composed a tune which had the same structure and mood like the original folk phrase but almost unrecognisable the connection between them. This last one happened in the case of the viola concerto. We can find the "Scottish motive" in the third movement of the composition (finished by Serly) from bar 114 to bar 133. The reason why Bartók built in this part was definitely the Scottish origin of Primrose. There is a Scottish folk song, called "Gin a Body Meet a Body, Colmin 'Thro' the Ray" which is very similar to the mentioned part. In bar 114 the music slows down from the virtuoso Rumanian dance music and the lower strings start to imitate pipe bass and after two bars the oboe starts to play the "Scottish tune". The "Scottish tune" runs through the whole piece even if it's unrecognisable until the mentioned part of the third movement. The Rumanian dance motive in the 3rd movement The 3rd movement is the only one that contains concrete folk style. We were talking already about the part from bar 114 to bar 177 that has a strong connection with the "Scottish tune". Apart from this section the whole 3rd movement based on Rumanian dance motives. On the picture we can see a Rumanian folk motive collected and notated by Bartók himself. This music shows extreme similarity with the 3rd movement. In the first 4 bars the wind section plays sustained chord while the strings plays off beats. With these movements the orchestra creates the fast, wild tempo and character that is exactly the same like a Rumanian folk dance. The viola presents the theme. Hereupon the role of the orchestra almost the same like the role of a folk band. Keeping the tempo, sometimes join to the soloist and creating effects that make the performance even wilder and colourful.

Problems with the interpretation:

Lack of information about the composition The very different interpretations show clearly the problems of the viola concerto. Bartók was always very precise with the notation and with all the performing instructions. In this case unfortunately almost everything is missing or not obvious at all. There are no tempo markings, articulation marks, dynamic marks in the manuscri pt, if there are we can look at them as a sudden idea that the composer considered as useful ideas. Comparing the markings there is a bit more articulation sign then the others, but for those who know better the east European music these signs are rather obvious than specific signs in term of performance practise. Here we can see 3 bars from bar 197 in from the first movement. As a result of the lack of information about the piece the performer could think that his time came and here is the opportunity for the self-actualisation, there are no borders written by the composer. In my opinion there is no democracy in performing practise. As Nicolaus Harnoncourt said in his book (a zene, mint párbeszéd): "az eloadómuvész szerepe a bécsi klasszikus kor óta pusztán szolgai".

Understanding of the composition In the music of Bartók the main starting point is the folk music. I think like this even there are not so many obviously recognisable place that shows strong connection with the folk music. The other important point is the language. As we cannot separate the folk music from the language we have to start the research with the language. In this case the Hungarian language. I think everybody who learned Hungarian music heard from the teacher that "put the accent to the beginning. This applies for every word and every sentence. But this is not enough. There is one unique difference between the Indo-European languages and the Hungarian. In the Indo-European languages the accent makes longer the syllable. The long syllable always feels accented. In the Hungarian is completely the opposite. The accent makes shorter the syllable. And also there is no relation with the height of the voice. In French and German if you have a low short then a high long syllable the high long always going to be accented like for example in the 9th symphony of Beethoven 9th. "O Freude".

The weight ratio of the music The measurement proofs if the music rhythmic or not is not only a feeling. Let's examine a 2/4 bar. There are two weights. If we divide for four parts and thinking in eights, the main weight in on the first eight and there is a smaller weight on the 3rd eight. The graph shows the intensity of one single note. If we consider four notes as a unity like one note and we divide the single note four parts it's perfectly visible that the emphasised notes have longer life in term of time than the others. According to this theory the playing cannot be rhythmic if the notes following each other in a perfectly metronomic time. To give life and meaning to the music, we have to group the notes in a naturally intelligent way. In the folk music we can recognise that when the tune starts the first note is longer than the following ones. Later the material has shorter notes the movement accelerate, and towards the end of the phrase gets calm again. This kind of line that connects the notes and creates a "sentence" from the "words" can be perfectly recognised specially in the second movement. The first three bars, the second three bars, and the part from bar 7 to bar 11 all of them are separate sentence. Before I start the critical comparison of two recordings of the viola concerto of Bartók I find it important to talk about the tempos. I find it very sad that the very majority of the performers who recorded this piece handle the tempo markings freely. I listened eleven recording and none of the performers followed the advised metronome markings properly. I'm being aware that the numbers are not coming from Bartók but I'm convinced that Serly who was the closest to the composer as his student had enough knowledge to decide properly these missing instructions. The folk music examples that I collected during my research proof that Serly did a great job. I'm convinced that using the tempos of Serly can help the soloist to perform the Viola concerto of Bartók the most expressive and natural way.