Béla Bartók was one of the leading Hungarian and European composers of his time, proficient also as a pianist. He joined his friend Zoltán Kodály in the collection of folk music in Hungary and neighbouring regions, including, in his case, Anatolia. His work in this field deeply influenced his own style of composition, which is, however, very much more astringent in its apparent mathematical organisation than much of what Kodály wrote. He was out of sympathy with the government that replaced the immediate post-1918 republic in Hungary, where he was held in less official esteem than abroad, and moved in 1940 to the United States, dying there in relatively straitened circumstances in 1945.

Orchestral Music

Probably the best loved of Bartók’s orchestral compositions is the Concerto for Orchestra, commissioned by Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The two violin concertos are important additions to the solo violin repertoire, as is the Viola Concerto, now to be heard in two possible reconstructions. This last and the Third Piano Concerto were left in various stages of incompleteness when Bartók died. Both are moving works, while the earlier two piano concertos have much to offer. Other important orchestral works that form not infrequent parts of concert programmes are the Divertimento for Strings and the challenging Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. The energetic Romanian Dances appear in various versions, including one for solo violin and string orchestra, arranged from an original piano composition.

Stage Music

Bartók wrote relatively little for the theatre. His opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle was first staged in Budapest in 1918, a year after the première of the ballet The Wooden Prince. The pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin enjoyed a succès de scandale in Cologne, where it was first staged in 1926.

Chamber Music

Bartók’s six string quartets are a significant and important part of repertoire, extending the musical and technical range of the form. The 44 Duos for two violins are primarily educational compositions, but make attractive concert pieces in various groupings suggested by the composer, while the Sonata for Solo Violin follows, in a modern idiom, the example of J.S. Bach. Bartók’s two violin sonatas date from the early 1920s, while Contrasts, for violin, clarinet and piano, was written in America for Szigeti, Benny Goodman and the composer.

A work of some importance is the spectacular Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, later rescored by the composer for two pianos and orchestra. The original version makes use of three kettledrums, a xylophone, two side drums, cymbals, suspended cymbal, bass drum, triangle and tam-tam, with the two pianos. It has an extended first movement, a night-music second and a tautly rhythmic third. Written in 1937, the sonata experiments fruitfully with the varied percussive sonorities of pianos and percussion instruments.

Piano Music
Mikrokosmos consists of six books of pieces of progressive difficulty, intended to be used for teaching, with the last two volumes including more demanding pieces possible for concert use. Folk melodies form the basis of 85 Pieces for Children, while Allegro barbaro shows the composer in a more aggressive mood.

The son of a schoolmaster who had settled in Vienna, Franz Schubert was educated as a chorister of the imperial court chapel. He later qualified as a schoolteacher, briefly and thereafter intermittently joining his father in the classroom. He spent his life largely in Vienna, enjoying the company of friends but never holding any position in the musical establishment or attracting the kind of patronage that Beethoven had 20 years earlier. His final years were clouded by illness as the result of a syphilitic infection, and he died aged 31, leaving much unfinished. His gifts had been most notably expressed in song, his talent for melody always evident in his other compositions. Schubert’s compositions are generally numbered according to the Deutsch catalogue, with the letter D.

Stage Works

Schubert wrote operas, Singspiel and incidental music for the theatre. His best-known compositions of this kind include the music for the unsuccessful play Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern (‘Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus’), mounted at the Theater an der Wien in December 1823. The ballet music and entracte from Rosamunde are particularly well-known.

Church Music

Among the various works Schubert wrote for church use, particular mention may be made of the second of his six complete settings of the Mass. He completed his final setting of the Mass in the last year of his life, and it was first performed the following year.

Choral and Vocal Music

Schubert wrote for mixed voices, male voices and female voices, but by far the most famous of his vocal compositions are the 500 or so songs—settings of verses ranging from Shakespeare to his friends and contemporaries. His song cycles published in his lifetime are Die schöne Müllerin (‘The Fair Maid of the Mill’) and Die Winterreise (‘The Winter Journey’), while Schwanengesang (‘Swan Song’) was compiled by a publisher after the composer’s early death. Many songs by Schubert are very familiar, including ‘Der Erlkönig’(‘The Erlking’), the ‘Mignon’songs from Goethe and the seven songs based on The Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott.

Orchestral Music

The ‘Unfinished’ Symphony of Schubert was written in 1822, but no complete addition was made to the two movements of the work. Other symphonies of the eight more or less completed include the ‘Great’ C major Symphony and the Classical and charming Fifth Symphony. His various overtures include two ‘in the Italian style’.

Chamber Music

Of Schubert’s various string quartets the Quartet in A minor, with its variations on the well-known Rosamunde theme and the Quartet in D minor ‘Death and the Maiden’, with variations on the song of that name, are the most familiar. The Piano Quintet, ‘Die Forelle’ (‘The Trout’), includes a movement of variations on that song, while the great C major String Quintet of 1828 is of unsurpassable beauty. The two piano trios and the single-movement Notturno date from the same year. Schubert’s Octet for clarinet, horn, bassoon, two violins, viola, cello and double bass was written early in 1824. To the violin sonatas (sonatinas) of 1816 may be added the more ambitious ‘Duo’ Sonata for violin and piano, D. 574, of the following year and the Fantasy, D. 934, published in 1828, the year of Schubert’s death. The ‘Arpeggione’ Sonata was written for a newly devised and soon obsolete stringed instrument, the arpeggione. It now provides additional repertoire for the cello or viola.

Piano Music

Schubert’s compositions for piano include a number of sonatas, some left unfinished, as well as the Wanderer Fantasy and two sets of impromptus, D. 899 and D. 935. He also wrote a number of dances for piano—waltzes, Ländler and German dances. His music for piano duet includes a Divertissement à l’hongroise, marches and polonaises largely written for daughters of a member of the Esterházy family, for whom he was for a time employed as a private teacher.