Bela Bartok: Composition, Concepts, and Autograph Sources (Ernest Bloch Lectures in Music)
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
This long-awaited, authoritative account of Bartk's compositional processes stresses the composer's position as one of the masters of Western music history and avoids a purely theoretical approach or one that emphasizes him as an enthusiast for Hungarian folk music. For Bla Bartk, composition often began with improvisation at the piano. Lszl Somfai maintains that Bartk composed without preconceived musical theories and refused to teach composition precisely for this reason. He was not an analytical composer but a musical creator for whom intuition played a central role. These conclusions are the result of Somfai's three decades of work with Bartk's oeuvre; of careful analysis of some 3,600 pages of sketches, drafts, and autograph manuscripts; and of the study of documents reflecting the development of Bartk's compositions. Included as well are corrections preserved only on recordings of Bartk's performances of his own works. Somfai also provides the first comprehensive catalog of every known work of Bartk, published and unpublished, and of all extant draft, sketch, and preparatory material. His book will be basic to all future scholarly work on Bartk and will assist performers in clarifying the problems of Bartk notation. Moreover, it will be a model for future work on other major composers.
From the Back Cover
"This book is at the frontiers of Bartk research. It presents a vast array of unknown material. Both the breadth and the depth of Somfai's approach is unique among source studies in twentieth-century music." (Reinhold Brinkmann, Harvard University)
Bela Bartok: Composition, Concepts, and Autograph Sources (Ernest Bloch Lectures in Music)
Bela Bartok: Composition, Concepts, and Autograph Sources (Ernest Bloch Lectures in Music),Laszlo Somfai,University of California Press,0520084853,1881-1945,Bartok, Bela,,Bartâok, Bâela,,Criticism and interpretation,History & Criticism - By Composer,Literary Criticism,Manuscripts,Music,Music Of The 20th Century,Bartók, Béla
Bela Bartok: Composition, Concepts, and Autograph Sources (Ernest Bloch Lectures in Music)
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