Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Regarding Bela Bartok

Now remains Tuesday, 26 September 2006.

RtR posted the following comment soon ago, as this is the day in 1945 Bela Bartok died:

“I know a few readers of the MoB might find pleasure in listening to Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste while following along with the musical score. Bartok composed it with a pine cone on his desk. The piece is a musical Fibonacci series.

Serge Koussevitsky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in the 40's knew that Bartok was dying of leukemia and commissioned the work that I consider to be the most publicly accessible of the Bartok oeuvre, the Concerto for Orchestra.

My understanding of Bartok's reply to being informed of his being diagnosed with a terminal illness is that I believe he felt as though the reality of his impending death was an incongruity since he believed that he yet had much work to do.

During my well indulged years as a music student, it was a luxurious pleasure to lose myself in the Concerto for Orchestra after having spent a few hours devoted to the musical analysis of the various Bartok works.

I do not invoke Requiescat in Pacem for Bela. Rather, I believe that he would find peace in being granted perpetual perseverance al fine.”

Blessings to you, RtR.

HH loves the Piano Sonata of 1926, which combines better than any other piece of piano music, I think, both the lyrical and the percussive abilities of the piano. During many periods of depression following the “end” of the Vietnam Wars in 1975, HH found this Sonata of great comfort.

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