This chapter will examine the extent to which Bartk synthesised elements that were derived from his

interaction with folk music. In Bartks mature works these elements evolve into what Antokoletz calls a highly complex and systematic network of divergent chords and scales.[1] In attempting to show the relation of folk music to Bartks creative music concepts, I concentrate on important techniques central to the early compositional idiom. I will analyse Bartks use of modality, demonstrating its influence on the symmetrical intervallic constructions of abstract music. It will be the purpose of this discussion to concentrate on the Bartks early collections of piano music, Fourteen Bagatelles op. 6 (1908), Ten Easy Pieces (1908) and Sketches op. 9b (1908-10).

In his Harvard lectures Bartk explained the difference between his concept of harmonic dissolution and that achieved by the dodecaphonic composers: Schnberg, Webern and Berg. He described a contrast between works based on an atonal system and works fixed in a concept governed by tonal centricity:
To point out the essential difference between atonality, polytonality, and polymodality, in a final word on this subject, we may say that atonal music offers no fundamental tone at all, polytonality offers or is supposed to offer several of them, and polymodality offers a single tone. Therefore our music, I mean the new Hungarian art music, is always based on a single fundamental tone, in its sections as well as in its whole.[2]

This illustrates how Bartk related chromatic pitches to modal pitch sets with common fundamental notes. As was demonstrated in the previous chapter, Bartk used a system combining two or more modal segments, based on a single fundamental pitch, which enabled him to use all twelve pitches of the chromatic spectrum. This system retains the fundamental tone as a point of reference, rather than a fundamental in the traditional hierarchical sense. This technique is not concerned with atonality, but a rejection of harmony in favour of a new way of establishing tonal priority. As was shown in the previous chapter, this technique was used to enrich the harmonic language

of simple modal folk tunes. Bartks rather more complex and variegated approach to polymodal interaction of his original works is demonstrated by his comments:
In our works, as well as in other contemporary works, various methods and principles cross each other. For instance, you cannot expect to find among our works one in which the upper part continually uses a certain mode and the lower part continuously uses another mode. So if we say our art music is polymodal, this only means that polymodality or bimodality appears in longer of shorter portions of our work, sometimes only in single bars. So change may succeed from bar to bar, or even from beat to beat in a bar.[3]

It is important to note that Bartks ideas were not developed in isolation from other developments in European art-music: he acknowledged that this compositional trend was not only limited to the new Hungarian art music, but was also influenced by other composers affected by the folk idiom. An important event in Bartks development as a composer was his discovery of Debussys whole-tone scales and pentatonic formations, which he felt gave valuable hints for future

possibilities.[4] He writes in his essay Autobiography about the common bond between composers linked to folk tradition: In 1907, at the instigation of Kodly, I became acquainted with Debussys work, studied it through thoroughly and was greatly surprised to find in his work pentatonic phrases similar in character to those contained in peasant music. I was sure these could be attributed to influences of folk music from Eastern Europe, very likely from Russia. Similar influences can be traced in Igor Stravinskys work. It seems therefore that in our age, modern music has developed along similar lines in countries geographically far away from each other. It has become rejuvenated under the influence of a kind of peasant music that has remained untouched by the musical creations of the last centuries.[5] These discoveries coincided with Bartks examination of the modal and pentatonic structures of his native Hungarian folk music. Bartks free compositions written after this period are an attempt to synthesis these elements and provide a cohesive framework for the construction of new works.

In 1907 Bartk was appointed chair of piano teaching at the Academy of Music in Budapest. His activities in 1907 led to a series of original piano works that formed the basis of a new style. These were published as collections of short pieces, the earliest of which was the Fourteen Bagatelles op. 6. Bartk described them in 1945: A new piano style appears as a reaction to the exuberance of the Romantic piano music of the nineteenth century; a style stripped of all unessential decorative elements, deliberately using only the most restricted technical means. [6] He was evidently aware of the importance of the place of the Bagatelles in his compositional development when he said that: the Bagatelles inaugurate a new trend of piano writing in my career.[7] He wrote in a letter of 1910 that after writing the Bagatelles: I have regained some inner harmony, so that today, I am not need of contradictory accumulation of dissonances which express that mood. This may be a consequence of allowing myself to become more and more influenced by folk music [8] Many Bartk scholars have emphasised the importance of the Bagatelles in the wider context of the turn-of-the-century modernist movement. Stevens points out that Bartok was ahead of his contemporaries: The Piano music of 1908 shows experimentation with bitonality, dissonant counterpoint, chords in intervals other than thirds, somewhat before the works of Stravinsky and Schoenberg in which these devices first came to light.[9]s Elliot Antokoletz, who uses the Bagatelles as the basis of his study The Music of Bla Bartk (1984), points out that they were one of the earliest sets of pieces to discard the triad as the exclusive harmonic premise.[10] The originality of these pieces was highlighted by Ferruccio Busonis words of praise, which were included in an advertisement for the first edition published by Kroly Rosznyai in 1909: I hold these pieces to be among the most interesting and original of our time; what the composer has to say is out of the ordinary, and entirely individual.[11] These pieces parallel the dissolution of tonality found in the early music of Arnold Schnberg. There are strong parallels between the Bagatelles and Schnbergs op. 11

piano pieces composed the following year. They mark an important transition from the youthful style to Bartks more individualistic mature style found in later works. Victoria Fischer, author of an article on the Bagatelles, points out that these pieces are a microcosm of Bartks mature style and contain seeds of what was developed in later compositions.[12]

Other collections subsequently published by Bartk, Seven Sketches op. 9b, and Ten Easy Pieces, also all illustrate various levels of compositional treatment Bartk used for the accompaniment of folk music, as well as techniques for the creation of original music. A method quite common to all these collections is the pedagogical exploration into a limited use of technique. These studies can indeed be interpreted as the seeds of composition, revealing the basic constructions of Bartks musical oeuvre, which later developed into more complex interactions. On one level these works reveal Bartks interest in a pedagogical approach to composition, and on another they are an exposition of his early experimental ideas, which took shape in his larger scale compositions.

In Bagatelle no. 1, polytonality is the main feature of the musical language and the piece is notated in two key signatures, which Bartk says is a half-serious, half-jesting procedure designed to make fun of the use of key signatures in contemporary music.[13] The top stave has four sharps implying C#-minor, and the lower stave has four flats implying Fminor. In his analysis of this piece Bartk rejects a polytonal interpretation, which asserts the existence of two keys operating simultaneously. He states unequivocally that the tonality is simply a Phrygian coloured C major.[14] This statement supports a polymodal rather than the polytonal interpretation. In his Harvard lectures Bartk explains the inability of the ear to perceive two or more different keys simultaneously. He points out that the ear selects one key as the fundamental and will project the tones of the other

keys in relation to the one selected.[15] In other words, the pitches of one key will be heard as altered tones of a second key.

Antokoletzs analysis shows that the upper line has characteristics of C#-Aeolian superimposed over descending C-Phrygian segments. At the most prominent cadential points the C-Phrygian and C#-Aeolian modal lines coincide on the dyad C-E, implying C major tonality (Ex. 4.1).[16] It is clear that Bartok intended to assert the priority of Phrygian coloured C-Major without resorting to traditional dominant-tonic chordal functionalism. It is interesting to note that the only pitch missing from the twelve-note spectrum is D-natural, which tends to emphasis the flattened second Phrygian colouring.

Ex. 4.1: Bagatelle No. 1, Bars 1-12.

Bagatelle No. 1 demonstrates the use of melodic and harmonic symmetries, which equalise the notes of the diatonic mode. Antokoletz points out that the C#-Aeolian mode is gradually transformed in this piece into reordered, three-note segments of the cycle of fifths.[17] The second segment (F#-C#-G#) is presented in its symmetrical cyclic order (bar 7). This process is intensified in the second section, where a six-note sequence of descending fourths is unfolded (E-B-F#-C#G#-D#) (bars 13-14).
Ex. 4.1: Bagatelle No. 1, bars 13-18.

In bars 10-11, another symmetrical construction is used as the upper line is derived from a C-pentatonic pitch collection. I have shown in the previous chapter that fourth chords, which can also be rearranged as cycle of fifths, are related to the pentatonic scale (Ex. 3.10). In light of this fact, I can demonstrate that the pentatonic label applies equally as well to the three-note groups in bars 7-8 and 13-17. To a large degree the intervallic constructions of this piece are influenced by the symmetrical pentatonic properties of folk music. In bar 12, the upper line uses another symmetrical ordering (E-A-B-C#F#). These symmetries weaken the tonal hierarchy, creating a sense of tonal stasis. Bartok warns us that an attempt to apply tonal interpretations is to pigeonhole all music that we do not understand. The music is better understood as a complex interaction of scales, chords and pitch collections. Bartks approach to polymodality is also well demonstrated in the second of his Seven Sketches op. 9b. In bars 14 an E-minor triad is simultaneously sustained in the right hand with the Ab major tetrachord of the left hand. skjhsCAslsaf