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Notes Concerning Bartók's Solo Vocal Music (II): The Twenty Hungarian Folksongs (1929)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2010

Extract

Accomplishments of a highly sophisticated European civilisation, and the simplicity and directness of peasant culture: the dilemma of these two modes of existence is never completely absent from Bartók's creative mentality. His dissatisfaction with urban civilisation produced an attraction to a social order where art is not merely a pleasing utilization of leisure or a highly personal and esoteric mode of expression, but is accepted as a valid response to a social need, as important and definite in its own sphere as any other manifestation in the life of the community. The music of this community must therefore be comprehensible to, must evoke responses and associations in, all who live in this society, and not merely appeal to the minority of an élite. For Bartók this community was represented by the peasant society.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1956

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References

1 Mason, Colin: Bartók and Folksong. Music Review, XI:4. Cambridge, 08, 1950 Google Scholar.

2 Leichtentritt, Hugo: Bartók and the Hungarian Folksong. Modern Music, X:3. New York, 0304, 1933 Google Scholar.