The melancholy thirteen-bar prefatory theme (“Mesto”) of the Sixth Quartet, which introduces each of the four movements in the work, has received much attention by writers on Bartók. Such terms as ‘motto theme’, ‘idée fixe’, ‘signature theme’, and ‘ritornello’ have usually been used to describe it, indicating that the work heralds Bartók's direction away from arch form—the structural method of his two preceding quartets—and towards cyclic form as a means of achieving overall unity. The sketches of the work, however, and the documents relating to it, suggest that the use of the prefatory theme as a cyclic link was not part of the original plan; that the work as first conceived would have shown an even more radical abandonment of the principles of thematic unification characteristic of nearly all Bartók's major works of the previous decade; and that the particular cyclic connection between the first and last movements was a structural modification based on new expressive needs which arose during the course of the composition of the work.

In teaching Mikrokosmos to some four score children over a period of several years, I have realized that it serves numerous musical purposes beyond just that of being another series of pieces and studies for pupils. In addition to laying a strong and richly varied foundation for the understanding and performance of twentieth-century music, it presents almost unending varieties of situations for facilitating sight-reading and transposition. The work offers virtually every pianistic and musical problem to the student, and interestingly enough, its use gives him increased insight into music of the past as well as of the present.

Like many friends of Kodály, I find myself having to grapple with a sense of being stricken beyond comfort, and a warring disbelief that he is dead at all. Scattered all over the world is a body of people who have felt the personal magnetism of this extraordinary man, and whose lives have been radically changed as a result. Mátyás Seiber eloquently described the ‘peculiar, suggestive, compelling force that issues from him’, and how his teaching was invested with a touch of Buddhism, which forced his pupils to redeem themselves. That power is no less operative now that he is dead; it is if anything intensified, and people who have been aware of his standards find themselves impelled to take up the challenge that they represent.

• Shostakovich's Second Violin Concerto (Norman Kay)

• Musgrave's The Decision (Stephen Walsh)

Roger Smalley says that in Webern as opposed to Schoenberg, canon dominates the later music, which is “a reason for the spareness of Webern's textures… These characteristics are also true of Stravinsky's serial music, which is why on the deepest level he is a Webernian serialist and (pace Hans Keller) not a Schoenbergian one”.