Music Composition DUMmIES

From 1905 on, Bartók considered the documentation of rural folk music his

true calling in life. He recorded thousands of examples from Bulgaria, Hungary,

Romania, Turkey, and other areas. Eventually he wrote down a vast amount

of this material in musical notation, organized it systematically, and analyzed

and wrote about it. This contribution to the developing discipline of ethno-

musicology ranks among Bartók’s most important achievements.

For Bartók the composer, the discovery of peasant music had a liberating

influence. Bartók based some of his compositions directly on the music he

collected, as in the Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songsfor solo piano.

But more commonly, he composed his own material in a style that reflected

his absorption of the melodic and rhythmic aspects of the folk music he stud-

ied, but still retained many of the classical elements of mainstream classical

music.

Among Bartók’s important works are his Mikrokosmos (1926, 1932–1939),

which consists of 153 piano pieces in six books of increasing difficulty.

Ranging from basic five-finger exercises to the virtuosity of “Six Dances in

Bulgarian Rhythm,” Mikrokosmosis both a unique 20th-century teaching

method for piano and a thorough introduction to Bartók’s compositional

style. Other major works include six string quartets, the one-act opera

Bluebeard’s Castle, Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, and Sonata for

Two Pianos and Percussion.

Igor Stravinsky, 1882–1971 ..........................................................................

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer who spent most of

his musical career challenging established musical conventions. His composi-

tions were technically challenging enough that no critics could dare fault him

for writing “easy” music, yet engaging enough thematically that they couldn’t

just dismiss him as obsessed with technique and random experimentation.

His most famous composition, 1913’s Rite of Spring, was so radical in its overt

sexuality both musically and choreographically that the Parisian audience

rioted violently in the theater during its opening performance, with some

attendees even taking the mayhem into the streets outside. The protests were

so loud, in fact, that the dancers on stage had trouble hearing the orchestra

playing. It wasn’t very long before the composition was heralded as genius,

and subsequent performances were both well attended and well received.

Stravinsky’s initially disturbing yet wildly popular compositions, which

included The Rite of Spring, Fireworks, and Firebird, all drew heavily from the

Russian folk music of the “common” people — music that before had been

considered inferior for concert performances. Another defining feature of

Stravinsky’s larger pieces is that he made no attempt to link the movements

of his compositions in a harmonious way. Instead, he made a clean break

258 Part V: The Part of Tens