Michael Parloff: Lecture on Bartók’s Quest for Musical Authenticity (Music@Menlo)

Michael Parloff explores the progression from the musical exoticism of the "Style Hongrois" to the authenticity of folk-based, modernist musical languages.

Part 2 provides insight into early twentieth century, composer-ethnomusicologists such as Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, who rejected the popularized Style Hongrois. Armed with Edison phonographs and wax cylinders, they visited the villages of “greater Hungary” in search of a more undiluted style of music making. From this rich soil of indigenous Eastern European peasant music, they developed a synthesis of pure “Eastern” folk idioms and traditional Western musical forms.

This 61-minute lecture is the second part of a 2-hour Encounter entitled “From Exoticism to Folkorism.” Part 1 (on the Style Hongrois in 18th- and 19th-century music) can also be viewed on YouTube at    • Michael Parloff: Lecture on The Style Hong...  

This Encounter was recorded on August 3, 2014 at Music@Menlo; Chamber Music Festival and Institute, David Finckel and Wu Han, Artistic Directors

Chapters:
Introduction; Bartók in the late 19th-century: 0:00
Bartók’s early tone poem, Kossuth: 3:45
Bartók hears Piros Alma: 12:00
Bartók & Kodaly: 13:55
Bartók the Ethnomusicologist: 15:55
First folksong recordings: 19:45
Bartok’s prescription for the treatment of folk music: 23:25
Bartok’s first encounters with Debussy’s music: 33: 40
Blue Beard’s Castle Prologue: 40:40
Romanian Folksong Settings: 43:30
Pushing the limits of tonality in folksong settings: 47:05
Violin Rhapsody No. 1: 49:50

Video edited by Darryl Kubian, Indigo Fox Media