String Quartet No. 3 by
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hunga ...
was written in September 1927 in
Budapest
Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...
. It is one of six
string quartets by Bartók.
The work is in one continuous stretch with no breaks, but is divided in the
score into four parts:
Despite Bartók calling the third section a "recapitulation" it is not a straight repetition of the music from the ''prima parte'', being somewhat varied and simplified. Although not marked as such, the coda is in fact a telescoped recapitulation of the ''seconda parte''.
The mood of the first part is quite bleak, contrasting with the second part which is livelier and provides evidence of the inspiration Bartók drew from Hungarian
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
, with dance-like melodies to the fore.
The work is even more
harmonically
In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harm ...
adventurous and
contrapuntally complex than Bartók's previous two string quartets and explores a number of extended instrumental techniques, including ''sul ponticello'' (playing with the
bow as close as possible to the
bridge
A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...
), ''
col legno
In music for bowed string instruments, , or more precisely ; ), is an instruction to strike the string with the stick of the bow across the strings.
History
The earliest known use of in Western music is to be found in a piece entitled "Hark ...
'' (playing with the wood rather than the hair of the bow), and ''
glissandi
In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a wikt:glide, glide from one pitch (music), pitch to another (). It is an Italianized Musical terminology, musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In ...
'' (sliding from one note to another).
It has often been suggested that Bartók was inspired to write the piece after hearing a performance of
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( ; ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...
's ''
Lyric Suite'' (1926) in 1927. The piece is the most tightly constructed of Bartók's six
string quartet
The term string quartet refers to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two Violin, violini ...
s, the whole deriving from a relatively small amount of thematic material integrated into a single continuous structure. It is also Bartók's shortest quartet, with a typical performance lasting around fifteen minutes.
The work is dedicated to the Musical Society Fund of Philadelphia and was entered into an international competition for
chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of Musical instrument, instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a Great chamber, palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music ...
run by the organization. It won the US$6,000 first prize jointly with a work by
Alfredo Casella
Alfredo Casella (25 July 18835 March 1947) was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.
Life and career
Casella was born in Turin, the son of Maria (née Bordino) and Carlo Casella. His family included many musicians: his grandfather, a f ...
. The piece was premiered on 19 February 1929 by the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet in
London's Wigmore Hall
The Wigmore Hall is a concert hall at 36 Wigmore Street, in west London. It was designed by Thomas Edward Collcutt and opened in 1901 as the Bechstein Hall; it is considered to have particularly good building acoustics, acoustics. It specialis ...
.
The piece was first published in 1929 by
Universal Edition
Universal Edition (UE) is an Austrian classical music publishing firm. Founded in 1901 in Vienna, it originally intended to provide the core classical works and educational works to the Austrian market. The firm soon expanded to become one of t ...
.
Discography
References
*
External links
*
Béla Bartók - String Quartet No. 3on YouTube
{{DEFAULTSORT:String Quartet No. 3 (Bartok)
1926 compositions
Compositions that use extended techniques
3