Bela Bartok: Composition, Concepts, and Autograph Sources Volume 9 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520084858)

This long-awaited, authoritative account of Bart k's compositional processes stresses the composer's position as one of the masters of Western music history and avoids a purely theoretical approach or one that emphasizes him as an enthusiast for Hungarian folk music.

For B la Bart k, composition often began with improvisation at the piano. L szl Somfai maintains that Bart k composed without preconceived musical theories and refused to teach composition precisely for this reason. He was not an analytical composer but a musical creator for whom intuition played a central role.

These conclusions are the result of Somfai's three decades of work with Bart k's oeuvre; of careful analysis of some 3,600 pages of sketches, drafts, and autograph manuscripts; and of the study of documents reflecting the development of Bart k's compositions. Included as well are corrections preserved only on recordings of Bart k's performances of his own works. Somfai also provides the first comprehensive catalog of every known work of Bart k, published and unpublished, and of all extant draft, sketch, and preparatory material. His book will be basic to all future scholarly work on Bart k and will assist performers in clarifying the problems of Bart k notation. Moreover, it will be a model for future work on other major composers.

Author: László Somfai
ISBN-10: 0520084853
ISBN-13: 9780520084858
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 05/07/1996
Pages: 340
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.04lbs
Size: 10.32h x 7.34w x 1.09d