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When Bela Bartók died in September of 1945, he left a partially completed viola concerto commissioned by the virtuoso violist William Primrose. Yet, while no definitive version of the work exists, this concerto has become arguably the most-performed viola concerto in the world. The story of how the concerto came to be, from its commissioning by Primrose to its first performance to the several completions that are performed today is told here in Bartók's Viola Concerto:The Remarkable Story of His Swansong.

After Bartók's death, his family asked the composer's friend Tibor Serly to look over the sketches of the concerto and to prepare it for publication. While a draft was ready, it took Serly years to assemble the sketches into a complete piece. In 1949, Primrose finally unveiled it, at a premiere performance with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra.

For almost half a century, the Serly version enjoyed great popularity among the viola community, even while it faced charges of inauthenticity. In the 1990s, several revisions appeared and, in 1995, the composer's son, Peter Bartók, released a revision, opening the way or an intensified debate on the authenticity of the multiple versions. This debate continues as violists and Bartók scholars seek the definitive version of this final work of Hungary's greatest composer.

Bartók's Viola Concerto tells the story of the genesis and completion of Bartók's viola concerto, its reception over the second half of the twentieth century, its revisions, and future possibilities. ... Read more

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"... detailed and thorough... a wealth of information... David Yeomans deserves our thanks for a job exceedingly well done." -- American Music Teacher

"... a must for pianists... " -- American Reference Book Annual

"David Yeomans's study is certainly to be recommended for all good music libraries, pianists and students of Bartók." -- The Music Review

"Although there are currently more than 15 books in print about composer Béla Bartók, this short volume is unique in its focus on his complete oeuvre for solo piano.... Recommended for pianists, piano teachers, and students from lower-division undergraduate level and above." -- Choice

"... the entire book is indispensable for any of us before we play another Bartók piece." -- Clavier

"This work collects in one place an enormous number of 'facts' about the piano music of Bartók... for planning concerts and student repertoire, and as a survey of an important body of 20th-century music, this listing is valuable." -- Library Journal

This chronological listing of more than 400 pieces and movements presents in convenient form essential information about each of Bartók's solo piano works, including its various editions, timing, level of difficulty, pertinent remarks by the composer, and bibliographical references to it.

Customer Reviews (1)

Essential for Bartok Lovers
This book is a complete survey of all of Bela Bartok's solo piano literature.For each piece (including every piece in Mikrokosmos), it includes detailed notes on the music and its background, playing tips, and ratings of technical and musical difficulty.The book also includes information about Bartok's musical notation and style.Not only are we told which music publishers have each piece in print, but it also includes complete descriptions of the available anthologies of Bartok's music.

The information provided by pianist David Yeomans is of very high quality, and I found his difficulty ratings, in particular, extremely accurate and helpful when selecting works for practice.This book is a must for anyone who loves to play Bartok's music, no matter what your level of playing ability.

Only the information on the recordings is out of date, but this is rendered moot by the fact that all of Bartok's solo piano works are available on CD in the excellent renditions by Gyorgy Sandor. ... Read more

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One of the basic scholarly works on the composer's style.
The author, Janos Karpati, musicologist and professor of the F. Liszt Academy of Music, Budapest, is equally well known as a Bartok specialist and as a distinguished scholar of the music of the East, especially that ofJapan. The Introduction is planned to define the place and relative weightof chamber music within the whole oeuvre. Cahpter 2, Forerunners andContemporaries is an important summary of stylistic similarities."Monothemiticism and Variation" investigates an importantunderlying principle of Bartok's art. Karpati introduces his most originalanalytical concept, "mistuning". In Karpati's hand thisexpression turned into a strictly formulated theoretical concept: on p. 211a table explains how acoustic intervals can be replaced by"mistuned" ones either a semitone lower or a semitone higher. ... Read more

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This series of biographies presents the great composers against the background of their times. Each draws on personal letters and recollections, engravings, paintings and, when they exist, photographs, to present a complete picture of the composer’s life. ... Read more

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Biography of a Hungarian musician and collector of folk music who was one of the most prominent composers of the twentieth century. Includes musical examples. ... Read more

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Two early twentieth-century operas -- Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande (1902) and Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) -- transformed the traditional major/minor scale system into a new musical language. This new language was based almost exclusively on interactions between folk modalities and their more abstract symmetrical transformations. Elliott Antokoletz reveals not only the new musical language of these operas, but also the way in which they share a profound correspondence with the growing symbolist literary movement as reflected in their libretti. In the symbolist literary movement, authors reacted to the realism of nineteenth-century theatre by conveying meaning by suggestion, rather than direct statement. The symbolist conception included a new interest in psychological motivation and consciousness manifested itself in metaphor, ambiguity, and symbol.

In this groundbreaking study, Antokoletz links the new musical language of these two operas with this symbolist conception and reveals a direct connection between the Debussy and Bartok operas. He shows how the opposing harmonic extremes serve as a basis for the dramatic polarity between real-life beings and symbols of fate. He also explores how the libretti by Franco-Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck (Pelleas et Melisande) and his Hungarian disciple Bela Balazs (Duke Bluebeard's Castle) transform the internal concept of subconscious motivation into an external one, one in which fate controls human emotions and actions.

Using a pioneering approach to theoretical analysis, Antokoletz, explores the new musico-dramatic relations within their larger historical, social psychological, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts. ... Read more