A Context for Bela Bartok on the Eve of World War II: The Violin ...

epercussions Spring-Fall 1996
common to the art music of the time. On the other hand,
Bart6k's dual scale degrees often occur together in a single
harmony. They result from the conflicting demands of
chordal progression and melodic line, which Bart6k welds
together with deft scoring, careful spacing, and luxuriant
harmony. In this example at least, Bart6k's practice falls in
line with late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century chromaticism.
In sum, Erkel's and Bart6k's phrases, composed
some eighty years apart, are both syntheses of the standard
western-European harmonic practices of their times (selected
fairly conservatively in both cases) and the composers' .
respective understandings of Hungarian folk music.
Although Bart6k gained his knowledge by working
with actual peasants in the countryside whereas Erkel
learned the folk style from other composers and urban
Gypsy bands, many of the folk features from which they
drew inspiration are indistinguishable in practice. Many of
the Hungarianisms in Erkel's and Bart6k's music are shared
equally by the" authentic" (rural Transylvanian fiddling)
and by what Bart6k took to be the" ersatz" (urban bastardizations
of the Gypsy bands). Because of this, the difference
between Bart6k's and Erkel's music is less compellingly a
reflection of their different relationships to folk music than
of their differently Western-oriented compositional training
separated by some sixty-five years.
Erkel, as a young opera conductor in Kolozsvar (now
Cluj, Romania) learned his craft from the examples of
Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Meyerbeer, and early Verdi.
Bart6k, as a student at the Music Academy, grew to musical
maturity with a diet of Beethoven, Brahms, Liszt and, later,
Strauss. Given this training, it is no surprise that he cared
passionately about the organic unity of his music. We have
already demonstrated this in our discussion of the relationship
between the opening bass line and the primary theme
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