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

68 Schneider Bart6k's Violin Concerto
mation, thematic recall, and topical allusion guarantee the
Violin Concerto a certain semiotic intensity; but without the
hint of a program provided by the composer, what <strong>Bartok</strong>
communicates must remain above all musical, its precise
meaning elusive.
Describing <strong>Bartok</strong>'s almost pathological reluctance to
communicate in words, Kodaly said in a memorial tribute,
"Happy are those who could help him in removing the
barbed-wire fence he raised around himself in selfdefense.,,63
How much <strong>Bartok</strong>'s careful reticence, especially
in discussing the meanings of his own creative work, was
due to his innate personality and how much was conditioned
by the tensions of his time, we will probably never
know. But, given that <strong>Bartok</strong> lived under circumstances in
which barbed wire was hardly a neutral metaphor <strong>for</strong> artistic
isolation, we can be thankful <strong>for</strong> his ability to withdraw.
In self-imposed isolation, <strong>Bartok</strong> found a space <strong>for</strong> expressive
complexity at a time generally beset with crudely reductive
polarization.
63. "<strong>Bela</strong> Bart6k the Man" (1946) in The Selected Writings of Zolttin Kodtily,
trans. Lili Halapy and Fred Macnicol (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1974),
101.