Bela Bartok. By David Cooper. Yale University Press; 436 pages; £25. To be published in America by Yale in June.
ALONG with Franz Liszt, Bela Bartok, who died in 1945, is regarded as one of Hungary’s greatest composers. Many consider his six string quartets, completed between 1908 and 1939, to be second only to Beethoven’s. Though not as atonal as the work of many of his contemporaries, such as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, Bartok’s compositions can be heavy-going, combining influences from Hungarian folk, jazz and Arabic music. In this weighty tome, David Cooper of Leeds University digs into Bartok’s life, interlacing his discussion of the compositions with wider discussions of politics and culture.
Just as Bartok’s music is not for the faint of heart, neither is this book. The level of research is astonishing, at times to the point of scholasticism. And a big chunk of it is filled with detailed analyses of Bartok’s compositions, along with dozens of musical illustrations. Musical jargon peppers the discussion: for readers who do not know their arpeggios from their appoggiaturas, parts of the book will be difficult to understand.
But even for musical neophytes, the book has much to offer. Bartok was born in Nagyszentmiklos (now Sannicolau Mare in Romania), a...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1yT6ENc
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