Page 18 - Phil Nov8th program digital book

Program Notes

In many ways, this concert program is very personal. ‘Personal,’ because it showcases
one of our own brilliant orchestra musicians. ‘Personal,’ because the newest music on this
program was penned just a couple of years ago by a composer intimately familiar with the
instrument featured in her music. ‘Personal,’ because the concert concludes with a joy-
filled symphony by a master composer who didn’t let his serious malady of deafness get
in the way of creating beauty. And ‘personal,’ because the concert begins with a personal
favorite of mine — music that makes me want to jump up and dance. ‘Personal’ never
sounded so good. Enjoy!
— Steven Karidoyanes

~ The following program notes are by Dr. Laura Stanfield Prichard ~

Romanian Folk Dances Béla Bartók
(1881 – 1945)

Béla Victor János Bartók was born in the ancient pre-Roman town of
Nagyszentmiklós [Great Saint Nikolas], Hungary (part of Romania from 1920), and
died of leukemia in New York City on September 26, 1945. He composed his Romanian
Folk Dances from Hungary (Magyarországi román népi táncok) in 1915 for solo piano.
Two years later, he orchestrated the same music, which features seven tunes from
Transylvania. In 1920, the border region was partitioned, becoming part of Romania,
so he adjusted the title to Dansuri populare românești (Romanian Folk Dances).
As a composer, Bartók had a pessimistic, split personality and several national and
religious allegiances. He is beloved by devotees of modernist composition for his
virtuosic Concerto for Orchestra (commissioned by the BSO in 1943), an expressionist
opera named Bluebeard’s Castle, and the dramatic Music for Strings, Percussion, and
Celesta (familiar to many for its use in The Shining). But he was also one of the most
important collectors of Central European folk music and a founder of the discipline of
Comparative Musicology (which evolved into Ethnomusicology). Raised a Catholic, he
gravitated toward atheism, and converted to Unitarianism in 1916, calling it “free and
humanistic.”
Although born in a town on the Hungarian-Romanian border, he lived with his mother
to Nagyszőlős (now Vynohradiv, Ukraine) from age seven to thirteen. He then studied
in Pozsony (now Bratislava, Slovakia) and at the Budapest Academy of Music under
Liszt’s pupil Istvan Thoman, alongside Ernö Dohnányi. In 1904, he started to collect,
record, classify and analyze Romanian folk songs after hearing Lidi Dósa, a Székely
Hungarian woman from Transylvania. He would eventually preserve 1115 Romanian
melodies. Bartók was introduced to Zoltán Kodály, who soon became his closest
friend: Kodály had already begun to collect recordings of Hungarian folk music using
an Edison cylinder.
Bartók also collected the folk music of Algeria, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, and
Slovakia (despite being called “unpatriotic” and being suspended from teaching
for political reasons). He was stoically nostalgic for the ethnic diversity of the old
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and he wrote of the “brotherhood of people… in spite of

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