Bartók, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition: Case Studies in the Intersection of Modernity and Nationality

5. Tradition Transcribed: The Rhapsody for Violin No. 1, the Politics of Folk-Music Research, and the Artifice of Authenticity

five Tradition Transcribed The Rhapsody for Violin No. 1, the Politics of Folk-Music Research, and the Artifice of Authenticity The truest poetry is the most feigning Shakespeare, As You Like It (3.3.20) 184 Much of the music discussed in the previous chapter relies on elements of Hungarian folk music (modes, structures, rhythms) that Bartók habitually abstracted in his original compositions. The First Rhapsody for violin and piano (1928; arranged for violin and orchestra, 1929) reflects a somewhat different type of relationship to folk music. Its sources are instrumental melodies as opposed to folk songs; the melodies were mainly collected from Romanians as opposed to Hungarians; and, most important, he not only takes inspiration from their general characteristics, but actually quotes them. More precisely, the Rhapsody consists of tunes collected from village fiddlers in rural Transylvania that Bartók arranged in a manner suitable for concert performance. Such a work embodies two levels of transcription: first the notation of the original tunes, and then their arrangement as a piece of “art music.” With a few exceptions (e.g., Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs) Bartók’s concert arrangements of folk music tend to be among his most accessible works. Many of them are also pedagogical in nature. He originally intended them as a popularizing branch of his folk-music research. In the preface to their early folk-music publication Hungarian Folk Songs for voice and piano (1906), Bartók and Kodály described two ways of publishing folk songs, each with its own purpose: comprehensive dictionaries of folk songs for scientific analysis, and transcriptions of what they saw as the most beautiful songs with added accompaniments for the enjoyment of the general public.1 The fact that the First Rhapsody for Violin differs from many of Bartók’s arrangements of folk music in that it makes considerable technical demands on the performer reflects the relative virtuosity of instrumental dance music itself. The virtuosity of the First Rhapsody also suggests a connection between Bartók’s arrangement of peasant dances and the Lisztian tradition of the Hungarian rhapsody.A popular showpiece, the First Rhapsody fulfills Bartók’s original goal of generating enthusiasm for folk music among a wide audience and stands in contrast to the abstract complexity of “original” compositions like the Fourth String Quartet, written the same year. As Bartók and Kodály emphasized, the accompaniment added to the folk tunes should be more than a neutral background for the melody; it should provide the melody with, as Kodály put it,“a proper musical attire . . . [that] must attempt to make up for the lost meadow and village.”2 In other words, Bartók and Kodály understood the act of transcription to be one of transplantation that challenges the arranger to re-create the feeling of the original environment with composerly additions. Thus, in Bartók’s view, folkmusic arrangements required much the same creativity as original composition. Yet transcription is also appropriation. At the very least, notation and arrangement of peasant music appropriates an artifact from a rural oral tradition for an urban literate one. When a composer of a different nationality from the original peasant performer makes the transcription, he may be seen as committing cultural theft. This distinction is especially relevant in the case of the First Rhapsody because the majority of the tunes Bartók used were collected from Romanian peasants.3 Hungarian Composer One of the most important documents pertaining to the issue of cultural appropriation is Bartók’s letter to the Romanian writer Octavian Beu on 10 January 1931. In it Bartók gives a detailed response to a draft of a lecture Beu was preparing about him for the Romanian Radio. The date of Bartók’s letter suggests that the radio program may have been intended as a fiftiethbirthday tribute to the composer, whose Hungarian birthplace (Nagyszentmikl ós, or Sînnicolau Mare in Romanian) had become part of Romania with the border changes imposed by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Apparently Beu himself had engaged in an appropriation of his own by referring to Bartók as a Romanian composer (compositorul român). It is unclear to what extent this characterization was designed to pave the way Tradition Transcribed / 185 for a positive Romanian reception of Bartók’s music. Beu seems to have touched a sensitive nerve, however, because Bart...