| Contents |
Introduction. Sources and methodology ; Bartok and the cultural environment ; The impact of Bartok and Ady on Hungarian modernism ; Focus and organization -- Part 1. History and aesthetics. Organic artwork or communal style?: common problems, common tradition, and the Viennese response. Modernism outside the mainstream ; Folklorist debate ; The Romantic tradition of organicism ; Organicism as modernism ; Mass culture and the problem of style ; Modernism and the social context of Austrian art -- The historical and social context of Hungarian modernism. Search for identity in a fragmented society ; Emergence and status of a bourgeois middle class ; The backwardness of the political establishment ; Nationalism and the gentry ; "National" music: Verbunkos, Gypsy music, and Magyar nota -- The Romantic roots and political radicalism of Hungarian modernism. Nationalism and reform in the nineteenth century ; The power of logic and reason ; The power of poetry ; The birth of the radicalist and modernist movements ; The polarization of public life ; The discovery of peasant music ; The idealogical battle for Budapest ; Modernism as subculture -- Hungarian modernism and the organicist theory of art. Universal or national art ; Realism and the Hungarian modernist aesthetic ; The phenomena of life ; The aesthetic conceptualization of folk art ; Bartok's organicist folklorism ; Coherence and realism ; Art and morality -- Part 2. Poetry and music: Ady and Bartok. The formation of Bartok's aesthetics. Folk music and the reflection of spirit and emotion ; The first piano concerto ; The road toward a new aesthetics ; Nietzsche and folk music ; The context for Bartok's aesthetics ; The theoretical parallel in the early works of Gyorgy Lukacs -- Ady's mystical symbolism. Ady's role in the Hungarian radicalist modernist movement ; The ego as mirror of the universe ; Expanding symbolism ; A transcendental center ; Mysticism and devotion to life ; Ady and Bartok -- Loneliness and love: the literary context of Bluebeard's Castle. Communication and friendship ; Balazs's "Mystery play" ; Loneliness in the Hungarian modernist experience ; The lonely soul: magic circle and mysterious landscape ; Circular motion as the paradigm of life ; Mystery of the other as the paradigm of love ; Woman as the metaphor for life ; Loneliness and longing for love ; The poetic idea of Bluebeard's Castle -- Bartok's stylistic synthesis: the dramatic music of Bluebeard's Castle and its antecedents. The new ideal of national music ; Coherence and folk style ; Voices for Judith and Bluebeard ; Sources of the orchestral material: Verbunkos and Pastorale ; Rhythmic variation in the new dramatic style ; Dramatic design and symbolism ; Expanding symbolism ; The musical mirror of the dramatic idea. |
| Abstract |
Bartok's music is greatly prized by concertgoers, yet we know little about the intellectual milieu that gave rise to his artistry. Bartok is often seen as a lonely genius emerging from the gray background of an "underdeveloped country." Now the author offers a broader perspective on Bartok's art by grounding it in the social and cultural life of turn-of-the-century Hungary and the intense creativity of its modernist movement. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-332) and index. |
| LCCN | 97019826 |
| ISBN | 0520207408 (cloth : alk. paper) |
