The String Quartets of Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was one of the most important composers and musical thinkers of the 20th century. His contributions as a composer, as a performer and as the father of ethnomusicology changed the course of music history and of our contemporary perception of music itself. At the center of Bartók's oeuvre are his string quartets, which are generally acknowledged as some of the most significant pieces of 20th century chamber music. The String Quartets of Béla Bartók brings together innovative new scholarship from 14 internationally recognized music theorists, musicologists, performers, and composers to focus on these remarkable works from a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives. Focusing on a variety of aspects of the string quartets-harmony and tonality, form, rhythm and meter, performance and listening-it considers both the imprint of folk and classical traditions on Bartók's string quartets, and the ways in which they influenced works of the next generation of Hungarian composers. Rich with notated music examples the volume is complemented by an Oxford Web Music companion website offering additional notated as well as recorded examples. The String Quartets of Béla Bartók, reflecting the impact of the composer himself, is an essential resource for scholars and students across a variety of fields from music theory and musicology, to performance practice and ethnomusicology.

Dániel Péter Biró is Associate Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the University of Victoria. Dr. Biró completed his PhD in composition at Princeton University in 2004. Awarded the Hungarian Government's Kodály Award for Hungarian composers and the Gigahertz Prize for Electronic Music, his compositions have been performed around the world. Dániel Péter Biró is co-editor of Search - Journal for New Music and Culture. Harald Krebs received his Ph.D. in music theory from Yale University in 1980. He is Distinguished Professor and head of the theory program at the School of Music at the University of Victoria, and President of the Society for Music Theory (2011-13). His book Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann, published by Oxford University Press in 1999, won the Society for Music Theory's Wallace Berry Award in 2002.

ContributorsIntoduction - Dániel Péter Biró and Harald KrebsChapter 1 - Paul Wilson - "Sonata Form in the First Movement of Bartók's Fourth String Quartet"Chapter 2 - Jonathan Bernard - "Bartók and Traditional Form Description: Some Issues Arising from the Middle and Late String Quartets"Chapter 3 - Jee Yeon Ryu - "The Structural Role of Formal Contrast in Beethoven's Piano Sonata Op. 101 and Bartók's Third String Quartet"Chapter 4 - Harald Krebs - "In Beethoven's Footsteps: Metrical Dissonance in Bartók's String Quartets"Chapter 5 - John Roeder - "Bartók's Grooves: Metrical Processes in the Fourth String Quartet"Chapter 6 - Daphne Leong - "Between Sound and Structure: Folk Rhythm at the Center of Bartók's Fifth String Quartet"Chapter 7 - Elliott Antokoletz - "The Romanian 'Long Song' as Structural Convergent Point for the Chiasmal Harmonic Design in Bartók's Fourth String Quartet"Chapter 8 - William Benjamin - "The Use of Tonal Concepts and their Attendant Modes of Continuity in the Inner Hearing of Bartók's String Quartets"Chapter 9 - Edward Gollin - "Aggregate Structure and Cyclic Design at the Conclusion of Bartók's Second String Quartet"Chapter 10 - Charles Morrison - "The Realization(s) of Functional Qualities in Bartók's Second String Quartet"Chapter 11 - Judit Frigyesi - "How Barbaric is Bartók's forte? - About the Performance of Bartók's Fast Movements for Piano and Strings, with Emphasis on the First Movement of the Fifth String Quartet"Chapter 12 - Martin Iddon - "Bartók's Relics: Nostalgia in György Ligeti's String Quartet No. 2"Chapter 13 - Dániel Péter Biró - "Bartók's Quartets, Folk Music, and the Anxiety of Influence"Chapter 14 - Friedemann Sallis - "Recycled Flowers: Quotation, Paraphrase and Allusion in György Kurtág's Officium breve in memoriam Andreæ Szervánszky Op. 28 for String Quartet"Epilogue - Dániel Péter Biró and Martin Iddon - "Bartók's Present"Bibliography