User:Hyacinth/Contrasts (Bartók)

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Contrasts is a musical composition scored for clarinet-violin-piano trio by Béla Bartók (1881-1945) commissioned for violinist Joseph Szigeti and clarinetist Benny Goodman. Bartók's only chamber piece to include a wind instrument(Bradshaw 2001, p.116), the piece is frequently performed by the Verdehr Trio and was recorded for their Making of a Medium Series.

The piece has three movements:

Verbunkos (Recruiting Dance)
Pihenõ (Relaxation)
Sebes (Fast Dance)

The movements contrast in tempo. The first movement contains a Cadenza for clarinet and the last one for violin. The piece features examples of alternate or dual-thirds (C and C# in an A triad):

(Sieber 1949)

This mixed thirds structure may be thought of as bitonal in that the major and minor third of a triad are used. This structure may be extended through considering each third of the original triad as also being a possible third in a triad a half step in either direction. Thus C#/Db is a major third in an A Major triad and the minor third of a Bb Major triad:

(ibid)

1 Movements
2 Reception
3 Further reading
4 Sources
5 External links

[edit] Movements

[edit] Verbunkos

"Verbunkos", features polymodality or what Kárpáti terms alternative structures. For example, the framing motif of the first movement features, in relation to the root, A, the minor and major third and the perfect and diminished fifth:

(Kárpáti 1981, p.203)

Eb is revealed as both an alternative fifth of an A chord and the alternative third of a C chord by the canon at the third at the beginning of the development, bar 58:

(ibid)

Between the six notes of both triads are seven thirds.

Verbunkos was a stately and stylized Hungarian Recruiting Dance "measured in rhythm and rich in melodic embellishments characterized by the theme:

(Seiber ibid)

[edit] Pihenõ

This movement has been described as volcanic rather than relaxing (E.R. 1948), despite its title, "relaxation" or "rest".

[edit] Sebes

The violinist must retune (scordatura) two strings for the last movement, lowering the E and raising the G a semitone each (E.R. 1948).

The trio of this movement features "Bulgarian Rhythm" (Seiber 1949, p.28) and is similar in spirit ot the Finale of the first Violin Sonata:

(Sieber, p.29)

[edit] Reception

The work is said by Kárpáti (ibid) to have "technical bravura and at the same time...poetic versatility". In contrast, E.R. (ibid), assumes that appreciation of the work suffers from its "lack of variety of mood" though "Bartók's genius consists in gifts of rhetoric so rich that he can spread this one mood, and spread it interestingly, over a score or more of large-scale works". He argues that the "contrasts" in the piece are "of speed rather than of mood."

Seiber (p.28) considers it "a less weighty, less important work in Bartók's whole œuvre" though (p.29) the "writing for both violin and clarinet" are "most effective throughout". An article describing a program in which "the standard note on Bartók's Contrasts...was replaced by a sequential, diagrammatic sketch," concluded that, "in fact, Bartók looks as inscrutable as he sounds"^[1].

[edit] Further reading

"Program Notes: Better Unwritten than Unread", Music Educators Journal, Vol. 54, No. 7. (Mar., 1968), pp. 96-97. Features a listening score for Contrasts.

[edit] Sources

Bradshaw, Susan (2001). "Piano music: recital repertoire and chamber music", Cambridge Companion to Bartók, p.116. Amanda Bayley, ed. ISBN 0-521-66958-8.
Kárpáti, János (1981). "Alternative Structures in Bartók's 'Contrasts'", Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, p.201-207, T. 23, Fasc. 1/4, Centenrio Belae Bartók Sacrum#.
Seiber, Mátyás (1949). "Béla Bartók's Chamber Music", Tempo, New Ser., No. 13, Bartók Number‎. (Autumn, 1949), pp. 19-31.
E. R. (1943) ."Review: Contrasts, for Violin, Clarinet and Piano by Béla Bartók", Music & Letters, Vol. 24, No. 1. (Jan., 1943), p. 61.