List of string quartets by Béla Bartók

The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók wrote six string quartets, each for the usual forces of two violins, viola and cello. Notable composers who have been influenced by them include Benjamin Britten, particularly in the Sonata in C for Cello and Piano (Rupprecht 1999, 250; Whittall 2013, 189), Elliott Carter, who refers in the opening of his own First String Quartet to Bartók’s Sixth Quartet (Schmidt 2012, 172), Chen Yi (Wong 2007, 237), Edison Denisov, whose Second Quartet is closely related to Bartók’s Fifth Quartet (Čigareva 2007, 231), Franco Donatoni, who was deeply impressed when he heard a broadcast of Bartók's Fourth Quartet (Osmond-Smith 2001), Robert Fripp, who mentions them as an influence upon King Crimson (Tamm n.d.), Miloslav Ištvan (Němcová 2001), György Kurtág, whose Opp. 1 and 28 both owe a great deal to Bartók's quartets (Sallis 2014, passim; Sanderson [2013]), György Ligeti, both of whose string quartets owe a great deal to Bartók’s quartets (Iddon 2014, passim; Satory 1990, 101–103), George Perle, who credits the Bartók Fourth and Fifth Quartets as precedents for his use of arrays of chords related to one another by different types of symmetry (Lansky 2001), Walter Piston (Donahue 1964, passim; Manheim n.d.), Kim Dzmitrïyevich Tsesekow (Shcherbakova 2001), Wilfried Westerlinck (Volborth-Danys 2001), Stefan Wolpe, who explained in a public lecture how he had derived ideas from Bartók’s Fourth Quartet (Babbitt n.d.), and Xu Yongsan (Wong 2007, 238).

For information about each quartet, see the following links:

• String Quartet No. 1, Op.7, Sz. 40, BB 52
• String Quartet No. 2, Op.17, Sz. 67, BB 75
• String Quartet No. 3, Sz. 85, BB 93
• String Quartet No. 4, Sz. 91, BB 95
• String Quartet No. 5, Sz. 102, BB 110
• String Quartet No. 6, Sz. 114, BB 119

Sources

• Babbitt, Milton. n.d.. untitled essay. In "Recollections of Stefan Wolpe by Former Students and Friends", edited by Austin Clarkson. Ada Evergreen website (Accessed 18 April 2014).
• Čigareva, Evgeniâ Ivanovna. 2007. "Zur Bartók-Rezeption in Russland". Studia Musicologica 48, nos. 1–2 (March): 225–36.
• Donahue, Robert L. 1964. "A Comparative Analysis of Phrase Structure in Selected Movements of the String Quartest of Béla Bartók and Walter Piston". DMA thesis. Cornell University.
• Iddon, Martin. 2014. "Bartók’s Relics: Nostalgia in György Ligeti’s Second String Quartet". In The String Quartets of Bela Bartok: Tradition and Legacy in Analytical Perspective, edited by Daniel Péter Biró and Harald Krebs, 243–60. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-993619-9.
• Lansky, Paul. 2001. "Perle, George". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Manheim, James. n.d. "Harlem Quartet: Walter Piston: String Quartets Nos. 1, 3, and 5". Allmusic.com (accessed 18 April 2014).
• Němcová, Alena. 2001. "Ištvan, Miloslav". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Osmond-Smith, David. 2001. "Donatoni, Franco". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Rupprecht, Philip. 1999. "The Chamber Music". In The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, edited by Mervyn Cooke, 245–59. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Sallis, Friedemann. 2014. "Recycled Flowers: Quotation, Paraphrase, and Allusion in György Kurtág’s Officium breve in memoriam Andreæ Szervánsky op. 28 for String Quartet". In The String Quartets of Bela Bartok: Tradition and Legacy in Analytical Perspective, edited by Daniel Péter Biró and Harald Krebs, 285–305. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-993619-9.
• Sanderson, Blair. [2013]. "Armida Quartett: Bartók, Kurtág, Ligeti: String Quartets". AllMusic.com (Accessed 18 April 2014).
• Schmidt, Dörte. 2012. "'I Try to Write Music That Will Appeal to an Intelligent Listener’s Ear': On Elliott Carter’s String Quartets", translated by Maria Schoenhammer and John McCaughey. In Elliott Carter Studies, edited by Marguerite Boland and John Link, 168–89. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Satory, Stephen. 1990. "Colloquy: An Interview with György Ligeti in Hamburg". Canadian University Music Review/Revue de musique des universités canadiennes 10:101–17.
• Shcherbakova, Taisiya. 2001. "Tsesakow, Kim Dzmitrïyevich". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Tamm, Eric. n.d. "Fripp the Listener", chapter 3 of "Robert Fripp—From Crimson King to Crafty Master". Progressive Ears website (Accessed 18 April 2014).
• Volborth-Danys, Diana von. 2001. "Westerlinck, Wilfried". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Whittall, Arnold. 2013. "Britten’s Rhetoric of Resistance: The Works for Rostropovich". In Rethinking Britten, edited by Philip Ernst Rupprecht, 181–205. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-979481-2.
• Wong, Hoi-Yan. 2007. "Bartók's Influence on Chinese New Music in the Post–Cultural Revolution Era". Studia Musicologica: An International Journal of Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 48, nos. 1–2 (March): 237–43.

External links

• Bartók Quartet Performance Guide