Music as the beginning and the end of my researches

During my childhood, I have always thought that once I grew up I would be a musician, but unfortunately (or luckily) life had a completely different path for me—I graduated from the Faculty of Architecture and I received my PhD from the Arts Academy (University of Zagreb). When I was accepted as a doctoral candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts, I thought “it is not music, but at least it is an academy,” and my proposed simultaneous research of the composer Alexander Scriabin and painter Alexej Jawlensky showed that interdisciplinary I wished to return to my first passion: music. My mentor, Prof. Igor Rončević, Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, told me that my research should be linked to the contemporary context as well, or otherwise I would not step into unexplored space nor create a new tread in the world knowledge. Thanks to that instruction, I introduced one more artist into my research, but not a productive artist like Scriabin and Jawlensky, but a reproductive one—the world-renowned pianist Ivo Pogorelich. I assumed that his art would help me transfer my research into contemporary highly reproductive era.

It is not necessary to point out that my proposal at the Academy of Fine Arts was considered “a little weird,” but I explained that the visual-art section of my research was applicable to all branches of art in general, thus also to Pogorelich’s pianism, which suited my thesis precisely because his interpretations are unusually rich in musical tone colours. Finally, my artwork (which was an inevitable final part of my research and a prerequisite for receiving a PhD from the Arts Academy) was allowed to have a foothold in anything, thus it was not unusual that my multidisciplinary virtual light installation was indeed a synthesis of all researched artists, as many as five selected branches of art (music, painting, literature, architecture and dance), theory and philosophy of art, which all I successfully linked to science as well.

I have always loved playing the piano, so it was a special experience to promote my first book at the Zagreb Academy of Music

Chromatic fantasies in the new building of the Zagreb Academy of Music

In the period from 2012 to 2014, I have already published my researches at a higher literary level in the award-winning journal for literature, culture and science Riječi (Words). But at one point I realized that I needed to unite my texts, because despite being readable independently, there was an unbroken connection between them, leading the reader to the conclusion of the whole research. As I was taught the writing style by Mr. Andrija Tunjić, the Editor of the journal Riječi and Croatian renowned theater critic at Vijenac (also the author of a series of books), I asked him kindly to be the Editor of my first book.

In my book I finally managed to achieve a satisfactory literary expression by my own criteria, adding some new insights and connections between various branches of art and previously unrelated art works and their authors. The main theme were chromatic fantasies of Scriabin, Jawlensky and Pogorelich, and the researched three artists helped me to show that the reproductive artist just like the productive one is capable of achieving abstract expression. Following this idea, it was wonderful to organize the book promotion in the new building of the Zagreb Academy of Music, which has a rainbow-coloured installation on its roof—it is the same colour spectrum I used to “overpaint” the black and white piano keys on the cover of my book. This design showed that Scriabin’s light organ was the leitmotif of all of my researches, while the silhouette of the piano provided a refuge for the very long subtitle of my book.

speakers provided original interpretations of the same work

My book is entitled Abstract Reproductive as Productive Art: Chromatic Fantasies of the Composer Alexander Scriabin, Painter Alexej Jawlensky and Pianist Ivo Pogorelich, and with it I wanted to show that reproductive artists, just like productive artists, can render the original work unrecognizable, despite being obliged to respect the written work in its entirety. Once artists begin to dissolve the original work, they have endless shades of musical tones at their disposal, and precisely this aspect was followed by Prof. Ljubomir Gašparović while playing Scriabin’s composition Feuillet d’Album, Op. 58, at the beginning and the end of the promotion. He managed to show that the same composition could be played to such an extent differently that the listener would almost not be able to recognize that the same piece was performed.

In addition to Scriabin’s music, Robert Selimović composed electronic music for this occasion, and we listened to it while entering the hall and as an accompaniment to my video-work entitled Music Iconostasis of the Painter Alexej Jawlensky. The audience was greeted by the publisher representative Mrs. Đurđica Vuković, and the Editor Andrija Tunjić was the first to speak about my book, while remembering my beginnings. Prof. Zlatko Kauzlarić Atač was the book reviewer and he followed (he was also the current Director of the Postgraduate Studies at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts and the President of my Doctoral Dissertation Evaluation and Defense Committee) and Prof. Gašparović was the last to present my book—it is worth mentioning that his speech was as interesting as his playing the piano. After all presenters, I could hardly wait for a moment to say something as well, because I finally found myself in the favorite situation when like reproductive artist I could interpret my own work. Prof. Atač’s speech was later published in the journal Riječi, while the news of the promotion was conveyed by the magazine Vijenac.

In the audience family, colleagues, friends and art lovers

It amazed me how many people came to the promotion because I was aware that this was my first book, hoping that the hall would be at least comfortably filled. So I could not believe it when I saw that there were not enough chairs and that a part of the audience would be standing! I had a wonderful time with my family and friends, but also my professors and colleagues; even one Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts expressed interest in my book by joining us. I thank everyone for coming, I have never felt so much good energy in my entire professional life!

In the audience family, colleagues, friends and art lovers

It amazed me how many people came to the promotion because I was aware that this was my first book, hoping that the hall would be at least comfortably filled. So I could not believe it when I saw that there were not enough chairs and that a part of the audience would be standing! I had a wonderful time with my family and friends, but also my professors and colleagues; even one Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts expressed interest in my book by joining us. I thank everyone for coming, I have never felt so much good energy in my entire professional life!

Working as the Croatian Ambassador in Moscow, I learned that Scriabin Festival is held there and that there is the Scriabin Museum and Scriabin Fund. I soon came to the information that the co-organizer of the Scriabin Festival is one of the descendants of that famous Russian composer, Alexander Serafimovich Scriabin. I asked the secretary to invite that gentleman to a meeting at the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia. Thus, at the agreed time, a strong gentleman of fifty-something appeared at the Embassy. Striking on him was a short, well-groomed beard, already gray as his hair. At first he was quite reticent in anticipation of finding out why I had called him. I explained to him that I was interested in the development of cultural cooperation between the Republic of Croatia and the Russian Federation. As some of the Croatian musicians have Scriabin’s works in their repertoire, perhaps we could arrange for one of them to be a guest in Russia, which was to be organized by one of the associations that promote Scriabin’s work.

Plate on the entrance to the Memorial Museum of A. N. Scriabin, Moscow

Sasha came to life. He readily provided details of plans and programs and suggested possible forms of cooperation with clearly defined commitments. He would take over the issue of obtaining an invitation, providing a performance hall and a rehearsal piano, as well as printing posters and program leaflets, and the Embassy was to provide financial assistance and accommodation for the contractor. We have very precisely agreed on the deadlines within which each of the planned tasks should be performed. As I knew for sure that Croatian pianist Veljko Glodić also had Scriabin’s works in his repertoire, I suggested that he be the first artist we would invite within the framework of such a collaboration. However, due to certain prejudices about Russians as not very business-oriented people, and due to sporadic experiences that confirmed such prejudices, it seemed unlikely that everything that Sasha and I agreed would be realized as planned. But I was wrong. Sasha proved to be a reliable man, a skilled organizer and manager, and a man of his word.

Thus began our cooperation, but also our precious friendship that marked not only my ambassadorial mandate in Moscow but also the many years that followed my return. Alexander Serafimovich Scriabin and his wife Ana Yuryevna Scriabina are true friends, dear people and recognized experts in the cultural life of Russia. The founding of the Croatian Society “Alexander Scriabin” is largely achieved thanks to their efforts as well.

You may also like our other publications…

Valery Kastelsky was one of the greatest Russian pianists and pedagogues of the second half of the 20th century. He studied in Moscow with the legendary Soviet pedagogue Heinrich Neuhaus and was awarded at three major piano competitions: Chopin’s in Warsaw (1960), Long Thibaud in Paris (1963) and the ARD competition in Munich (1967). He is known for his nobility, spirituality, charm and deep and thoughtful performances. From 1992 to 2001, he was the Vice President of the Alexander Scriabin Foundation in Russia (from 1992 until today, the President of the Foundation is Alexander Serafimovich Scriabin, who is also the Honorary President of the Croatian Society “Alexander Scriabin”). As he was one of the last and dearest students of the great Neuhaus, his professor said of him: “Valery Kastelsky is one of my most interesting and favourite students. He knows how to get the audience to listen to music carefully. There is something very individual in his talent. I believe that his distinctive talent will still mature and that the general public will recognize it very soon.”

I was fortunate to be one of the many Professor Kastelsky’s students, and my collaboration with him began in 1997 when I enrolled in the Graduate School at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and it lasted until the year 2000. My memories of him are extremely beautiful both from the professional and from the human point of view. Regardless of the fact that in his young age he won awards at the world’s most famous piano competitions, he was not a “competitive” type, neither according to recordings from those days nor according to pedagogical principles. Being an extremely poetic but also introverted person, he never liked excessively fast tempi and external effects. The content and core of music have always been the focus of his attention. Absolute respect for the composer’s text was mandatory! Also, impeccable pianistic mastery of matter was something that had to be achieved without discussion. But one of the most important components of his pedagogy was working on sound. The nobility and dignity of tone were constant themes of our classes. He never tolerated, and he reacted very sharply to the harsh sound. Even in the greatest forte dynamics he sought the beauty and aristocracy of sound.

Valery Kastelsky plays Scriabin in 1985; Valery Babyatinsky recites poems

Another important component of Kastelsky’s pedagogy was the sense of time. In the first year of my studies, the Professor organized a class concert dedicated to Scriabin. All 10 of his piano sonatas were to be performed during that concert, and I was to learn the 7th sonata. It is a very difficult composition with extremely complicated polyrhythm and polyphony. When I started reading and analyzing the text, I realized that this constant polyrhythm creates a special, magical effect of improvisation and that it can sound quite free and flexible. When I approached it that way, it became much easier to play the sonata. After a few days I happily went to class with the Professor expecting all the praise. But to my regret, the Professor took a pen in his hand right from the beginning of the composition and diligently acted out the metronome to its very end. Playing that sonata accompanied by Professor’s pen was a great torment. All my beautiful ideas about improvisation, flexibility and free treatment of time were destroyed. The same scenario was repeated during the next class . The Professor was absolutely steadfast! Still, after 3-4 hours I started to feel that I was no longer bothered by Professor’s pen, that I could function, feel good and play without rubbing. I realized that this music is wonderful in its organized course. The Professor probably sensed the changes that had taken place and reacted immediately: “Now you can play rubato as much as you want.”

This great pedagogue, on the example of only one sonata, revealed to me a fundamentally important musical truth: in order to perform rubato well, it must first be possible to play the composition strictly in tempo. Later I went through something similar in Schumann’s Fantasy Op. 17 and in Schubert’s Wanderer fantasy. That chronology has always had to exist. This is why I often point out that Valery Kastelsky was one of the great representatives of the Soviet piano school of the second half of the 20th century. At the same time he was a modest and approachable person, an artist who in my memory remained an example of what a true pedagogue should be.

You may also like our other publications…

Trip to Moscow to attend a conference organized to mark the 100th anniversary of establishment of the Scriabin Museum

It is a New Year’s Eve and it is the last moment to say goodbye—can it be done better than by remembering the highlights of 2018? Of course, for me it was the participation in a conference organized to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Memorial Museum of Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, the famous Russian composer and pianist. Since I devoted to his mystic chord the entire first chapter of my book Abstract Reproductive as Productive Art: Chromatic fantasies of the Composer Alexander Scriabin, Painter Alexej Jawlensky and Pianist Ivo Pogorelich, the Scriabin Museum invited me to Moscow to present the results of my work, and to listen to what other artists and researchers have to say about Scriabin’s art. The title of the chapter is Alexander Scriabin’s Mystic Chord as a Marionette of Heinrich von Kleist, because in mystic chord I discerned a figure in motion that comes to life the moment Scriabin, like a puppeteer, from the center of his spiritual creation manages the world of sounds.

Walking around Moscow at night is a wonderful experience due to an unusual warmth radiated by this often freezing city

Vers la flamme like the flaming form of the Saint Basil’s Cathedral

After visiting Moscow, it seems to me that the mobility of the mystic chord, besides in the urban structure of this city, may even more likely have its origin in the blazing form of the Saint Basil’s Cathedral. Thus the decision to project fire during my elaboration of Scriabin’s compositions Vers la flamme (Toward the Flame) and Prometheus: The Poem of Fire in this context also proved to be appropriate—obviously neither Stravinsky was far from the same idea when he composed his world known masterpiece Firebird. It seems to me that in this picturesque church many Russian artists have found a spiritual drive for their artistic concepts, and as it is located at the very origin of Moscow, I cannot escape the impression that precisely this church is the eternal hearth of all Russians, having the power to thaw even the coldest hearts during the endless winter nights. However, I noticed the greatest interest of the audience when I presented the last picture—Sir James Fraser’s spiral illusion, and only now I realize that long before my trip to Moscow, by choosing this pictorial example, I had anticipated my future experience of the rhythm, harmony and melody of the city in which numerous Russian artists had been creating their greatest works (read more in Part 1 of this travelogue).

new acquaintances and friendships

Let’s get back to the conference—it was wonderful to exchange ideas with museum staff and professors from the Moscow and St. Petersburg Conservatories. On top of that, the place in the conference schedule reserved for my lecture was indeed a great honour: on the second day, the first lecture was given by Mo. Atanas Kurtev—Fellow of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and Arts and world known pianist who teaches at numerous francophone European Conservatories, after his lecture I was the one to present my work on mystic chord, and then the podium was reserved for Mr. Alexander Serafimovich Scriabin, PhD—Scriabin’s descendant and the President of the Scriabin Fund in Moscow and the Honorary President of the UK based Scriabin Association. As I do not speak Russian, I prepared my lecture in English and sent the text to the Scriabin Museum, and colleague Areg Mekhakyan, who—in addition to preparing an extremely interesting lecture on the connection between Scriabin’s music and Eastern philosophy—was kind to translate it into Russian in order to be able to simultaneously read part by part during my presentation. This is why everyone expected me to speak English, not knowing that as expression of respect and gratitude I prepared the first few sentences in fluent Russian (I practiced proper accents for a week). I will never forget the spontaneous smile of the audience as a reaction to that surprise. Everyone was very friendly during the conference: Mr. Vladimir Popkov, the Head of the Scientific Research Department, made sure that everything develops smoothly from the first invitation letter until departure from Moscow, and one of the most fascinating people I had a chance to meet was Mrs. Valentina Vassilyevna Rubtsova, the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Music.

Real life stories are often like fairy-tales

Every story that resembles a fairy-tale always has an unexpected epilogue, so this one is no different: when I returned to Zagreb, colleagues from the Scriabin Museum contacted me to inform me that on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Museum they would like to publish my entire essay on mystic chord in Russian! Since translating into a foreign language is the greatest dream of all authors, I immediately started working as 80 pages urgently needed to be translated into English so that the Museum would have enough time to translate it into Russian and publish it next year. The indication that the New Year could be as good as the past one is the best possible ending of 2018, so in Scriabin’s spirit I wish you to fulfill all of your chromatic fantasies and all the best in 2019!

Real life stories are often like fairy-tales

Every story that resembles a fairy-tale always has an unexpected epilogue, so this one is no different: when I returned to Zagreb, colleagues from the Scriabin Museum contacted me to inform me that on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Museum they would like to publish my entire essay on mystic chord in Russian! Since translating into a foreign language is the greatest dream of all authors, I immediately started working as 80 pages urgently needed to be translated into English so that the Museum would have enough time to translate it into Russian and publish it next year. The indication that the New Year could be as good as the past one is the best possible ending of 2018, so in Scriabin’s spirit I wish you to fulfill all of your chromatic fantasies and all the best in 2019!

You may also like our other publications…

Trip to Moscow to attend a conference organized to mark the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Scriabin Museum

It is October and I am finally in Moscow, a city that I have always wanted to visit because this is where my favorite composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin lived and worked (Moscow, January 6, 1872—Moscow, April 27, 1915). His apartment is located right next to Arbat Street, which has been described in numerous Russian literary works, and since Bulgakov in his mystical novel The Master and Margarita even evoked a flight over it, I decided that the chosen hotel would have to be in it, or at least in the closest possible neighborhood (I still hoped that, unlike the poet Homeless and editor Berlioz, I would avoid a sudden encounter with the devil). Realizing that the hotel I liked was located in the Composer’s Street, there was no longer any doubt where to stay, and the Google Maps showed that Scriabin’s and Pushkin’s museums were only a two or three minute walk away.

The famous Arbat Street in which the main protagonists of numerous Russian literary works spent unforgettable moments

Synesthesia-based interdisciplinarity

The building where Scriabin lived is completely transformed into his Memorial Museum. On the ground floor there is a hall for chamber concerts, exhibitions, lectures, etc., while on the first floor one can enjoy the original preserved Scriabin’s apartment and his Bechstein piano, which later played numerous famous pianists (Sofronitsky, Neuhaus, Horowitz, Van Cliburn, Pletnev, etc.). The adjacent building has also recently been refurbished in order to create a bigger concert hall (it is necessary to pass the courtyard to get there), and it is worth mentioning that the hall is enriched with light effects, reminding us that Scriabin was a visionary far ahead of his of time, laying the foundations of the modern light-show. It is commonly believed that Scriabin, influenced by synaesthesia—a phenomenon characterised by the interaction of the senses, became aware that each musical tonality corresponds to a certain colour. Following this idea, in his famous composition Prometheus: The Poem of Fire, he composed a section for light organ in order to translate musical harmonies into color structures.  (more on the matter in my book Abstract Reproductive as Productive Art). Consequently, his colour system, grounded in Newton’s optics, is in harmony with the circle of quints (a five tone span), which is demonstrated on a light device from the early 20th century (picture with colorful light bulbs).

Moscow as a huge Fibonacci spiral

This trip once again confirmed that it is highly desirable to travel to the city where an artist lived and worked. Just like in Prague, where it becomes clear that Kafka’s The Metamorphosis could not have been written anywhere else, in Moscow it becomes clear that Scriabin’s flexible melody structures, rich in chromatics and thus challenging for the performer’s memory, may have its origins in the urban structure of his city. It was really difficult to develop a sense of space, i.e. to determine the north and the south; in fact in Moscow it is almost impossible to orient at first. Therefore, if I had to describe Moscow in one word, it would be the word “maelstrom.” The moment you immerse in the spirit and essence of this city, you feel that—not even knowing how—you have suddenly found yourself in a huge Fibonacci spiral, and in that particular moment the only thing you can do is to close circle by circle step by step, in the rhythm of Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2., until you reach the very point of its origin, where at once you get overwhelmed with the shine of the flaming and picturesque beauty of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. It must be that Ivan the Terrible was not so terrible after all, leaving such a fabulous building behind, but the moment you reluctantly decide to leave, you realize that Shostakovich’s elegant waltz has turned into Khachaturian’s fateful three-fourths tact, and in this masked acceleration, to me it is still not clear how after Red Square I found myself in front of the Bolshoi Theater, because I was sure it was on the opposite side. 

Transience of fame

The story is already too long for today, and the goal was not to document every single detail of the trip (much less in the chronological order), but to convey a breath of atmosphere and inspire someone else to travel to Moscow and get acquainted with the character and work of artist known for an unusual destiny, because just a few were so famous like Scribin during their lifetimes, and so quickly forgotten after death.

Transience of fame

The story is already too long for today, and the goal was not to document every single detail of the trip (much less in the chronological order), but to convey a breath of atmosphere and inspire someone else to travel to Moscow and get acquainted with the character and work of artist known for an unusual destiny, because just a few were so famous like Scribin during their lifetimes, and so quickly forgotten after death.

You may also like our other publications…

If we consider the artistic and historical premises of the compositional worlds of Alexander Scriabin, Béla Bartók and Dora Pejačević, individualism imposes itself as a common link between the three composers and as a fundamental principle of the musical epoch from which they originated. By creating works of art, the individual creative genius expresses not only his personal world of feelings and imagination, but also penetrates to the higher spheres of spiritual experience and through art reaches the realization of the spiritual meaning of life and the universe. The philosophical definitions of individualism, which greatly helped to form this artistic worldview, can already be found in philosophers and writers of the second half of the 18th century. In Kant‘s philosophy, the foundation of cognition is not the objective given of the world but the individual mind interpreting the world. Goethe’s Faust is an archetype of the spiritual cognition of a dedicated individual in search of the true essence of reality. Individualism is the basic postulate and starting point of the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, philosophers who significantly influenced the worldview of Alexander Scriabin and Dora Pejačević. Schopenhauer perceives music as a means by which the profane world is transcended, in which the principle of necessity of determined will rules and reaches the sphere of pure ideas, that is, the state of pure consciousness free from the bond of instinctive conditioning. The artistic ideal should be instrumental or “absolute” music devoid of association with worldly phenomena, but poetic and mythical content can rise through music to the metaphysical, becoming the ideal of the syncretic unity of musical drama as the apotheosis of art. The pinnacle of individualism is Nietzsche’s thinking about the individual who, after the “death of God,” must create a world superior to a corrupt religious, moral, and historical heritage. Nietzsche considers the only historical exception to be art, which since the Greek tragedy, born of the very spirit of music, elevates the individual above the gloomy reality by a harmonious relationship between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

Prof. Glodić plays Scriabin’s Sonata No. 3 on April 22, 2015, at A. N. Scriabin Hall in Dzerzhinsk, Russia

The work of Scriabin, Bartók and Pejačević certainly derives from the stylistic features of the artistic epoch in which they operated. If the notion of style includes the totality of creative features of a particular epoch, characteristics of musical forms and personalities of artists, the most profiled styles at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, along with the late Romanticism, were Impressionism and Expressionism. Impressionists use subjective perception to transform experiences of natural phenomena into works of art. In painting, reality is transformed into a rich palette of nuanced color, and in music a new auditory experience is achieved through a series of specific procedures. The musical form is perceived as a succession of rhythms and tonal colors, not as a strict deduction of musical lines. Interest and awareness regarding aliquot spectra generated by tones, especially bass tones, results in a wealth of tonal colors. Harmonic language includes consonances containing none, undecime, and quartdecime, implying a new natural approach that liberalizes the use of upper chord extensions. Debussy fragmented themes into short motifs, using repetitive figuration, passages, tremors, successions of large seconds, pentatonic and full-scale scales, modal, quartic or fifth consonances, achieving the effect of fluid texture, floating airiness that transcends the roughness of the material world. Nietzsche’s ideas, along with Freud‘s psychology of the unconscious, paved the way for expressionism, an artistic movement that emerged in the early 20th century. It is based on a highly subjective artistic reality marked by strong emotional expression. Theodor Adorno describes it as the art of the unconscious, and the portrait of fear is at the epicenter of many expressionist works. In music it is expressed by the affirmation of dissonant consonances, with the absence of solid consonances, and in painting by the distortion of lines and the choice of colors. A number of names associated with the movement include painters Egon Schiele, Oscar Kokoschka, George Grosz, August Macke, Edward Munch, playwrights Strindberg and Wedekind, poets Gottfried Benn and Georg Trakl. Schoenberg and Berg are the most prominent representatives of expressionism in music, but the strong elements of expressionism characterize the mature works of Scriabin and Bartók.

BÉLA BARTÓK was born on March 15, 1881 in Nagysentmiklos, Hungary—then part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and died on September 26, 1945 in New York, USA. He worked as a pianist, pedagogue, composer and ethnomusicologist. His work is an example of how, starting from the late Romanticism in the early works, in the process of compositional maturation, uniquely incorporating elements of Impressionism, Expressionism and folk music of Central and Southeastern Europe, one of the most significant compositional opuses of the 20th century was created. Bartók’s parents were teachers and passionate amateur musicians, so he received his first music lessons from his mother at an early age. He composed his first recorded compositions as a teenager. The collection of 31 compositions created in the period from 1890 to 1894 includes dances such as waltzes, polkas and mazurkas, program compositions such as “The course of the Danube”, sonatas and themes with variations. Until 1988, Bartók composed the Piano Quartet in C minor (BB13) and the String Quartet in F major (BB.17). The compositions are realized in a mature romantic style influenced by Schumann and Brahms and indicate Bartók’s exceptional compositional talent. Bartók graduated in 1899 from the grammar school in Pozsony (today Bratislava). He continued his musical education at the Ferenz Liszt Academy in Budapest, where he studied piano with Thoman (Liszt‘s student) and composition with Kossler, who with his conservative academic approach would not give a significant impetus to the development of Bartók’s compositional personality. The impetus came after young Bartók heard the first performance of Strauss‘s symphonic poem “Thus Spoke Zarathustra.” On this occasion he wrote: “I was raised from the stagnation of the composer as if struck by lightning when I heard Strauss’s work!” In 1849, performing as a pianist and composer, Bartók attracts attention throughout Europe, with concerts in Vienna, Berlin, Paris and elsewhere. In 1905 he participated in the international competition “Rubinstein” in Paris in the categories of composition (prize not awarded) and piano (prize is awarded to Backhaus). In the same year he was invited to teach piano at the Academy in Budapest, where in 1909 he received a permanent engagement.

In search of his own compositional identity, Bartók develops an interest in folk music. After composing “Rhapsody” and “Scherzo for piano and orchestra” still in the late Romantic style, in December, 1904 he wrote to his sister: “I plan to gather the best Hungarian folk songs, add a piano accompaniment and elevate them to the level of the best artistic songs.” As early as February 1905, he published a collection of Transylvanian poems entitled “The Red Apple.” In March of the same year, he began collaborating with Zoltan Kodaly, a composer with an interest in Hungarian folklore but also with much deeper ethnological knowledge. Their long-standing ethnomusicological work will determine the fundamental characteristics of their compositional styles. From 1906 to 1910, Bartók collected folk songs throughout Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (Hungary, Slovakia, parts of Romania) and, to a lesser extent, Serbia and Bulgaria. During 1908, Bartók composed “14 Bagatelles,” Op. 6., in which the specific characteristics of his new style can be discerned. Dissonances such as seconds and septa are emancipated, there is no late romantic syllable density and developed figuration, the sense of functional harmony is disturbed by frequent use of rhythmic ostinato figures, occasional use of bitonality, parallel fifths, septa, frequent use of tritons, and tonic-harmonic interpolation . In “Bagatelle no. 4” we find a Hungarian folk tune, and in “Bagatelle no. 5” Slovak. (…)

The full text you can read following the link:

Alexander Scriabin and Contemporaries From Central Europe

Literature

Antokoletz E., The Music of Béla Bartók, Berkeley, 1984
Baker J., The Music of Alexander Scriabin, New Haven, CT, 1986
Bowers F., Scriabin: a Biography of the Russian Composer, 1871–1915, Tokyo and Palo Alto, CA, 1969, 2/1995
Dernova V., Garmoniya Skryabina, Moskva, 1968
Gillies M., Bartók Remembered, London, 1990
Griffiths P., Bartók, London, 1984
Kaufman E., The Evolution of Form and Technique in the Late Works of Scriabin, diss., Yale U., 1972
Kos K., Dora Pejačević, Zagreb 1982
Laki P., ed.: Bartók and his World, Princeton, NJ, 1995
Lendvai E., Béla Bartók: an Analysis of his Music, London, 1971
Macdonald H., Skryabin, London, 1979
Schloezer B. de, A. Skryabin: lichnost′, misteriya [Skryabin: personality, mysterium] (Berlin, 1923/R as Scriabin: Artist and Mystic, trans. N. Slonimsky with various appendices), Oxford, 1987
Taruskin R., ‘Skryabin and the Superhuman’, Defining Russia Musically, Princeton, 1997
Wilson P., The Music of Béla Bartók. New Haven, 1992

You may also like our other publications…