The evolution of Bartok's musical language

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that Bartók’s musical language was built upon two distinct procedures, however convergent: in one hand, the borrowing of Eastern Europe folk music sources that, on the other hand, progressively imbricates with abstract structures of post-tonal music. This evolution implies a new kind of tonal system and new means of harmonic progression. It is also demonstrated how the transformation of his musical language starts with the harmonization of folk songs, evolves to the composition with folk tunes, and finally reaches an abstract level with the fusion of symmetrical collections with modal elements of folk sources. Some pieces representative of this evolution process are analyzed: the first of Eight Hungarian Folk Songs and three of the Eight Improvisation on Hungarian Peasant Songs, for piano, op.20. Special attention is given to the “Z cell” tetrachord. The paper concludes that Bartók’s style evolution, in the direction of personal musical idiom, was based in the use of the twelve pitches of the chromatic scale but in a different way as conceived by Schoenberg.