Béla Bartók [antikvár]

The many years that have passed since Bartók's death have more than confirmed that the ouvre has survived its creator. But it can be said of him what can be said of only few of the great masters in the history of music: that his human features do not fade with the passing years. On the contrary, the further from his death, the clearer and more distinct, in ever greater and more subtle detail, his portrait appears. Undoubtedly this is largely due to the international network of research into his life and works. We know more of the sources of his art, of his approach to and methods of work, than had been accessible in his lifetime. It will not be long before we shall almost certainly have reliable information on virtually all aspects of his life, on practically every day of his sixty-four and a half years. As time goes by the mass of detailed information falls into a connected chain displaying and explaining the logical motivations behind his actions, decisions and choice of forms of expression. On the other hand, these extensive researches are themselves rather more the result than the reason for the growing appreciation of his work. We can see for ourselves that more and more people are coming to understand his music, each individual work and also their meaning as a connected whole, more and more listeners recognize in it their own deepest feelings, fears and desires. And there are an increasing number of people who want to know as much as is possible about the man himself. They want that information moreover to be authentic and accurate. Since Bartok the romantic approach to artists and the romantic biographies of artists have been on the wane. Whoever has journeyed with him through heaven and hell, experienced through his music the agonies of his age, and learned faith in the future from it, can hardly enjoy the artificially coloured, insipid "literary" representations of the genuine dramas of life. The same anti-romantic forces which gave life to contemporary music have brought a new awareness to the reader, namely, that there is no experience more exciting than the experience of truth, than the world of facts. This same claim has brought about today's characteristic literature, i.e., literary documentation which equates the beauty of scientific completeness and exactitude with the power of artistic selection and shaping. However, apart from these qualifications, an overriding demand of our era, it would be impossible to present a portrait of Béla Bartók without responding to an inner imperative to seek the truth, a demand which transcends the limits of style. Of this he himself provided an example through his life and work, both dedicated to the pursuit of truth and a passionately severe objectivity. And indeed, in giving the title "The Indivisible Man" to an article on Bartók, Béla Balázs- -an eminent Hungarian poet, writer and film aesthetician, a contemporary of the composer and librettist of two of his works for the stage—chose the most appropriate of terms. The some hundred pictures and documents contained in this book are designed to illuminate the career of this "Indivisible Man", this epoch-making musician and scholar, this incorruptible and diamond-hard man and artist. We follow, as in the separate frames of a film the little boy of five, the elementary school pupil, the student at the Budapest Academy of Music, the young composer, the world-famous artist in the prime of life, touring the world at the zenith of his career, and finally the dying man in the last stages of his life, the spirit still breaking through his enfeebled frame as he struggled with a mortal disease. The pictures therefore trace Bartók's career during some sixty years, with the intention of revealing a single, integrated portrait out of the many components.