Bela Bartok's Cantata Profana

The following is a self-gradifying (haha) centering of thoughts for a term paper proposal needed in BGSU's MuCT 514, 20th Century Analysis: The Hungarian Connection.

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When discussing Béla Bartók in a music history class, a student is faced with one of two works: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta or the Concert for Orchestra. There are a few others, such as the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Bluebeard's Castle (his sole opera), or The Miraculous Mandolin, that are talked about at all in a typical music student's historical and/or analytical studies. So when someone stumbles across a well-written article about the masterful Hungarian composer's life and works, mention of choral works can be a bit suprising. I myself had no idea Bartók wrote any choral works, with the exception of settings of the copius amounts of Hungarian folk-tunes he collected, published, and sometimes reorchestrated.

While searching on JSTOR for any information on Contata Profana (1930), I stumbled across a lone article about the work. Within the first paragraph it covers the very issue of the knowledge of Bartók's "other" compositions:

Ever since its composition an aura of mystery has surrounded Béla Bartók's Cantata Profana. It has been treated and approached by many as a secretive work of art lacking a particular interpretation and, consequently, has been interpreted from various points of view and via a number of scientific fields ranging from psychology and anthropology to historiography and even astrology. But the work - whose mythical ballad text and oratorio-like dimensions, unique in the author's output - still seems to be wrapped in concealment. (Vikárius 1)

But why? Perhaps the fact that this work is so unique to Bartók's output that professors do not discuss the work, as it does not fit into his "typical" neo-classicist composition style. Or perhaps because not many Bartók scholars focus on works that are not overtly influenced by his ethnomusicological pursuits or have strong Hungarian nationalistic tendencies.

What I plan on doing is researching and analyzing this relatively unknown work by Béla Bartók, attempting to discover compositional practices that make this piece unique, and maybe in the process build up some interest in this cast-aside choral work. Due to the timing of this composition's inception, ties his ethnomusicological mission are almost guaranteed. But discovering where he wrote the piece (perhaps when he was living in America), for what purpose, and delving deeper into the Romanian Christmas songs (colinde) that the work and its text are based upon, may shed some light onto the mysterious topic of Béla Bartók's Contata Profana.

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Vikárius, László. "Béla Bartók's 'Cantata Profana' (1930): A Reading of the Sources." Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 35, Fasc. 1/3, Ed. Denijs Dille Nonagenario. (1993 - 1994), pp. 249-301.

McCreless and his "Evolutionary Perspective"

For an interesting read, check out:

McCreless, Patarick. “An Evolutionary Perspective on Nineteenth-Century Semitonal Relations.” The Second Parctice of Nineteenth-Century Tonality. Ed. William Kinderman and Harold Krebs. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. 87-113.

Here is my reaction to the article condensed into paragraph form:

The McCreless article offered some very interesting views in how to bridge so-called 'classical diatonic tonality' to 'nineteenth-century chromatic tonality.' He states that this nineteenth-century chromaticism has an underlying space made up of twelve diatonic keys, unlike the Schenkerian approach of a work having one diatonic key that governs the tonal space. McCreless relates this to the theory of biological evolution, suggesting that the older functions and styles of music have not disappeared in this new chromatic tonality, but have rather adapted themselves to take on different functions. Therefore, chromatic writing takes on a new role; instead of being a foreground event that falls back onto a tonal background, diatonic space becomes a “foreground with respect to the chromatic space demanded by the whole, which accordingly must be viewed as background” (McCreless 103). Instead of the Schenkerian process of justifying a chromatic passage in terms of some sort of diatonic prolongation, in 'nineteenth-century chromatic tonality' diatonic prolongation needs to be rationalized in a way that shows “how it fits into the larger context of chromatic space” (103).

Responses to Readings for August 28th, 2006 (MuCT 519, Fall 2006)

In the article entitled “Into the Foothills: New Directions in Nineteenth-Century Analysis” from Vol. 11/1 of Music Theory Spectrum, author Christopher Lewis highlights conceptions of diatonic tonality of the 19th-century as follows:

- William Benjamin suggests that any two diatonic collections may interlock, not limited to just parallel major and minor modes. In a sense, because diatonic collections can follow similar processes and progressions they can be linked together. Beyond this, Benjamin suggests that “chromatic detail may have more than local significance.”
- William Mitchell proposes that chromaticism is not based upon a scale of seven diatonic and five non-diatonic notes, but rather a scale of twelve tones that can partially or fully supplant a diatonic scale.
- Gregory Proctor’s studies focus on the issue of distinguishing two common practices in the 19th-century, those of the “classical diatonic tonality” and “nineteenth-century chromatic tonality.” The former implies a more Schenkerian approach to chromaticism, where it is used in tonicization and modal mixture. The latter embraces Mitchell’s idea of the twelve-tone scale, as well as the idea of the layering of “tonal space,” where there is a background tonality and foreground tonality that move in parallel motion and have a chromatic result.
- Patrick McCreless advocates the idea of diatonic linear motion that, unlike “classical diatonic tonality,” contributes to the overall structure of a piece but does not define it. As Lewis states in the article*, the “fundamental shape of the piece may be created by principles that are harmonic rather than linear, and chromatic rather than diatonic.” Therefore, McCreless suggests that music of this timeframe should be studied not as specifically harmonic/linear or diatonic/chromatic, but should instead be looked at for the relationship and interaction between diatonic and chromatic elements.

Lewis discusses various alternatives to diatonic/monotonal background structures as follows:

- Harold Krebs is listed as identifying three possible deviant backgrounds in 19th-century music. The first is one involved a work containing two discrete, complete fundamental structures, one in the opening key and one in the final key. Second is a work with an incomplete opening structure, followed by a complete one in the final key. The third is a piece with two complete but overlapping structures.
- Robert Bailey developed a theory of the “double-tonic complex,” where the essential feature of a work is the pairing together of two tonalities a minor third apart, giving each tonic its own chromatic mode. The two tonalities are linked so that they can serve as local representatives of the tonic, and my actually co-exist, with one of them in a primary position and the other subordinate.
- Deborah Stein focuses on the idea of “extended-tonal” techniques, suggesting conventional dominant-tonic polarity is undermined by replacing the dominant at the foreground and middle ground and expanding the plagal domain of a tonal area.
- Allen Forte describes the usage of defining motives and analyzing their design and usage throughout a work. He suggests that motivic penetration of the middleground may be “a structural aspect of widespread significance in all music of the later nineteenth-century.” Using set theory, Forte has noted that specific pitch classes and dyads serve as structural determinants, initiating or terminating crucial motions of providing structural cross-references. In this sense it is motivic development that controls tonal/chromatic sounds events in a work.

Associative Tonality: where specific melodies or motives can be associated with a particular pitch level, and/or a particular tonality can be associated with particular characters or underlying dramatic themes.

Directional Tonality: a “tonal plot,” where the principal operation involves the motion from one key to another, rather than the prolongation of a single tonality.

Expressive Tonality: the repetition or recall of a passage, transposed up to underscore intensification, or shifted down to indicate relaxation, both of which directly correlate to the action or desire for expressiveness in a composition.

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Bailey, Richard. "The Structure of 'The Ring' and its Evolution." 19th-Century Music vol. 1/1 (1977), pp. 48-61.
Lewis, Christopher. "Into the Foothills: New Directions in Nineteenth-Century Analysis." Music Theory Spectrum vol. 11/1 (1989), pp. 15-23.
McCreless, Patrick. "Ernst Kurth and the Analysis of the Chromatic Music of the Late Nineteenth Century." Music Theory Spectrum vol. 5 (1983), pp. 56-75.

Reaction to the Groves Reading on Béla Bartók (MuCT 514, Fall 2006)

First, I have to confess that I know very little about Bartók, in regards to either of his roles as composer or ethnomusicologist. In a few of the theory courses I took in my undergraduate career we touched on his compositions and usages of folk melodies, but we never really discussed his history, his passion for creating a unique style of his own, or his influences early in his compositional career.

Personally, I believe his quest to find a unique style of compositional technique is an interesting subject that I might delve into at some point. It would be interesting to listen to his compositions pre-folk tune influence and those that followed, particularly after his ‘Transylvanian tour.’ In the Grove article it states that Busoni found Bartók’s Fourteen Bagatelles to be “at last something truly new.” This statement peaks my interest in that Bartók began to create ‘new music’ that was inspired by ‘old music.’ I find that this ‘revelation’ by Bartók plays into the idea that a better understanding of the past bears fruit in the future. By embracing the stylistic traits of Hungarian (and other European) folk tunes, he was able to transform his style and compositional practices into something unique and interesting.

This positive influence of the folk tunes on Bartók’s compositional career is two-sided. On one side was the accessibility of these works after his collection of them, and how he could – as many could have and have themselves – use the tunes as either melodic, rhythmic, and textual models for new works. The other side is how specifically the older, less heterogeneous Hungarian tunes embraced the ecclesiastical (Aeolian/Dorian) or pentatonic modes that provided material straying away from the tonal compositions he was writing earlier in his career. Due to the burgeoning usage of chromaticism and atonality in the early 20th century, Bartók could use the folk tunes to embrace this new direction in music. In essence, he utilized tradition to adapt his compositional technique into a more contemporary style. The topic of utilizing old/traditional and new/contemporary falls into an area that I am personally very interested in: the bridging of early and new music.