List of string quartets by Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók in 1927

The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók wrote six string quartets, for two violins, viola and cello:

List

• String Quartet No. 1 (1909), Op.7, Sz. 40, BB 52
• String Quartet No. 2 (1917), Op.17, Sz. 67, BB 75
• String Quartet No. 3 (1927), Sz. 85, BB 93
• String Quartet No. 4 (1928), Sz. 91, BB 95
• String Quartet No. 5 (1934), Sz. 102, BB 110
• String Quartet No. 6 (1939), Sz. 114, BB 119

Posterity

Notable composers who have been influenced by them include:

• Benjamin Britten, particularly in the Sonata in C for Cello and Piano
• Elliott Carter, who refers in the opening of his own First String Quartet to Bartók's Sixth Quartet
• Chen Yi
• Edison Denisov, whose Second Quartet is closely related to Bartók's Fifth Quartet
• Franco Donatoni, who was deeply impressed when he heard a broadcast of Bartók's Fourth Quartet
• Robert Fripp, who mentions them as an influence on the band King Crimson
• Miloslav Ištvan
• György Kurtág, whose Opp. 1 and 28 both owe a great deal to Bartók's quartets
• György Ligeti, whose two string quartets both owe a great deal to Bartók's quartets
• Bruno Maderna
• 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
• Walter Piston
• Steve Reich, who described them in an interview as "the greatest set of quartets since Beethoven"
• Kim Dzmitrïyevich Tsesakow
• Wilfried Westerlinck
• Stefan Wolpe, who explained in a public lecture how he had derived ideas from Bartók's Fourth Quartet
• Xu Yongsan
• Jouni Kaipainen, credited openly Bartók's quartets as his model.

Recordings

Key recordings of the complete cycle include:

• Emerson String Quartet, Deutsche Grammophon, released 1990.
• Hagen Quartet
• Juilliard String Quartet:
  • Recorded 1949, New York. Robert Mann and Robert Koff, violins; Raphael Hillyer, viola; Arthur Winograd, cello. Three LPs, 12 in., monaural. Columbia Masterworks ML 4278/4279/4280.
  • Recorded May and September, 1963, Columbia 30th Street Studios, New York. Robert Mann and Isidore Cohen, violins; Raphael Hillyer, viola; Claus Adam, cello. Three LPs, 12 in., stereo. Columbia Masterworks D3L 317 (set): ML 6102, 6103, 6104. New York: Columbia Masterworks, 1965.
  • Recorded 13–23 May 1981, Columbia 30th Street Studios, New York. Robert Mann and Earl Carlyss, violins; Samuel Rhodes, viola; Claus Adam, cello.
• Lindsay String Quartet
• Takács Quartet, Decca 289 455 297-2. Released 1998.

See also

• List of compositions by Béla Bartók

References

Sources

• Anon. 1988. Bartók, Lindsay String Quartet – The 6 String Quartets at Discogs (Listing of the 1988 reissue)
• 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): 225–236.
• 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, 243–260. 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.
• Manheim, James. n.d. "Harlem Quartet: Walter Piston: String Quartets Nos. 1, 3, and 5". AllMusic (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.
• 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.
• Palazzetti, Nicolò. 2015. "Italian Harmony during the Second World War: Analysis of Bruno Maderna's First String Quartet". Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale 21, no. 1: 63–91.
• Rupprecht, Philip. 1999. "The Chamber Music". In The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, edited by Mervyn Cooke, 245–259. 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 (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, 168–189. 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 10:101–117.
• Shcherbakova, Taisiya (2001). "Tsesakow, Kim Dzmitrïyevich". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.44810.
• 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.
• 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): 237–243.

External links

• Performance guide, Bartók Quartet