Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Op. 20

Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs [1920]

Molto moderato -

Molto capriccioso

Lento, rubato -

Allegretto scherzando -

Allegro molto

Allegro moderato, molto capriccioso

Sostenuto, rubato -

Allegro

The Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs - written five years after the Sonatina and seven years before the Three Rondos - are Bartók’s first and most radical venture in treating folk-song material as freely as if it were his own. As he declared in a lecture delivered at Harvard in 1943, he reached here “the extreme limit in adding daring accompaniments to simple folk tunes.” The first Improvisation, on an attractive Dorian melody collected by Bartók himself in the Tolna District, is not particularly remarkable in this respect, since it does little more than present the same theme three times in different harmonies. The second, on the other hand, teases its melody with playful pauses, syncopations, tempo changes and a variety of ironic harmonies.

The next three Improvisations are usually presented as a group - an atmospheric and increasingly passionate “night music” treatment of a parlando melody from Szerém, a short scherzo based on another tune from Tolna (“The Wind Blows from the Danube”) and a frantic Allegro molto anticipating later developments in Bartók’s piano technique. The sixth Improvisation, which is comparable to the second in its capricious spontaneity, presents its pentatonic Székely folk song on the black keys while accompanying it in incongruous harmonies on the white keys.

The seventh Improvisation - a deeply serious and beautifully coloured treatment of a Transylvanian lullaby - was first published in 1920 in Le Tombeau de Claude Debussy, a special issue of the Revue Musicale, where it stands as one of several distinguished memorials to a composer Bartók valued above most of his contemporaries. The last Improvisation is a correspondingly lively series of three variations on a Szílágy tune associated with eminently sensible words to the effect that “in winter it’s not good to plough…better to stay in bed to frolic with a bride.”