Excerpts from Mikrokosmos Book VI (1939)

Free Variations

Divided Arpeggios

From the Diary of a Fly

Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths

Ostinato

Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm

Bartók’s aim as a composer, he declared in an interview in 1939, was to create a synthesis of East-European folksong with what he regarded as the best of West-European music - Bach’s counterpoint, Beethoven’s dynamic structures, Debussy’s harmony. Mikrokosmos, a “series of pieces in all the styles” and at the same time a progressive guide to the acquisition of the piano technique required to play them, represents that new world in miniature. Beginning in 1932 with the simple pieces of Books I and II devised for his eight-year-old son Peter, Bartók completed the collection in 1939 with Book VI, which is a challenge even to professional pianists.

Like many Mikrokosmos pieces, Free Variations dwells on the percussive aspect of Bartók’s piano technique, offsetting the prevailing dry articulation only with the more lyrical legato phrasing of the slower middle section, while changing the metre in Romanian style on an almost bar-by-bar basis throughout. Divided Arpeggios is a sonorous tribute to the art of Debussy, whereas From the Diary of a Fly is an example of Bartók’s liking for buzzing insect sounds, coloured in this case by the fly’s dramatic encounter with a spider’s web and its agitated (and successful) efforts to free itself at the central climax of the piece. Minor Seconds, Major Sevenths characteristically creates nocturnal beauty, with birds and more insects, out of two allegedly dissonant intervals. Ostinato reclaims the Allegro barbaro vigour of the composer’s youth. As for the Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm - which Bartók dedicated to the British pianist Harriet Cohen and often played in his own recitals - they are arresting studies in one of his most exciting rhythmic discoveries, the “additive” rhythms of Bulgarian folksong where each bar is of the same length but the beats within the bars are not.