Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

While opinions vary as to the quality of the music Bartók wrote during the five or six years of his unhappy exile in America, there is a fairly general agreement that most of the works he completed in the not much happier five or six years before that - the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the Fifth and Sixth String Quartets, the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, the Second Violin Concerto, the Divertimento - are among the greatest twentieth-century scores of their kind. Of those six masterpieces, none is greater than the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Commissioned by the far-sighted Paul Sacher for the tenth anniversary of the Basle Chamber Orchestra in 1936, it was first performed under his direction in January of the following year - much to the composer’s satisfaction, it seems, apart from the “really bad” playing of the unfortunate pianist in the ensemble.

Bearing in mind the only semi-professional membership of the Basle Chamber Orchestra at the time, it is not surprising that the new score required no fewer than twenty-five rehearsals. Bartók thought he had made it not too difficult - he claimed that he could play all the special effects himself even though he was no string player - but he was thinking of the individual parts rather then the overall ensemble. The division of the strings into two separate groups to the right and left of the platform, with the piano and the harp grouped with the various percussion instruments in the middle, was bound to cause problems. It is, on the other hand, a primary source of the very special sound of the piece.

The one movement where the strings are not used antiphonally is the opening Andante tranquillo, which is a five-part fugue based on the chromatic theme introduced by muted violas in the opening bars. Bartók was particularly proud of this movement. It is constructed strictly according to a scheme of entries in two cycles of fifths, one rising and one falling, which coincide on the same tonality at a fff climax marked by repeated E flats and a heavy blow on the bass drum. But alongside the structural rigour there is extraordinary textural sensitivity. The scoring is particularly intriguing at the point where, with the theme now in inversion, the movement turns back on itself to reach a poetic coda with the theme presented in both versions simultaneously on violins against a background of quietly rippling celesta arpeggios.

The second movement, a kind of scherzo in sonata form, makes enterprising use of both the antiphonally grouped strings and the other instruments, notably the piano and the harp, which Bartók chose to place between them. The strings introduce both the main themes, a robust folk dance in C and a more capricious idea in G, tossing them regularly from one side to the other and once or twice to the piano in the middle. But the main function of the piano - supported by “Bartók pizzicatos” snapping against the fingerboards of the strings on the left and impelled by a five-note ostinato on the right - is to introduce a dramatic off-beat variant of the fugue theme from the first movement. Later in the development an extended pizzicato passage, to which the harp eventually lends its authority, anticipates the main theme of the last movement.

The Adagio is the most sinister of Bartók’s “night-music” fantasies. Introduced by a xylophone repeating one note in a mathematically calculated acceleration and deceleration, it incorporates four distinct episodes, each linked to the last by a short phrase from the fugue theme. A passionate viola recitative is followed by a weird texture of whispered trills and spine-chilling slides on muted violins supporting an icy version of the fugue theme high on two solo violins and celesta. In an equally effective contrast of textures, an eerie confluence of celesta arpeggios and harp and piano glissandos is confronted by a sudden aggression from a percussive five-note motif, the last eventually turning back on itself to effect a reverse recapitulation.

Having played a prominent part in every movement so far, the fugue theme must surely make at least one more appearance in the finale. In fact, the Allegro molto proceeds for much of its course as a vigorous rondo on an entertaining variety of folk-dance tunes. It is not until two-thirds of the way through, when a frantic accelerando has left it apparently nowhere else to go, that the tempo drops to molto moderato to make way for a climactically broad melody on the lower strings - which, as it turns out before a cello cadenza leads into the coda, is nothing other than a wholesome diatonic variant of the chromatic fugue theme with which the work had begun.

Gerald Larner©

While opinions vary as to the quality of the music Bartók wrote during the five or six years of his unhappy exile in America, there is a fairly general agreement that most of the works he completed in the not much happier five or six years before that - the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the Fifth and Sixth String Quartets, the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, the Second Violin Concerto, the Divertimento - are among the greatest twentieth-century scores of their kind. Of those six masterpieces, none is greater than the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Commissioned by the far-sighted Paul Sacher for the tenth anniversary of the Basle Chamber Orchestra in 1936, it was first performed under his direction in January of the following year - much to the composer’s satisfaction, it seems, apart from the “really bad” playing of the unfortunate pianist in the ensemble.

Bearing in mind the only semi-professional membership of the Basle Chamber Orchestra at the time, it is not surprising that the new score required no fewer than twenty-five rehearsals. Bartók thought he had made it not too difficult - he claimed that he could play all the special effects himself even though he was no string player - but he was thinking of the individual parts rather then the overall ensemble. The division of the strings into two separate groups to the right and left of the platform, with the piano and the harp grouped with the various percussion instruments in the middle, was bound to cause problems. It is, on the other hand, a primary source of the very special sound of the piece.

The one movement where the strings are not used antiphonally is the opening Andante tranquillo, which is a five-part fugue based on the chromatic theme introduced by muted violas in the opening bars. Bartók was particularly proud of this movement. It is constructed according to a strictly symmetrical scheme whereby the voices diverge in ever more distant harmonic directions with every entry and then - at an emphatic fff climax marked by repeated E flats and a heavy blow on the bass drum - dramatically converge on the same tonality. But alongside the structural rigour there is extraordinary textural sensitivity. The scoring is particularly intriguing at the point where, with the theme now presented in an upside-down form, the movement turns back on itself to reach a poetic coda with the theme presented in both versions simultaneously on violins against a background of quietly rippling celesta arpeggios.

The second movement, a kind of scherzo in sonata form, makes enterprising use of both the antiphonally grouped strings and the other instruments, notably the piano and the harp, which Bartók chose to place between them. The strings introduce both the main themes, a robust folk dance in C and a more capricious idea in G, tossing them regularly from one side to the other and once or twice to the piano in the middle. But the main function of the piano - supported by “Bartók pizzicatos” snapping against the fingerboards of the strings on the left and impelled by a five-note ostinato on the right - is to introduce a dramatic off-beat variant of the fugue theme from the first movement. Later in the development an extended pizzicato passage, to which the harp eventually lends its authority, anticipates the main theme of the last movement.

The Adagio is the most sinister of Bartók’s several “night-music” fantasies of insect noises and bird calls, creepy whispers and eerie silences. Introduced by a xylophone repeating one note in a mathematically calculated acceleration and deceleration, it incorporates four distinct episodes, each linked to the last by a short phrase from the fugue theme. A passionate viola recitative is followed by a weird texture of whispered trills and spine-chilling slides on muted violins supporting an icy version of the fugue theme high on two solo violins and celesta. In an equally effective contrast of textures, a liquid confluence of celesta arpeggios and harp and piano glissandos is brought into sudden confrontation with a heavily percussive five-note motif. Having made its aggressive point, that motif turns gently back on itself to effect a recapitulation of the foregoing material in reverse order, ending with the xylophone solo.

Since it has played such a prominent part in every movement so far, the fugue theme must surely make at least one more appearance in the finale. In fact, the Allegro molto proceeds for much of its course as a vigorous rondo on an entertaining variety of folk-dance tunes. It not until two-thirds of the way through, when a frantic accelerando has left it apparently nowhere else to go, that the tempo drops to molto moderato to make way for a climactically broad melody on the lower strings - which, as it turns out before a cello cadenza leads into the coda, is nothing other than a wholesome diatonic variant of the chromatic fugue theme with which the work had begun.

Gerald Larner©