Now listen to what he says — von Bartók, I mean — the words he uses: “The outcome of these studies was of decisive influence upon my work, because it freed me from the tyrannical rule of the major and minor keys.” “Tyrannical rule” indeed. Blame it all on the diatonic scale. Worse than an electric fence. What was at stake? Freedom, first off. From an imaginary limit. From the tyrannical State of Music. [……] Got that?
Equality, second. For the composer, the instruments, the notes. “This new way of using the diatonic scale brought freedom from the rigid use of the major and minor keys, and eventually led to a new conception of the chromatic scale, every tone of which came to be considered of equal value and could be used freely and independently.” I won’t let anyone tell me that music isn’t politicaclass="underline" this is the dictatorship of democracy. Down with the subordinate clause.
You all know how the freedom sought by the French Revolution — revolutionaries take note — or was it carnage? revenge? was it bloodlust? — was usurped — was reversed by Napoléon’s emperorship, and [……] ah, you don’t know, do you? [……] Well, good for you, you have nothing to forget.
So now we have to cope with the smarty-pants atonalists — Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern — Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern — Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern — who opposed the very romanticism that energized them — Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern — it’s only a scratch — to deal with their more specific dislike of Stravinsky’s eclectic modernism, et cetera. Lastly, nearing our station, we observe how the music of the folk as espoused by Bartók and Kodály got handballed from wall after wall of indifference: by the romantic music of Mahler, the intellectual regimens of the Viennese crowd — Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern — the turncoat classicism of Stravinsky, and the clangorous pauses of Cage and his crew. [……] You may make notes but not pass them. This isn’t kindergarten.
I could say simply that the Concerto for Orchestra is an appeal for peace, but that would make it sound simpleminded, and this piece is anything but. It is a mingling and clashing of competing kinds of music, the instruments that play them, and the totalitarian contexts within which large ensembles necessarily require their musicians to perform. A violin or cello concerto brags that, for a change, the rest of the world revolves around this one violin or cello and its simplest string. [….…]
This is only true of the genre, of course, instances vary. [….…] So, in the Concerto for Orchestra, various instruments enjoy their moment in the sun; turn and turn about, they are allowed to lead; and an ideal community is, in this way, imagined; one in which the individual is free, has its own unique voice, yet chooses to act in the best interests of all others. [……] The problem is: how to save Difference without making its members only frivolously different, like taking your tea in a glass instead of a cup.
The materials of a work of art, my dears, appear first as simple differences but then begin to migrate into oppositions and into pairs. For instance, the cleeks and buzzes of insects in the night, each with their own scratch on the face of darkness, sidle alongside the clarinet’s happy candy like ants to a melt of chocolate — apparently an enemy of our pleasure. No matter how pure a note is, when singly sounded, we realize its man-made character and its preordained place in that confectional box, the musical scale; whereas we trace nighttime’s clatter back to the cricket, who is broadcasting its lust, first in one direction, then in another, with sharp chirps like the crepitations the locust makes by bowing its legs vigorously back and forth upon steadied wings to signal its presence and advertise its need. [……] The action is called crepitating. I shall inscribe it. [……] These little wails of music, or bits of ragged scrape, are seeking a companion, a connection, even if only momentary, but always so they may give more sense to their sounds and make more of meaning’s music. Bartók composed many such dark concerts; arrangements of notes for a time as lonely as we fancy we are when we wake suddenly to find only “middle” occupies the night.
Now cast your eyes upon the palette that modern circumstances have placed before the composer, all pertaining to the nature of any singled-out sound or insect’s whir. There is the instrument that is its source, as the cricket’s is of its, and any messages that may be traced to it, for instance, the call of a bullfrog or the whistle given girls; there is the placement of the instrument in the pit, on the platform of the concert hall, or for solo or ensemble performance in a historic chamber; there is the choice of size and shape the musician must give his note (fat or thin, loud or soft, crisp or slurred) and the qualities of sound that can be expected from each of a hundred sorts of instrument; moreover, to be accounted for, there are the relations this note has with other notes (those that precede, those that follow, those that suffer or enjoy simultaneous existence); consequently the sounds collected in polychords, clusters, skeins, runs, motifs, themes, as well as all the other groups of notes that are treated as an entity — clouds of notes, cascades, fistfuls, snivels of notes — and all those with whom it shares rhythmic relations; repeated notes, notes that have been given a dominant position, those who satisfy subordinate roles, compositions in keys and styles and size, that have historical associations, reflect common customs, or reveal well-known intentions. Cast eyes and cry: too many and too much; take away this hive of opportunity, this surfeit of choice, and let us retire to simpler times when such a plethora was not recognized, our eardrums were not African, and our serious intentions were pious.
The next time you enjoy — say — a kiss, think of it for a moment as a moist slur of notes, and the experience showing up in your consciousness, as well as that of your companion, when your lips touch, is a chord of a chorus in a world of cacophony. All that laughter? That bad? I had to say “kiss” to wake you. How about a spoon in hot soup? Opposed palms coming together in a clap. Anyway, when Béla Bartók composed his celebrated concerto he was taking a musical world, like the warring one outside his studio, in all its prolixity, conflict, and chaos, and trying to resolve those factions in a triumphant chorus for a triumphant close.