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Bartók and Boosey & Hawkes: The European Years
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Extract
‘This contract is certainly my greatest success as a composer, so far’, commented Bartók in 1918 on contracting with the Viennese publisher Universal Edition. After years of hit-and-miss publishing with two Budapest firms, Rozsnyai and Rózsavölgyi, Bartók was proud at having caught, with the 1917 Budapest première of his ballet The Wooden Prince, the attention of Universal Edition's director, Emil Hertzka. Hertzka was renowned for his cultivation of such musical talents of central Europe as Mahler, Schoenberg, Janáœk, Berg and Szymanowski. Until about 1926, when Hertzka developed heart troubles and took a lesser role in managing the firm, Bartók was generally happy with his Viennese publishing connexion. Universal Edition had quickly moved to bring out the considerable backlog of his compositions, had strongly promoted his works through its new house journal Muskiblätter des Anbruch, and had often spurred his imagination with complimentary scores, suggestions and in-house gossip. But then, from 1926 to 1932, when Hertzka died, Bartók's dealings with Universal Edition became progressively less personal, less prompt and sometimes even chilly, although his compositions did continue to appear regularly from the publisher and to receive a quite reasonable level of exposure. Thereafter, as the Depression and financial difficulties led to more serious publication delays and breakdowns in communication, Bartók grew bitter and imperious. Several times after 1932 he threatened to terminate his contract with Universal Edition.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997
References
1 Letter, Bartók to Ion Busitia, 6 June 1918, reprod. in Bartók Béla levelei, ed. Demény, János (Budapest, 1976), p.247 Google Scholar. All letters referred to in this article appear in Bartók Letters: The Musical Mind, ed. Gillies, Malcolm and Gombocz, Adrienne (Oxford University Press, in press).Google Scholar
2 See Hawkes, Ralph, ‘Béla Bartók in der Emigration: Erinnerungen seines Verlegers’, Musik der Zeit, no.3 (1953), 68.Google Scholar
3 By a contract of 17 August 1939 with Universal Edition, Boosey & Hawkes acquired world rights in the works of Mahler and Weinberger, and rights for the British Empire and the Americas for Delius, Kodály and Bartók (see further below).
4 Included in letter, Bartók to Ralph Hawkes, 13 May 1938, PB (Peter Bartók collection, Homosassa Florida) BB-B&H.
5 Anon., ‘London Concerts’, Musical Times 79 (1938): 536 Google Scholar. Cf. also the report by ‘La Main Gauche’ (= Havergal Brian) in Musical Opinion, 07 1938, pp. 856–7.Google Scholar
6 Towards those Boosey & Hawkes employees, whom he had already known for many years in Vienna, Bartók was less trusting, and apparently unconcerned at their own personal plights.
7 PB BB-B&H.
8 Bartók made it clear that he was thinking of these suites quite distinctly from foul Sacher's commission, the Divertimento, about which he was at this time diffident.
9 Zeneországban: Olvasókönyv nagy és kis gyermekek részére (Budapest: Gergely R. Könyvkereskedése, 1939).
10 Letters, 29 May, 17 June and 8 July 1939 (PB BB-B&H).
11 Letter, 8 July 1939.
12 Letters, Hawkes to Bartók, 9 December 1939 (MTA BH 159, held in Bartók Archive Budapest) and, Bartók to Hawkes, 18 December 1939 (PB BB-B&H).
13 Letter, Bartók to Hawkes, 13 November 1996 (PB BB-B&H), his emphasis.
14 In the published score (B&H 15192) the translators only took up a little of the offered licence, respectively: uborka (Hung., gherkin), chickens (Eng.), cornichons (Fr., gherkin); róka (Hung., fox), Reynard (Eng.), Renard (Fr., fox).
15 PB BB-B&H.
16 See Cohen's recollection of this launching party and following concert by Bartók, in my Bartók Remembered (London: Faber & Faber, 1990).Google Scholar