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Symmetry and Dynamism in Bartók

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Christopher Mark
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Extract

Many words have been written on the subject of symmetry in Bartók, prompted by the abundance and variety of examples of the phenomenon to be found on the music's ‘surface’. As yet, however, the fundamental stasis of symmetry and the dynamism for which Bartók's music is noted have not been adequately reconciled, irrespective of what kind of symmetry has been examined – spatial, formal, or pitch-class. One of the problems regarding work in the first of these categories has been that analysts have tended to examine excerpts rather than complete spans of music. Thus while Jonathan Bernard proposes that there is in Bartók a ‘hierarchy of relationships in which smaller symmetries contribute to larger ones, which in turn contribute to even larger ones, and so on, across ever larger spans of time’ – a theory which has the potential, at least, to account for dynamic aspects of the music – his concern only with incomplete spans limits the effectiveness of his approach.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Issue 183 , December 1992 , pp. 2 - 5
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 ‘Space and symmetry in Bartók’, Journal of Music Theory vol.30 no. 2, Fall 1986 Google Scholar.

2 ‘Bartók, Lendvai and the principle of proportional analysis’, Music Analysis vol.2 no.1, 03 1983, pp.69–95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The music of Béla Bartók: a study of tonality and progression in twentieth-century music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

4 Bernard distinguishes between ‘mirror’ and ‘parallel’ spatial symmetry (op.cit. p. 188). My concern will only be with the former. The latter seems tendentious to me: it enables Bernard to regard a greater amount of music as being ‘controlled’ by symmetry, but has the absurd consequence that the major scale, which depends to a large extent on asymmetry for the existence of its hierarchical functions, can be labelled ‘symmetrical’.

5 Stravinsky, Igor and Craft, Robert, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (New York: Knopf, 1959), p.20 Google Scholar.

6 See, for instance, Antokoletz, , op.cit., p.185 Google Scholar, and Bernard, , op.cit., p.187 Google Scholar.

7 Lendvai, Ernö, Béla Bartók: an analysis of his music (London: Kahn and Averill, 1971)Google Scholar.

8 With regard to the latter see, for example, the textural and melodic inversions of Exposition material in the Recapitulation.