Post-Tonal Affinities in Piano Works of Bartók, Chen, and Crumb

Chapter 5
Programmatic Soundscapes in Bartók’s Out of Doors: Cellular Transformation

In this chapter, we will explore the transformation of cells within the abstract soundscapes of Bartók’s Out of Doors, an inventive outburst that followed a period of minimal composing. This substantial work is a product of influences by past and contemporaneous composers. It contains programmatic associations that range from musical instruments to nature, eliciting a complete gamut of peaceful to chaotic moods and whispery to percussive sounds. Bartók’s motivation to provide new repertoire for his concert tours led to the creation of Out of Doors, as well as the First Piano Concerto, Nine Little Piano Pieces, and other works in 1926. The outburst of new pieces followed half a decade of compositional stagnation due to professional and personal reasons. Bartók had been preoccupied with concert tours, publication of his folk music studies, and the preparation of scholarly writings that ranged from discussions on harmony to biographies on other Hungarian musicians and articles on Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak folk music.¹ In his personal life, Bartók dealt with the transition from his first to second marriage, as well as his mother’s economic condition and her status of citizenship. The only work in 1924 was Village Scenes, based on Slovak folk songs. In the same year, Stravinsky completed Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, which inspired Bartók to compose Out of Doors.² There is also a stylistic correlation between the Stravinsky and Bartók’s First Piano Concerto (1926). Both reflect the Baroque toccata style.³ Specifically, Bartók’s use of semitonal tetrachords, contrapuntal movement over a pedal point, symmetrical axial designs, and polymodality in the First Piano Concerto was impacted by the Frescobaldi idiom as seen in Toccata in G.⁴ There are many percussive elements in both the First Piano Concerto and Out of Doors suite. Critics of the time were sometimes antagonistic to the percus ← 79 | 80 → sive style and the juxtaposition between a simple folk melody and Bartók’s more abstract harmonization, to which Bartók wrote: “It may sound odd, but… the simpler the melody, the more unusual may be its accompanying melody”.5 Thus, from the mid-1920s, Bartók’s music became predominantly contrapuntal, with extensive use of canons, stretti, and fugues, all of this in a more intense chromatic language. This is epitomized in such works as the Third and Fourth String Quartets (1927, 1928) and later in Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936), etc.

As Bartók moved toward synthesis of East European folk materials with Western art music techniques in his late stylistic period (1926–1945), his use of polymodal polyphony is tied to Bach’s Italian predecessors, whose styles allowed a greater flexibility in contrapuntal writing.⁶ Bartók became familiar with pre-Bachian keyboard music through editing eighteen pieces by Couperin and volumes of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, all published by Rozsnyai. He also transcribed Italian music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by composers such as Ciaia, Frescobaldi, Marcello, Rossi, and Zipoli. The Out of Doors suite, unique for Bartók in its musical representation, could have been influenced by François Couperin’s ordres (i.e., suites), which included traditional dances along with descriptive character pieces.⁷ Bartók’s style and musical language in the suite are based on innovative aural effects that imitate other instruments and nature, creating distinctive sound spheres by means of the piano medium. These virtuosic and aurally effective pieces served their purpose well as concert repertoire during a time in which Bartók was performing internationally.

In 1927, Bartók remarked, “Yet it seems to me that its inherent nature [i.e., of the piano] becomes really expressive only by means of the present tendency to use the piano as a percussion instrument”. ⁸ The expressive-percussive element is especially apparent in the first piece of Out of Doors, “With Drums and Pipes”, which also resembles the toccata writing in the First Piano Concerto and the first movement of the Piano Sonata. Characteristics of repetitive figures, driving intensity, martellato articulations, and use of tone clusters are echoed in the concluding piece of the set, “The Chase”. Note that Bartók described the percussive style as an expressive one. While percussive elements may verge on a barbaric and unrefined interpretation, the percussive touch as a method of key-striking (i.e., in Bartók’s vocabulary) is the basic way to play the piano, percussive articulations including legato, non-legato, ← 80 | 81 → staccato, and staccatissimo, as opposed to tenuto and portamento, for instance.9 His language is very much rooted in modal influences and their harmonic derivations. In this harmonic idiom, pitch cells are essential to the musical idiom. The sonic effects serve to connect with folk sources in creating a stylized representation of nature and its sounds, as explored via the analyses of the following pieces in this suite: No. 1 “With Drums and Pipes”, No. 3 “Musettes”, and No. 5 “The Chase”.

The other two pieces are No. 2 “Barcarolla” and No. 4 “Music of the Night”. The second piece features cycles based on fourths similar to No. 125 “Boating” from the Mikrokosmos (see Chapter 4). The highly sensitive fourth piece echoes the chirps and twitters of nocturnal creatures, dedicated to Ditta, his second wife. The opening octatonic ostinato-chords echo the held chords from the Third Improvisation (see Chapter 3). Echoes of this piece also appear in Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto (1945). “Music of the Night” primarily involves chromatic activities and the principle of axial symmetry. From the perspective of cellular pivots, there is less movement among different constructions because it remains mainly within the chromatic realm, so we have left out this piece in favor of more pertinent discussions.¹⁰

No. 1 “With Drums and Pipes” is derived from the sounds of traditional instruments, the percussive elements of ostinato dyads (A-B♭, D-E) resembling tambourines (side drums), the melodic elements (e.g., m. 41) the recorder-like galoubet of French origin. Both instruments would have been played by a single musician in the thirteenth century.¹¹ The piece is in ternary cyclic form: Section A (mm. 1–40) is more percussive with ostinato dyads, A-B♭ and D-E; Section B (mm. 41–66) more melodic and with longer phrases; Section Aʹ (mm. 67–88) a shorter reprise; and the Coda (mm. 89–114) tying in percussive (drums) and linear (pipes) elements.