Bela Bartok — A Celebration

This compilation of essays, lectures, and scholarly papers on Bartok studies from 1953 to the present includes insights obtained by the author over a half-century career as a Bartok specialist.Divided into three parts, chapters examine Bartok as a multifaceted music figure: composer, folklorist, pianist, and teacher. As composer, it includes program notes, an introduction to his principles of composition, and theoretic-analytical discussion of selected works, including Mikrokosmos. As folklorist, it examines the outcome of Bartok's fieldwork, methodology, and findings in East European, Arabic, and Turkist autochthonous folk music materials. Bartok's American years are also discussed. The narrative is supported by a substantial number of musical examples and references.

Benjamin Suchoff is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles and a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. He has been successor trustee of the estate of Bela Bartok, curator of its New York Bartok Archive, and editor of the fifteen-volume Bartok Archive Studies in Musicology Series and the two volumes of the Bartok Archive Edition series of piano works.