Thesis submission ID 986 | created
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Rory Braddell, ‘THE MOUNTING OF A JEWEL’ - The marriage between composer and ethnomusicologist in Béla Bartók’s creative musical output.
Volumes, pp.: 1 (104pp) Wordcount: 21036
Supervisor(s): Piers Hellawell
Repository (online): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WT5cp85W1ofO9htVpWLOBDhQ4v3ehyPm/view?usp=sharing
General specialism: Musicology
Historical timeframe: 1903 - 1930
Key terms, concepts: ethnomusicology; folk music transcription; comparative ethnography; modal analysis; polymodal chromaticism; pentatonic scale theory; musical nationalism; fieldwork methodology (phonograph recording)
Key terms, persons: Béla Bartók; Zoltán Kodály; Franz Liszt
Key terms, places: Hungary; Transylvania; Budapest; Slovakia; Romania; Algeria
Key terms, institutions: Budapest Academy of Music
Key terms, genres, instruments: folk song arrangement; art song; piano miniature; bagatelle; symphonic poem; Hungarian Christmas carols (colindă); Romanian folk dances; 20th-century classical music; piano; voice
Abstract:
This dissertation examines the relationship between Béla Bartók's activity as an ethnomusicologist and his identity as a composer, arguing that his systematic fieldwork and analysis of Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak peasant music directly shaped the harmonic, melodic, and structural language of his original compositions. Beginning from Bartók's early nationalist works, which drew on the urban verbunkos and Magyar nóta traditions inherited from Liszt, the study traces his decisive turn after 1904–1905 toward authentic rural folk song, collected through extensive fieldwork and phonograph transcription across Hungary, Transylvania, Slovakia, and neighbouring regions. It considers Bartók's classificatory methods, adapted from Ilmari Krohn's system, and his tripartite division of "old style," "new style," and "mixed style" melodies.
The dissertation then analyses Bartók's folk-song arrangements—his "three-level concept" of harmonisation, ranging from simple accompaniment to fully integrated compositional treatment—as a laboratory in which he derived new harmonic possibilities from the modal and pentatonic properties of folk melody, including modal chromaticism, polymodality, symmetrical pitch-cell construction, and non-functional use of the minor-seventh chord. Finally, it demonstrates how these techniques, first tested in vocal and piano folk-song settings, were transplanted into Bartók's early original piano works (the Fourteen Bagatelles, Seven Sketches, and Ten Easy Pieces), where they generated abstract symmetrical formations—including octatonic and whole-tone extensions—that moved beyond direct folk quotation while retaining a single tonal point of reference. The study concludes that an analytic method grounded in Bartók's ethnomusicological research offers essential insight into the coherence and originality of his mature musical language.
Rory Braddell, ‘THE MOUNTING OF A JEWEL’ - The marriage between composer and ethnomusicologist in Béla Bartók’s creative musical output.
MA, Queen's University Belfast, 2001
Volumes, pp.: 1 (104pp) Wordcount: 21036
Supervisor(s): Piers Hellawell
Repository (online): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WT5cp85W1ofO9htVpWLOBDhQ4v3ehyPm/view?usp=sharing
General specialism: Musicology
Historical timeframe: 1903 - 1930
Key terms, concepts: ethnomusicology; folk music transcription; comparative ethnography; modal analysis; polymodal chromaticism; pentatonic scale theory; musical nationalism; fieldwork methodology (phonograph recording)
Key terms, persons: Béla Bartók; Zoltán Kodály; Franz Liszt
Key terms, places: Hungary; Transylvania; Budapest; Slovakia; Romania; Algeria
Key terms, institutions: Budapest Academy of Music
Key terms, genres, instruments: folk song arrangement; art song; piano miniature; bagatelle; symphonic poem; Hungarian Christmas carols (colindă); Romanian folk dances; 20th-century classical music; piano; voice
Abstract:
This dissertation examines the relationship between Béla Bartók's activity as an ethnomusicologist and his identity as a composer, arguing that his systematic fieldwork and analysis of Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak peasant music directly shaped the harmonic, melodic, and structural language of his original compositions. Beginning from Bartók's early nationalist works, which drew on the urban verbunkos and Magyar nóta traditions inherited from Liszt, the study traces his decisive turn after 1904–1905 toward authentic rural folk song, collected through extensive fieldwork and phonograph transcription across Hungary, Transylvania, Slovakia, and neighbouring regions. It considers Bartók's classificatory methods, adapted from Ilmari Krohn's system, and his tripartite division of "old style," "new style," and "mixed style" melodies.
The dissertation then analyses Bartók's folk-song arrangements—his "three-level concept" of harmonisation, ranging from simple accompaniment to fully integrated compositional treatment—as a laboratory in which he derived new harmonic possibilities from the modal and pentatonic properties of folk melody, including modal chromaticism, polymodality, symmetrical pitch-cell construction, and non-functional use of the minor-seventh chord. Finally, it demonstrates how these techniques, first tested in vocal and piano folk-song settings, were transplanted into Bartók's early original piano works (the Fourteen Bagatelles, Seven Sketches, and Ten Easy Pieces), where they generated abstract symmetrical formations—including octatonic and whole-tone extensions—that moved beyond direct folk quotation while retaining a single tonal point of reference. The study concludes that an analytic method grounded in Bartók's ethnomusicological research offers essential insight into the coherence and originality of his mature musical language.
Thesis submission ID 986