The Hungarian composer Bela Bartok (1881-1945) was one of the more withdrawn personalities of 20th century music. "Bartok in Britain" attempts a fresh look at Bartok, through a discussion of one aspect of his life, namely the series of some 20 British concert tours which he undertook between 1904 and 1938, and through British reactions to his music over the corresponding years. The reader is guided from Bartok's youth to late middle-age, from Bournemouth to inner Glasgow, from a girls' school on the Suffolk coast to the University College in Aberystwyth. The author follows his tussles with the London critics over the years as the fortunes of his music and his pianism fluctuated and investigates his battles with BBC bureaucracy as well as the more personal issue of his relationships with his British hosts. The work is based on British, Hungarian and American sources and is set against the backdrop of the British musical life of the period.
This leads naturally from Edwardian times, when concert-going was still very much the preserve of upper sections of society, through the changes wrought by war and the advent of radio and sound films, to the era of a more democratic listening public in the 1930s. Changes are also shown in the venues, programmes and critical attitudes towards music. The study looks at Bartok's relationships with the British critics Philip Hesletine and Cecil Gray and with his performing associates, the Aranyi sisters.
- ISBN10 0193152622
- ISBN13 9780193152625
- Publish Date 1 February 1989
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 13 November 1997
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 184
- Language English