Anyone Else Love Bartok?

[LayneGreene]

I've been revisiting music from my childhood, realizing how lucky I was to have been exposed to this stuff by my music teachers. While listening through some of my favourite Bartok pieces i stumbled on this

Any one else love Bartok? I think his work is fantastic.

[MikeRobinson]

Very definitely. His music had an extremely creative way of using the natural harmonic properties of the pianoforte. You can hear, I think, the other strings in sympathy to the ones that are being struck. While there's a "tremendous number of notes" flying at you, to my ears they form shapes ... short intervals during which many notes sound or resonate at the same time and are best regarded as a lump of sound. (Better put: "a single sound.") I think that was very much his intention. I don't think that this music would sound anywhere near as good if played on an electronic keyboard, or even a lesser piano. You need that fourteen-foot Steinway or Bösendorfer ... (P.S. "Hey, Santa... y'know, my front room's big enough...") ...

Edited December 5, 2012 by MikeRobinson

[LayneGreene]

I think my favourite thing about Bartok is how he didn't try to modernize the folk songs he borrowed from. I'm partial to his string quartets. This is my favourite, there's a score for it floating around online. It's ridiculous! and I love it!