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BARTÓK'S REVISIONS TO THE INSTRUMENTATION OF ‘DUKE BLUEBEARD'S CASTLE’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2013

Márton Keréfky
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Abstract

The full score of Béla Bartók's one-act opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) reached its final form through many intermediate stages and after many years. The most comprehensive revision had been carried out in 1917 before Bluebeard was finally put on the programme of the Budapest Opera House. Bartók's revisions concerned not only the ending of the opera and the vocal parts but also the instrumentation. On the basis of all available primary sources, the present article examines how the instrumentation changed between 1911 and 1925, when the full score was published by Universal Edition. As a result of experiences gained during rehearsals of The Wooden Prince in 1917, Bartók added two instruments, the celesta and the xylophone, which he had originally not used in Bluebeard. However, the original score included two tenor tuba parts, which he later replaced with trumpets and trombones. In the revised score Bartók applied new instrumental techniques, corrected an unplayable passage, made the orchestral material thinner in favour of the vocal parts, and altered the instrumentation in order to emphasize motivic connections. Most of these alterations, however, do not represent a conceptual change in the opera's instrumentation but rather realize Bartók's original ideas in a more precise and more elaborate way.

Type
Research Article
Information
Tempo , Volume 67 , Issue 264 , April 2013 , pp. 52 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 Kroó, György, ‘Data on the genesis of Duke Bluebeard's Castle’, Studia Musicologica 23 (1981), pp. 79–123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 For a list of primary manuscript sources of the opera and their stemma see Vikárius, László, Commentary to Béla Bartók, Duke Bluebeard's Castle, Op. 11, Facsimile of the Autograph Draft (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, Institute for Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2006), pp. 47–48Google Scholar.

3 There is no consensus among scholars when exactly Bartók composed the second version of the ending. According to László Somfai, it was in 1911, whereas Carl S. Leafstedt dates it to late 1911–early 1912. See Somfai, László, Béla Bartók: Composition, Concepts, and Autograph Sources (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1996)Google Scholar, p. 171, and Leafstedt, Carl S., Inside Bluebeard's Castle: Music and Drama in Béla Bartók's Opera (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 142–4Google Scholar. It remains certain that Bartók began the recomposition of the closing section only after he had received Béla Balázs's extended version of the drama's ending from Paris, and that he submitted the opera with the new ending to the competition sponsored by the Budapest music publisher Rózsavölgyi & Co. According to László Vikárius, ‘Balázs stayed in Paris between 11 October 1911 and early 1912’ and ‘it is possible that […] the new ending [was] ready in October’ (Vikárius, Commentary, p. 32). In a letter sent to her mother-in-law on 15 February 1912, Bartók's wife, Márta Ziegler-Bartók, mentioned the full score submitted to the Rózsvölgyi competition: ‘I have copied down the ending to the Bluebeard score, too (the part that the copyist wrote), and at the end of February Béla is entering it in the Rózsavölgyi competition.’ See Bartók Béla családi levelei (Béla Bartók Family Letters), ed. Bartók, Béla Jr. and Gombocz, Adrienne (Budapest: Zeneműkiadó, 1981)Google Scholar, p. 217, English translation in Leafstedt, Inside Bluebeard's Castle, p.148. Accordingly, Bartók must have composed the second version of the ending in late October 1911 at the earliest and in early February 1912 at the latest.

4 Leafstedt, Inside Bluebeard's Castle, pp. 125–58.

5 Leafstedt, Inside Bluebeard's Castle, pp. 153–8.

6 See footnote 2.

7 Bartók Béla családi levelei, pp. 208–209, English translation in Leafstedt, Inside Bluebeard's Castle, pp. 132–133, and in Vikárius, Commentary, pp. 18–19.

8 On 14 August, he wrote to his wife, ‘weren't the burden of the full score on me, I would long ago have left’ (Bartók Béla családi levelei, p. 214, my translation).

9 See Balázs's diary entry, Florence, 7 September 1911, in Balázs, Béla, Napló (Diary), ed. Fábri, Anna (Budapest: Magvető, 1982), vol.I, pp. 509–513Google Scholar, as well as Kodály's recollection in Kodály, Zoltán, Visszatekintés (Looking Back), vol.III, ed. Bónis, Ferenc (Budapest: Zeneműkiadó, 1989)Google Scholar, p. 481. Both are quoted in Vikárius, Commentary, pp. 21 and 25.

10 Kroó, György, A Guide to Bartók, trans. Pataki, Ruth and Steiner, Mária (Budapest: Corvina Press, 1974)Google Scholar, p. 56.

11 An early stage work in which the xylophone is used is Richard Strauss’ Salome, where it is called ‘Holz und Strohinstrument.’

12 George Grove, ‘Strohfiedel’, in Grove, George, ed., A Dictionary of Music and Musicians [1st ed.] (London: Macmillan, 1878–89), vol. IIIGoogle Scholar, p. 746, and Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Xylophone’ (accessed 3 December 2009).

13 Bartók Béla családi levelei, p. 266, English translation in Leafstedt, Inside Bluebeard's Castle, p. 69.

14 There are two different manuscript copies of the xylophone part of The Wooden Prince in the archive of the Budapest Opera House. In the original 1917 part, one finds the name ‘sticcato’ at the top of the second page. On the cover of both copies of the xylophone part, ‘KLAVIATURÁS’ (with keyboard) has been written, what shows that the keyed xylophone was used at performances of the ballet, too.

15 ‘Sollte kein Tastenxylophon zur Verfügung stehen, dann bleibe diese Stimme fort.’ (First edition of the full score, Universal Edition 7028, 1925, p. 38, figure 30.) For reasons unknown, this footnote is missing in later editions. There is only one recording of Bluebeard in which a keyed xylophone is used. According to the CD liner notes, the instrument is probably identical with the one Bartók knew. See Béla Bartók, Duke Bluebeard's Castle, László Polgár, Ildikó Komlósi, Budapest Festival Orchestra conducted by Iván Fischer, CD, Philips 470633-2 (2003). On using a keyed xylophone in Bluebeard see also Somfai, László, ‘Historic performance of the music of yesterday: Béla Bartók's fight for perfect notation and why it is misleading today’, Hungarian Music Quarterly 8:1–2 (1997)Google Scholar, p. 2.

16 Wagner often uses two tenor and two bass tubas in E flat and B flat, respectively, as well as a contrabass tuba, as, for instance, in the opening bars of Siegfried.

17 This is a rare piece of evidence for Bartók's having consulted with musicians about technical capabilities of their instruments. See Somfai, Béla Bartók, p. 232.

18 Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Harp’ (accessed 20 January 2011).

19 The timpani part, to which Bartók wrote hárman (by three players), appears in the bottom stave, suggesting that it was inserted at a later stage. (In Example 3a, it is moved to its proper place.)

20 The transformation of seventh chords into ninth chords makes problematic the execution of the harp parts between bar 4 after figure 30 and bar 2 after figure 31, as ten-note chords cannot be played on the harp (except if broken). (NB Harpists only use their first four fingers, see Grove Music Online, s.v. ‘Harp.’)

21 By the way, the only extant sketch to Duke Bluebeard's Castle, which survived in Bartók's ‘Black Pocket-book’ (fol.12v, line 10), features precisely this theme. See the facsimile edition of Bartók's sketchbook: Bartók, Béla, Black Pocket-book: Sketches 1907–1922, ed. Somfai, László (Budapest: Editio Musica, 1987)Google Scholar. According to Somfai, this theme perhaps belonged to ideas for the 1910 Two Pictures. See Somfai, Béla Bartók, p. 43.

22 The blood motif is one of the central musical motives of Bluebeard. After isolated occurrences, it appears explicitly in the torture chamber scene for the first time as a slowly pulsating G♯–A dyad in the trumpets at figure 34. On that motif see also Leafstedt, Inside Bluebeard's Castle, pp. 69–78.

23 Translation from Béla Balázs, Duke Bluebeard's Castle, performing version commisioned by Merlin International Theatre Budapest for the Edinburgh Festival, August 1998, trans. Peter Zollman (n.p., n.d.).

24 Downward glissandi on the harp are also to be found in Richard Strauss's works, for example in Salome, figure 57.

25 Leafstedt, Inside Bluebeard's Castle, p. 158.