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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
The melancholy thirteen-bar prefatory theme (“Mesto”) of the Sixth Quartet, which introduces each of the four movements in the work, has received much attention by writers on Bartók. Such terms as ‘motto theme’, ‘idée fixe’, ‘signature theme’, and ‘ritornello’ have usually been used to describe it, indicating that the work heralds Bartók's direction away from arch form—the structural method of his two preceding quartets—and towards cyclic form as a means of achieving overall unity. The sketches of the work, however, and the documents relating to it, suggest that the use of the prefatory theme as a cyclic link was not part of the original plan; that the work as first conceived would have shown an even more radical abandonment of the principles of thematic unification characteristic of nearly all Bartók's major works of the previous decade; and that the particular cyclic connection between the first and last movements was a structural modification based on new expressive needs which arose during the course of the composition of the work.
1 New York Bartók Archives Nos. 78 FSS1, 79 FSS1 and 79 FSFC1. The facsimiles from these are reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees.
2 Mus. Exx. Nos. 119 and 299c in Bartók's, Hungarian Folk Music, OUP, London 1931Google Scholar. Both songs also appear in No. 16 (parts I and V respectively) of Bartók's Twenty Hungarian Folk Songs (Husz magyar nepdal) for voice and piano of 1929. The second tune (No. 299c) appears in two variant forms, both in Hungarian Folk Music and in Bartók's 1929 setting. The version quoted in this article is the second variant.
3 Mus. Ex. No. 628 from Vol.1 (‘Instrumental Melodies’) of Bartók's, Rumanian Folk Music (edited Suchoff, Benjamin), Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1967Google Scholar.
4 Mus. Ex. No.5 from Vol.1 of Bartók's, Shvenske I'udove piesne (Slovak Folksongs), Academia Scientiarum Slovaca, Bratislava, 1959Google Scholar. The MS. notation of this example differs slightly from the published one. Our notation, for comparative purposes, shows the skeleton form (stripped of ornamental notes) as used by Bartók in the Three Rondos.
5 See also Mus. Exx. Nos. 522 and 523 from Vol.1, ‘Gyermekjátékok’ (Children's Games), of Bartók-Kodály, , Corpus Musicae Popularis Hungaricae, edited Kerényi, György, Academia Scientiarum Hungarica, Budapest 1951Google Scholar.
6 Bartók, , Rumanian Folk Music (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1967), Vol.1, p.16Google Scholar.
7 ibid. Mus.Ex.No. 106.