Out of Doors (Bartók)
Encyclopedia
Out of Doors is a set of five piano solo pieces, Sz. 81, BB 89, written by Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

 in 1926. Out of Doors (Hungarian: Szabadban, German: Im Freien, French: En Plein Air) is among the very few instrumental compositions by Bartók with programmatic titles. It contains the following five pieces with approximate duration based on metronome markings:
  1. With Drums and Pipes - pesante
    Pesante
    Pesante is a musical term, meaning "heavy and ponderous." It is often used in Latin languages, such as Spanish or Portuguese, with the word pesado meaning heavy in both of these languages. The French equivalent is lourd....

     1'45"
  2. Barcarolla - andante 2'17"
  3. Musettes - moderato 2'35"
  4. The Night's Music - lento - (un poco) pìu andante 4'40"
  5. The Chase - presto 2'00"-2'12"

Period and circumstances of composition

After World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 (1914–1918), Bartók was largely prevented from continuing his folk music field research outside Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

. This increased the development of his own personal style, marked by a sublimation of folk music into art music. Bartók composed Out of Doors in the 'piano year' of 1926, together with his Piano Sonata
Piano Sonata (Bartók)
The Piano Sonata BB 88 of Béla Bartók was composed in 1926. It is tonal, but is highly dissonant. It uses the piano in a percussive fashion.The work is in three movements, with the following tempo indications:*Allegro moderato...

, his First Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 1 (Bartók)
The Piano Concerto No. 1 , Sz. 83, BB 91 of Béla Bartók was composed in 1926. It is about 23 to 24 minutes long.-Background:For almost three years, Bartók had composed little. He broke that silence with several piano works, one of which was the piano concerto...

, and Nine Little Pieces. This particularly fruitful year followed a period of little compositional activity. The main trigger to start composing again was Bartók's attendance on 15 March 1926 of a performance of Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

's Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (and Le Rossignol
The Nightingale (opera)
The Nightingale is a Russian conte lyrique in three acts by Igor Stravinsky. It is generally known by its French name...

and Petrushka) in Budapest with the composer as pianist. This piece and Bartók's compositions of 1926 are marked by the treatment of the piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 as a percussion instrument
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

. Bartók wrote in early 1927:

It seems to me that the inherent nature [of the piano tone] becomes really expressive only by means of the present tendency to use the piano as a percussion instrument.

Another influence on the style of his piano compositions of 1926 was his study and editing of French and Italian (pre)-Baroque
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 keyboard music in the early 1920s.

Interrelation of the five pieces

Although the set is often referred to as a suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...

, Bartók did not usually play the set in its entirety. He premièred the first, fourth, and fifth pieces on the Hungarian radio on 8 December 1926, and played the fourth piece separately on numerous occasions. He referred to the set in a letter to his publisher as "five fairly difficult piano pieces", i.e., not as a suite. An arch form
Arch form
In music, arch form is a sectional structure for a piece of music based on repetition, in reverse order, of all or most musical sections such that the overall form is symmetric, most often around a central movement...

 in the set has been proposed, with successive tonal centers of E-G-A-G-E, but different tonal centers have also been suggested, e.g., D-G-D-G-F. Nissman shows how individual pieces' motives and endings lead logically into the following piece within the set. Originally, Out of Doors was published in two volumes: one contained the first three pieces and the other the last two.

The compositional process sheds some light on the interrelation of the five pieces. Bartók's first sketches show pieces 1 and 2 as finally published. The third piece was added later, based on unused material for the third movement of the Piano Sonata
Piano Sonata (Bartók)
The Piano Sonata BB 88 of Béla Bartók was composed in 1926. It is tonal, but is highly dissonant. It uses the piano in a percussive fashion.The work is in three movements, with the following tempo indications:*Allegro moderato...

. Notably, the two final pieces, 4 and 5, form one continuous piece, numbered "3" in the sketches. Bartók applied this juxtaposition of "The Night's Music" in a slow tempo with a presto section in a single piece/movement also in the second (middle) movement of his Second Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Bartók)
Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Sz. 95, BB 101 is one of the composer's more accessible compositions for audiences. It is especially notorious for being one of the most difficult pieces in the repertoire....

.

With Drums and Pipes

This is the only piece in the set which can be traced to a specific folk song, Gólya, gólya, gilice (see illustration). Bartók called his piece in Hungarian Síppal, dobbal,..., literally translated With a whistle, with a drum, ..., which for Hungarians is up to this day an obvious quote from this folk song. The main motive of Bartók's piece is found in bars 9 and 10. This motive is taken from bars 5 and 6 of the folk song. The only change Bartók made was to accommodate the syncopation. The song text in literal translation:
Stork, stork, [nonsense word
Nonsense word
A nonsense word, unlike a sememe, may have no definition. If it can be pronounced according to a language's phonotactics, it is a logatome. Nonsense words are used in literature for poetic or humorous effect. Proper names of real or fictional entities are sometimes nonsense words.-See...

], what made your leg bloody?
A Turkish child cut it, a Hungarian child cured it.
With a whistle, with a drum, and with a reed violin.


Károly Viski quotes this song in reference to the shamanistic origin of the text:
If we remember that the Hungarians, like many other people, were adherents of Shamanism in a certain period of their ancient history, these remnants can easily be understood. But the Shaman, the priest of the pagan Shamanism, is not only a fortune teller [….], he is also a doctor and magician, who drives away illnesses and cures them not with medicines, but with magic spells and songs. And if “he wants to hide”-that is in modern parlance- if he wants to fall into trance, besides other things, he prepares himself by dancing, singing and by performing to the accompaniment of drums ceremonial exercises […] Traces of this can be found even to this day in Hungarian folklore; of course […] in children’s playful rhymes: [song quote] In the game which goes with this little rhyme, they beat each other with great noise and rapid gesticulation.


The quotation from the folk song that Bartók used contains only the trichord on the second degree of the tonal center in the song: E, F#, and G. In Bartók's piece, this motive makes the tonal center (seem) E. Yet, just like the folk song, the piece comes home to the first degree: the tonal center D appears later in the piece at the end of the legato B section (measure 64) and the repeat of the A section.

The piece is in ternary form with a coda. The opening, closing, and coda sections consist of imitations of drums and lower wind instruments—"pipes". A less percussive, legato treatment of the piano is called for in the middle section in the middle and higher register, imitating gentler wind instruments. Bartók made a sketch of an orchestration for this piece in 1931, using for the opening section timpani
Timpani
Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

 and gran cassa
Bass drum
Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...

 ('drums') and (double
Contrabassoon
The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...

)-bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...

s and trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...

s ('pipes').

Barcarolla

This has received less attention in literature than the other movements. The left hand plays legato arpeggiated
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...

 chords, imitating waves. The meter and harmony change constantly, often every measure. For a barcarolle
Barcarolle
A barcarole is a folk song sung by Venetian gondoliers, or a piece of music composed in that style...

, there is little melody. As far as instrumental qualities and sound effects, the piano is used in a rather traditional way in this piece.

Musettes

The title refers to the musette
Musette de cour
The musette de cour or baroque musette is a musical instrument of the bagpipe family. Visually, the musette is characterised by the short, cylindrical shuttle-drone and the two chalumeaux. Both the chanters and the drones have a cylindrical bore and use a double reed, giving a quiet tone similar to...

, a type of small bagpipe. Bartók's was inspired by Couperin
François Couperin
François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.-Life:Couperin was born in Paris...

, who wrote keyboard pieces imitating this instrument. The piece consists mostly of imitating the sound effects of a poorly tuned pair of musettes. There is little melody. With drums and pipes and Tambourine of Bartók's Nine little pieces similarly consist of sound imitations of folk instruments.

A noteworthy instruction reads Due o tre volte ad libitum (play optionally two or three times), giving the performer a degree of freedom rare in classical music scores, and underlining the improvisatory and spontaneous nature of folk bagpipe music. The Sostenuto pedal of the grand piano is necessary for a right rendering of the final four bars.

The Night's Music

This piece was immediately well-received in Hungary, unlike many of Bartók's other compositions. Stevens already focuses attention to the quality and importance of this work in his early biography. It is "the locus classicus of a uniquely Bartókian contribution to the language of musical modernism".

The form is described variously in the literature, e.g., a loose rondo, ABACABA or as ternary, with the middle as 'developmental' section.

Three types of material are distinguished:
  1. A Imitation of the sounds at night in a Hungarian summer, tonal centre G or ambiguous tonality. A highly dissonant arpeggiated cluster chord (E#,F#,G,G#,A) is repeated throughout the section on the beat. On top of this, six imitations of natural sounds (birds, cicadas, and the particular Hungarian unka frog
    European Fire-bellied Toad
    The European Fire-bellied Toad Bombina bombina is a fire-bellied toad native to mainland Europe. These toads are slightly toxic sometimes to humans...

    ) are scored in a random fashion. This material is found in bars 1–17, 34–37, 48, and 67–71. There and small quotes in bars 25–26 and in 60, while the arpeggiated cluster chord is often inserted in the B and C material.
  2. B Chorale in G. This material is found in bars 17–34 and 58–66.
  3. C Peasant flute imitation strictly in the Dorian mode
    Dorian mode
    Due to historical confusion, Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different musical modes or diatonic scales, the Greek, the medieval, and the modern.- Greek Dorian mode :...

     on C#. Bartók frequently composed contrasting sections with a tonal centre which is a tritone
    Tritone
    In classical music from Western culture, the tritone |tone]]) is traditionally defined as a musical interval composed of three whole tones. In a chromatic scale, each whole tone can be further divided into two semitones...

     apart C#-G from a previous section. This material is found in bars 37–58, 61–67, and 70–71.


Notable overlap occurs in bars 61–66, where the chorale (B) and peasant flute (C) materials sound together. This is far from a traditional duet, because the characters, tempos and tonal centers of the two parts vary widely, as often in Bartók's night music.

The random scoring of nature's sounds in the A-material makes memorisation extremely difficult. But memorisation turns out to be not necessary as witnessed by the anecdote of Mária Comensoli, a piano student of Bartók. She was astonished when she first played The Night's Music by heart (as required at Bartók's lessons) and Bartók remarked

Are you playing exactly the same number of ornaments that imitate the noises of the night and at exactly the same place where I indicated them? This does not have to be taken so seriously, you can place them anywhere and play of them as many as you like.


The many precise dynamic and stress signs witness how Bartók aimed for very specific performance and sound effects. Three footnotes in the score deal with the exact execution of arpeggio
Arpeggio
An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...

s and grace note
Grace note
A grace note is a kind of music notation used to denote several kinds of musical ornaments. When occurring by itself, a single grace note normally indicates the intention of either an appoggiatura or an acciaccatura...

 figurations. The fourth footnote instructs the pianist to play the cluster chord E, F, F-sharp, G, G-sharp, A, B-flat, C-flat with the palm of the hand.

The Chase

This piece consists of five melodic episodes. They are prefaced and separated (except for the fourth and fifth episode) by 'ritornello' type sections of repeated cluster chords in a clashing rhythm (duplets
Tuplet
In music a tuplet is "any rhythm that involves dividing the beat into a different number of equal subdivisions from that usually permitted by the...

 in 6/8 measure).

The piece is related to the pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin
The Miraculous Mandarin
The Miraculous Mandarin or The Wonderful Mandarin Op. 19, Sz. 73 , is a one act pantomime ballet composed by Béla Bartók between 1918–1924, and based on the story by Melchior Lengyel. Premiered November 27, 1926 in Cologne, Germany, it caused a scandal and was subsequently banned...

, in character to the chase scene and harmonically to the important two building blocks which are presented directly at the start of the pantomime:
  1. A three-note chord consisting of the ground note, and a tritone and a major seventh above, e.g. F, B, E.
  2. A scale spanning an augmented octave


The left hand plays an ostinato
Ostinato
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...

 arpeggiated quintuplet
Tuplet
In music a tuplet is "any rhythm that involves dividing the beat into a different number of equal subdivisions from that usually permitted by the...

 chord of F, G#, B, C#, E, of which the E is on the beat (6/8 measure). This figure consists of the ‘pantomime’ chord of F, B, E, to which the quarter of G#, C# is added. This ostinato changes at every new episode:
  1. In the second episode, the C# is moved an octave down, making the whole figure span a minor tenth (C#, F, G#, B, E,).
  2. In the third episode, the B is moved an octave down B, F, G#, C#, E, calling in Bartók’s own fingering for a change of hand position in the execution of this figure (1, 5, 4, 2, 1).
  3. In the fourth episode, the figure is expanded to B, D, G, A#, F, G#, C#, E (in two quadruplets
    Tuplet
    In music a tuplet is "any rhythm that involves dividing the beat into a different number of equal subdivisions from that usually permitted by the...

     per two beats). This figure can be interpreted in different ways. Firstly, as two ‘pantomime’ chords, (F, B, E & B, F, A#; or F, B, E & D, G#, C#) to which four or two notes are added (D, G, G#, C#; and G, A# respectively). The chords are remarkably symmetrically distributed over the figure. Secondly, two ‘pantomime’ chords (F, B, E and G#, D, G) with two added notes (A#, C# ). Thirdly, the figure consists of two four-note figures, exactly a tritone apart. Lastly, the pitch inventory consists of two diminished seventh chords, on B and G, symmetrically divided over the figure.
  4. Within the fourth episode, the figure is limited to A#, B, D, G for a few measures. This seems mostly a necessity for pianistic reasons, but the resulting figure is quite similar to the one bridging the fourth and fifth episodes
  5. Bridging the fourth and fifth episodes, for only one measure the figure changes to B, D, F, G, A#. This figure is the first half of a cadence which resolves in the recapitulation of the first theme.
  6. In the fifth episode, the figure is the same as in the first episode, except that it is stretched to ten notes over two octaves in two beats, F, G#, B, C#, E, F, G#, B, C#, E.


The melody features the augmented octave scale.

This piece is technically difficult: "From the standpoint of technique and endurance, especially for the left hand, this [piece] could easily be the most demanding in Bartók's entire output.

Score

The Boosey & Hawkes printing is a facsimile of the original edition from Universal Edition, although a few notes and titles in different languages are lost. There is a new edition from Boosey & Hawkes by Peter Bartók and Nelson Dellamaggiore. On IMSLP a Russian edition is/was available which added some fingerings and unauthentic (damper) pedal markings. The pieces' Hungarian titles were also changed. ‘Síppal, dobbal’ (‘With pipe, with drum’ an obvious song quote) became ‘Dobokkal és fuvolaval’ (With drums and [modern, metal] flutes) and Hajsza ('The Chase') became Üldözés ('Persecution') .

Notable recordings

  • Bartók had planned to record the fourth piece himself, writing it would last approximately four and a half minutes. No recording is now known to exist.
  • György Sándor
    György Sándor
    György Sándor was a Hungarian pianist, writer, student and friend of Béla Bartók, and champion of his music.- Early years :...

     was a pupil of Bartók.
  • Zoltán Kocsis
    Zoltán Kocsis
    Zoltán Kocsis is a Hungarian pianist, conductor, and composer.Born in Budapest, he started his musical studies at the age of five and continued them at the Béla Bartók Conservatory in 1963, studying piano and composition...

     recorded all Bartók solo piano music attempting to stay close to Bartók's score and Bartók's own performance. Tempos are strictly followed from the score, including the extraordinary 160 dotted quarters per minute in The Chase.
  • Murray Perahia
    Murray Perahia
    Murray Perahia KBE is an American concert pianist and conductor.-Early life:Murray Perahia was born in the Bronx borough of New York City to a family of Sephardi Jewish origin. According to the biography on his Mozart piano sonatas CD, his first language was Judaeo-Spanish or, Ladino. The family...

    .

Sources

  • Bayley, Amanda (ed.) (2001). The Cambridge Companion to Bartók. Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521669580
  • Bónis, Ferenc. 1995. Így láttuk Bartókot: ötvennégy emlékezés. Budapest: Püski. ISBN 978-9638256539
  • Danchenka, Gary. "Diatonic Pitch-Class Sets in Bartok's Night Music" Indiana Theory Review 8, no. 1 (Spring, 1987): 15-55.
  • Fosler-Lussier, Danielle. (2007). Music Divided: Bartók's Legacy in Cold War Culture. California Studies in 20th-Century Music 7. Berkeley : University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520249653
  • Gillies, Malcolm (2006). "Bartók's "Fallow Years": A Reappraisal". Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae Volume 47, Numbers 3-4 / September 2006. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. ISSN 0039-3266 (Print) 1588-2888 (Online) DOI 10.1556/SMus.47.2006.3-4.7
  • Nissman, Barbara. (2002). Bartók and the Piano: A Performer's View. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0-8108-4301-3
  • Schneider, David E. (2006). Bartók, Hungary, and the Renewal of Tradition: Case Studies in the Intersection of Modernity and Nationality. California Studies in 20th-Century Music 5. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520245037
  • Schneider, David E. (1995). "Bartók and Stravinsky: Respect, Competition, Influence and the Hungarian Reaction to Modernism in the 1920s". In Bartók and his world, edited by Peter Laki, 172-202. Princeton: Princeton University Press ISBN 978-0691006338
  • Somfai, Laszlo (1993). "The 'Piano Year' of 1926". In The Bartók Companion, edited by Malcolm Gillies, 173-188. London: Faber. ISBN 0571153305 (cloth), ISBN 0571153313 (pbk) American printing, Portland, Oregon: Amadeaus Press, 1994. ISBN 0-931340-74-8 (cloth) ISBN 0-931340-75-6 (pbk)
  • Somfai, Laszlo (1996). Béla Bartók: Composition, Concepts, and Autograph Sources. Ernest Bloch Lectures in Music 9. Berkeley : University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520084858
  • Stevens, Halsey. (1953). The Life and Music of Béla Bartók. New York: Oxford University Press. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964. Third edition, prepared by Malcolm Gillies. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0198163497
  • Viski, Károly (1932). Hungarian Peasant Customs. Budapest: George Vajna & Co. ASIN: B002LY2XQM (No ISBN).
  • Yeomans, David (1988). Bartók for Piano: A Survey of His Solo Literature. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-31006-7 Paperback reissue, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-253-21383-5

External links

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