The music of words in Béla Bartók’s Twenty-Seven Choruses

Pintér, Csilla (2012) The music of words in Béla Bartók’s Twenty-Seven Choruses. Studia Musicologica, 53 (1-3). pp. 141-152. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

Bartók’s two- and three-part choruses for children’s and female voices are his best-known choral works worldwide. Nevertheless, the cycle as a whole does not enjoy a wide popularity outside of Hungary. The reason for this lies in the fact that, being a textually inspired composition written in an inaccessible language, it is internationally rarely performed due to difficulties of pronunciation and accentuation — not to mention the difficulties of translation. Text has a very special role in Bartók’s vocal works, where words do not act only through their meaning, nor do they function merely as a supplementary element of music, but are both an essential shaping force in the field of rhythm and a fundamental factor of timbre. The subject of this paper is a survey of some difficulties in performing the Twenty-Seven Choruses with particular emphasis on the role of the text in the pieces’ rhythmic style. The relation between words and timbre and, in connection with that, the orchestral version of seven choruses are also examined.

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