Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)
Settling In Budapest. Systematic Collection of Folk Songs (1907–1913)
SETTLING IN BUDAPEST. SYSTEMATIC COLLECTION OF FOLK SONGS ( 1 907-1 91 3) 1908 is quite a young man as yet, but already an accomplished personality, whose artistic best however is still in ferment. This art today belongs as yet mostly to the future ... but even until we can get hold of his music scores, it needs to be established rather urgently that those preferring the refined, the individual, the unprecedented in music can expect from him sheets of music notes of great interest.” He sends Violin Concerto to Henry Marteau. 19 May - He gets the response that Marteau has no time to look into the piece. 25 May - In Budapest he orders several sets of clothing from gentlemans tailor Manó Printz. 10 June - He settles the tailors bill. Letter sent to Henry Marteau. 15 June - In his letter to Péter König in Szeged he requests details about the situation and financial possibilities of the local music school. At the end of the school year he departs on a longish vacation, starting in Vienna where he stays at the Goldenes Lamm. He meets Busoni, to whom he shows his new work, the “14 Superior Piano Pieces” Op. 6 (later entitled 14 bagatells). 27 June - He writes his mother in Budapest, that Busoni liked the opus very much and wrote a really warm letter of recommendation to music publishers Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig advising the commendable act of publishing these pieces well in time. (They were finally first published by the Károly Rozsnyai and Son firm, under the title of Fourteen Piano Pieces; the Breitkopfs wrote that the pieces were too difficult and modern.) 28 June - He writes Etelka Freund from Baden bei Wien about the meeting with Busoni. 29 June - He gets invited by Busoni to play all 14 pieces for his pupils’ edification. 30 June - From Vienna he travels to Switzerland where he spends most of July. He goes to Geneva, Luzern (where he doesn’t feel comfortable), Zurich. 107
