Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)

Preface

PREFACE

himself often gave their titles differently; further uncertainty was caused at appearances abroad by inaccurate translations or misunderstandings. When elaborating the programmes we tried to use the usual titles while keeping the wording of the given programme in case of doubt. Bartok had written her mother already on 1 April 1903 that right orthography in music is multiple times more difficult than in any other language known to him.

It seemed necessary to mention the more significant performances of Bartoks compositions at home and abroad, even if not among his own activities when Bartok himself was not present, because by means of these we can follow the gradual increase of his popularity. We commemorate Bartoks literary activities, his articles, and pamphlets only connected to individual references, because dates of their publication were usually completely different from those of their writing, so they don’t fit into the sequel of days.

Bartok didn’t write a diary or regular notes in general. There was the rare exception of his work diary written - mainly by request of the Academy - during his scientific academical work started in the autumn of 1934, the copy of which was put at my disposal by Dr. György

Kerényi,

Bartok’s colleague at the time. Recording all data seemed superfluous, but I summarized monthly the time spent there for the year 1934/35 for reference, it being basically equal to the schedule of the other years.

Just the two most important of Bartok’s activities proved the least possible to insert into his biography on a precise daily basis: composition and the collecting of folk songs. In the case of the first, only a few daily events could be recorded due to its continuity, at most some references in letters. Bartok noted the end date on some of his works, these appear in the chronology, of course. In folk song collecting the beginning and end of individual trips can mostly be ascertained, but the intermediate time in individual villages is uncertain. Only the month (sometimes only the year) appears on the cover plates, and there are obvious slips of 13