Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)
World War II. Second and Third American Tour (1939–1945)
1 945 CHRONICLES OF BÉLA BARTOK'S LIFE The Yehudi Menuhins invite the Bartoks to their California home. Doctors find it a very good idea. He writes his son Péter that he got off cigarettes: “But because I stopped smoking, well, this might also play a part [or only this plays a part] in the cough having vanished as if blown away. Either way, I persist stubbornly in stopping, because that artificial lack of cigarettes has long been angering me.”. 5 April - Bartok writes from New York to Menuhin in Alma that they would go with pleasure in mid-June and would stay for 3 months. In the meantime time has come again for the extension of the Bartoks’ residence permit, and in connection, for their temporary leave of - and then return to - the United States. 10 April - From New York Bartok writes USA Consul Bayington in Montreal a letter regarding his wife’s residence permit. 15 April - Expressing his sorrow upon Franklin D. Roosevelt’s death he writes his son in Panama: “I am very sorry that F.D.R. did not live to see the end of the thing, although - who knows - the future might have brought him great disappointments. He was a great man. I was most impressed by him answering Molotov simply ‘it is up to you’ when that had wanted to force him to a premature 2nd front with a separate peace settlement (sometime in 42 [or 43]).”. He also writes about their travel plans to Montreal and California. 18 April - He writes the Edward B. Marks Music Corporation about an unfinished Bartok Album. 20 April - He obtains a certain “Pre examination” in New York for their temporary Montreal trip. 21 April - He writes Consul Bayington in Montreal: “I am a Hungarian citizen, my place of birth belongs to Romania right now”. 26 April - He writes Hans W. Heinsheimer: he is dissatisfied with the proofs of Concerto. At the same time he is asking for the addresses of violist William Primrose and violinist Isaac Stern with whom he 498
