Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)
Foreword
FOREWORD of Béla Bartoks American correspondence was published. An essential source for writing the last chapter was Béla Bartok Jnr.’s book The Five Continents As I Have Seen Them During My 186 Journeys (Püski Kiadó 1992). At the same time, many letters that have since become the property of our family or whose contents we have learnt about in the meantime also served as a source. We made a special effort to include in the book all the passages that introduce Béla Bartok as a person pondering on the affairs of humanity. When quoting from the writings of Béla Bartok, we left intact the form he used, even if it may have followed the contemporary spelling. I dedicate the publication of the now complete work to the memory of my Godfather and Péter. Thanks are due, without naming, to all those who have contributed in any way to clarifying and supplementing the data and information over the years. Thanks to CSc Ms Marianne Rozsondai, retired head of the Manuscript Archive and Old Books Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA KIK), for the Hungarian translation of the letters written in German. For the first time - with the help of the Institute for Hungarian Studies - the English edition of the complete work could be finished, so the chronicles of Béla Bartoks life will already be available from this source for all interested people not only those speaking Hungarian. For the English translation I would like to express my special thanks to Márta Rubin, pianist, master teacher at the Music Academy, and her daughter Iris Balkiz for her contribution as proofreader. In todays media flood, “producers” of information like to attach a new, fantastic, maybe even scandalous statement to everything and thus get into the limelight. Béla Bartoks life, work and humanity were brilliant in themselves, so it is not necessary to add any false statements to make his brilliance shine brighter, because to do so would only make it fainter. 9
