Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)
Preface
PREFACE PREFACE Béla Bartok inspired the publication of quite a number of biographies, memoirs and descriptions already in his lifetime, this number ever increasing since his passing. Most of these were rather unilateral or lacking in detail, there appeared many a wrong data and mistaken deduction. It seemed timely to publish a more complete compilation showing a more authentic view of Bartoks career based partly on existing sources, partly on witnesses still alive. The large number of collected data made the diary-like detailed description of Bartoks life possible. Bartok lived for 23,561 days in all, regarding the first 18 years of which we have only about 100 authentic pieces of information as he then lived mostly in his parents’ home, during this period only a few events of some importance stand out from his everyday life. Nevertheless, we can follow in detail the places where Bartok stayed, his family circumstances, studies, human and musical development even in this period. - However, we succeded gathering nearly 4,700 facts regarding the 17,000 days of his adulthood, meaning that we can follow his life path with 3-4 days intervals, there remains hardly a blank spot in his life. Bartoks and his family members’ correspondence provides most of the sources. I used information from more than 2,000 letters by Bartok himself, and of course also letters to strangers which have already been printed (primarily as a result of Dr. János Demény ’s work) beside family correspondence published this year for the first time. Publishing the full text of these letters is no task of this book. Rather I replaced the dry description of events at times with summarized Bartok quotes. In case of a 11
