Bartók Béla, ifj.: Chronicles of Béla Bartók's Life (Budapest, 2021)
Preface
CHRONICLES OF BÉLA BARTOK'S LIFE number of letters only the date and addressee appear - for legal reasons -, still I found expedient to indicate these as well for the sake of completeness and further research. This documentation gives evidence also to the incredible workload Bartok was capable of undertaking: beside his diverse primary job he wrote at times even 5-6 letters a day, gave private lessons, went on social visits. I quoted essential data from family letters, mainly about 1,000 from his mother but also several hundred from other family members; however, I relied on replies from strangers to Bartok only when in need of an explanation. Bartok usually saved every script and document, and most of these remained intact despite the devastations of the two wars. Thus I was able to record daily events, maybe insignificant in themselves but important in their completeness, based on school certificates, military documents, appointments and assignments, train tickets and hotel bills, tax papers and concert programmes. I strived for the precise recording of streets, addresses, concert halls, hotel names, registration numbers, etc. to make finding these easier, if anytime anyone wished to ’follow Bartók ’. I also convey the recorded exact numeric data on Bartok’s shoppings, salaries, and fees, because these are relevant to his all-time financial situation. I will refer to eventual mistaken data of some sources, but hereby I also mention the essential ones. There are inaccurate dates in documents (i.e. in Bartok’s military papers, his mother’s birth certificate, etc.); sometimes postal and railway stamps show different days; the dating of letters and especially dating and other data of concerts published in various biographical publications are often mistaken. In family letters Bartok’s mother misunderstood deadlines, names several times, Bartok himself wrote wrong dating, address or dates very often (31 June and 31 September also appear in his scripts), and he changed his earlier fixed programme regularly. Most of the mistakes are found in the concert programmes, especially in naming the pieces. Bartok made approximately 646 public appearances. He played the same pieces several times, but he 12
