Night music (Bartók)

Night music is a musical style of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók which he used mostly in slow movements of multi-movement ensemble or orchestra compositions in his mature period. It is characterized by "eerie dissonances providing a backdrop to sounds of nature and lonely melodies".^[1]

Characteristics

As with many musical styles, it is not possible to make a satisfying let alone indisputable definition of Night music. Bartók did not say or explain much about this style, but he approved of the term and used it himself. Most of the works in Night music style do not carry a title. From an audience point of view "'Night Music' consists of those works or passages which convey to the listener the sounds of nature at night".

1. Sound portrayal as opposed to traditional melody and harmony. An example of Bartók's focus on sound quality are the minute directions on how the
   Sonata for two pianos and percussion
   have to be played. This sound portrayal includes:
   1. The direct imitations of natural sounds, mostly of nocturnal animals. Also the term nature music is sometimes used. Milan Kundera, in commenting on Bartók's expansion of art music with natural sounds, writes "sounds of nature inspire Bartók to melodic motives of a rare strangeness".^[5]
   2. Evocations of the mood of night and spaciousness.
   3. Melodies are portrayed in the music, rather than being a direct means of (self-)expression. For instance, a pastoral flute and its melody are portrayed in The Night's Music from
      Out of Doors. The effect on the listener is not primarily the esthetic effect of the melody. The melody's effect is rather indirect: the evocation of being out of doors at night in the plain and hearing the shepherd play his melody.^[6] In the words of Milan Kundera, not only the natural sounds at night, but also the lonely songs and melodies, far from being a Lied or other self-expression of the composer, find their origin in the external world.^[7] In the words of Schneider "Bartók seems to be suggesting musically the old Romantic organicist idea that peasant [and shepherds'] music is a natural phenomenon, a view he expressed in writing on several occasions". He also points out that "the G♯'s [in bar 37, which start as the mere sound of repeated notes and turn into the shepherd's melody] gradually emerge from the myriad of other natural sounds".^[8]
2. On a more technical musical level, a piece or movement of night music style may show any of the following characteristics.
   1. An
      cluster chord
      . Because of the slow and repetitive nature, these sounds come to fulfill an accompanying or background role.
   2. Curt motives at irregular time intervals within the meter. These motives may be the imitations of the natural sounds or more abstract, often primitive, motives. An example is A–A–A–C–A–A in the second movement of the
      Sonata for two pianos and percussion. This motive is scored as a quintuplet
      of sixteenths in ⁴
      ₄ time on the third beat, plus a sixteenth note on the fourth beat: the last A. As the implied or latent rhythm is 3+2+1, it sounds as an accelerando which evaporates suddenly.
   3. Wide pitch ranges in
      cluster chords of adjacent notes and trills and may well add to the evocation of spaciousness or loneliness.^[9]
   4. Overlap and insertions of widely different materials, e.g. a bird call in a melodic line. Different materials sound irrespective of one another leading to novel sound effects, and, more subjectively, multiple layers and perhaps the feeling of spaciousness.

Night music developed stepwise and has unclear boundaries. Yet, a list of pieces of Night music can be established including its precursors. In some cases one could argue that only specific sections within a piece or movement are Night music. Danchenka's list (1987) of some works specifies in many entries exactly which bars are Night music. For instance, only the middle section of the Adagio religioso of the Piano Concerto No. 3 is included. However, Gillies (1993) points out how the main melodic material of the opening and closing sections are related to the bird calls of the middle section. As the bird calls could not be modified to match other melodic material, the opening and closing sections had to be directly derived from the bird calls.

• Second Suite for small orchestra Op. 4, Sz. 34, BB 40, mvt. 3, Andante 1905
• Fourteen Bagatelles Op. 6, No.12. 1908
• Fragments of sections and moods in the opera
  Duke Bluebeard's Castle
  1911(−1917)
• Five Songs, Op. 15: No. 5, Here down in the valley (Hungarian: Itt lenn a völgyben) 6 February 1916
• The Miraculous Mandarin, Op. 19. 1918–1924: The section where, in the dark, the mandarin's body glows with an eerie blue-green light.
• Eight Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Op. 20, No. 3. 1920
• Slovak Dance
  )
• Lullaby from Village Scenes (Falún) (mvt. 4 of voice version, 1924, mvt. 2 of chamber choir version, May 1926)
• The Night's Music of the five piano pieces
  Out of Doors
  , Lento – (un poco) pìu Andante 1926
• Piano Concerto No. 1, mvt. 2, Andante 1926
• String Quartet No. 3, mvt. 1, Moderato 1927
• String Quartet No. 4, mvt. 3, Non troppo lento 1928
• Piano Concerto No. 2, mvt. 2, Adagio – Più adagio – Presto – Tempo I, 1931
• String Quartet No. 5, mvt. 2 Adagio molto and 4 Andante 1934
• Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, mvt. 3, Adagio 1936
• Sonata for two pianos and percussion
  , mvt. 2, Lento, ma non troppo 1937
• Mikrokosmos
  , No. 107 Melody in the Mist- tranquillo, and No. 144, Minor seconds, Major Sevenths – Lento, published 1940.
• Concerto for Orchestra (Bartók), Introduction of mvt. 1 and mvt. 3, "Elegia", 1943
• Piano Concerto No. 3, mvt. 2, Adagio religioso, 1945
• Sketches for a Viola Concerto, mvt. 2, Adagio religioso, 1945

Development of Night music in Bartók's output

As a

The Song op. 15, No. 5 Here down in the valley is a song in the Lied tradition. Consequently, nature is not objectively portrayed as it is in Night music but nature mirrors the emotions of the subject. Nonetheless, it contains a night music characteristic: arpeggiated clusters of three adjacent notes in the medium and lower registers on the piano, played forte. The text is not particularly strong, but greater forces than artistic value (let alone reason) formed the inspiration: Bartók was madly in love with the poetess.

INTERMEZZO The genesis of Here down in the Valley

Starting in the summer of 1915, Bartók (by that time 34 years old) undertook collection trips of Slovakian folk music in the country while staying in the mansion of Gombossy, the chief forester of the

Ady Endre were suggested as the hidden text writer. Denijs Dille discovered the true authorship from interviews with both girls in the late 1970s, shortly before their passing.^{[citation needed}

]

One of Bartók's most performed pieces is his Concerto for Orchestra. The opening bars present a theme of rising fourths in cellos and basses, answered by tremolando strings and fluttering flutes in Bartók's characteristic "Night music" style. Trumpets, pianissimo, chant a pungent, short-phrased chorale [...]^[clarify] Bartók described the keystone third movement, "Elegia", as a "lugubrious death-song", in which unsettled "night music" effects alternate with intense, prayerful supplications (again related to the chorale-like material that pervades the first half of the work).

Bartók's last composition which contains Night music style is the slow movement of his third piano concerto, written in August and September 1945. He wrote it when mortally ill, he died 26 September.

The movement opens and closes in an almost Romantic style, the middle section contains sounds of nature. Kundera wrote: The hypersensitive theme, unspeakably melancholic, is contrasted with the other, hyperobjective theme [...]: as if a soul in tears can only find solace in the non-sensitivity of nature. The natural sounds are still mysterious and full of anticipation, but not at all eerie. They are rather peaceful, perhaps light, as if in his last night music, a bright new morning is ready to break.

Notes