Happy Friday everyone,
Thank you for subscribing to Wu Fei’s Music Daily. This is episode #477 — Bartók’s butterfly 巴托克蝴蝶.
This composition was created and recorded yesterday, performed by me on multitrack guzheng. In the previous episode #476, I was inspired by Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967). This piece, I am inspired by another Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945). The two composers were very close colleagues and friends during their active career years. As a young composition student, I studied and performed both of their chamber and choral music extensively.
Bartók was a composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hungary's greatest composers. (Ah, I must do an episode on Liszt, another super interesting composer.) Through Bartók‘s collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became ethnomusicology.
Bartók displayed notable musical talent very early in life: according to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano before he learned to speak in complete sentences. By the age of four he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano and his mother began formally teaching him the next year.
When I studied his music in high school, I fell in love with his music, especially the way he structured rhythms on piano and chamber music. I had never felt that “groove” from any previous classical compositions. I had to figure out what his “myths” was. After analyzing phrase by phrase, measure by measure, I found out that he often used a form of symmetrical structure built on a sequence of consecutive numbers to shape the chosen pitches, like 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1, like a butterfly. I was stunned and enlightened when I discovered this pattern.
If you want to read more about Béla Bartók, which I highly recommend, you can read it here. His piano solo works are beautiful and very interesting.
Wish you all a beautiful and interesting weekend!
Wu Fei 吴非
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