5 Facts About Bartók's Divertimento

Chamber Music Society will play Béla Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings, BB 118 during the opening night show, String Sonorities. This selection is special in that it played only once before, exactly ten years ago, to the day. This season’s opening night show is October 17th, and it also played October 17th, 2013. To mark the occasion, here are five facts about the movement you may not know.

1. Divertimento was commissioned by Paul Sacher, the conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra. For the duration of his work, Bartók resided in Sacher’s chalet in the Swiss Alps.

On the experience, Bartók wrote to his son:

“Fortunately I can put this [war] worry out of my mind if I have to—it does not disturb my work. Somehow I feel like a musician of olden times—the invited guest of a patron of the arts. For here I am, as you know, entirely the guest of the Sachers; they see to everything—from a distance. In a word, I am living alone—in an ethnographic object: a genuine peasant cottage. The furnishings are not in character, but so much the better, because they are the last word in comfort. They even had a piano brought from Berne for me...The janitor’s wife cooks and cleans, and my wish is her command. Recently, even the weather has been favoring me. However, I can’t take advantage of the weather to make excursions: I have to work: a piece for Sacher himself (something for a string orchestra); in this respect also my position is like that of the old-time musician. Luckily the work went well, and I finished it in fifteen days (a piece of about twenty-five minutes). I just completed it yesterday.”

2. He completed it in fifteen days.

3. Bartók wrote Divertimento in 1939. The light opening transforms into a dark, destabilizing movement, reflecting the political climate. It ends with a rondo formed around a double fugue.

4. Bartók emigrated to New York City in 1940, shortly after writing Divertimento. He lived in Forest Hills, Queens before settling in Riverdale in the Bronx.

5. The folk-like melody is drawn from his experience researching and transcribing folk music. In fact, he is often credited as a founder of ethnomusicology, or, the study of music in its cultural contexts.

From the Inside Chamber Music Podcast:

“He wanted to not sound German. He wanted to use the whole chromatic spectrum, all the notes in some interesting way. But he didn't want to imitate a German, or he didn't even like that world of Schoenberg's. And of course, what he discovered was the folk music of Hungary and, which is his country, and also Bulgaria and Romania.

And using the folk music, he developed his own language. But he wasn't just using folk music. That's really important. He was also trying to expand the way that music could utter anything. And so he was looking and listening to everything. And why don't we hear a little bit of music and then I'm going to say something about the history of Bartók's looking for new music.”

Inside Chamber Music: Bartók’s Divertimento for Strings, BB 118