He soon started to compose longer pieces of music. He liked the music of Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy and these influenced his style of music. He started to be interested in folk music. This can be heard in the first of his six string quartets.
Bartók and Kodály travelled together into the countryside to collect and study old Hungarian folk melodies. People in those days thought that real Magyar (old Hungarian) folk music was Gypsy music. Bartók and Kodály showed that there were other traditions beside these. They found music which used pentatonic scales similar to those used in some parts of Asia. The two composers started to use these folk ideas in their own compositions. Kodály often quoted (copied) actual folk songs in his own music, while Bartók preferred to compose music which sounded like folksong without actually copying it.
In 1909, Bartók married Márta Ziegler. Their son, also named Béla, was born in 1910.
In 1911, Bartók wrote his only opera, "Bluebeard's Castle". There are only two singers in the opera: Bluebeard and his wife Judith. He also wrote a ballet called "The Wooden Prince". This started to make him famous abroad. Another ballet, "The Miraculous Mandarin", is even more famous today. It shows the influence of Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, as well as Richard Strauss. He wrote a lot of chamber music including a total of 6 string quartets, 2 violin sonatas and a "Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion". He wrote some pieces for smaller orchestras: "Divertimento for strings" and "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta".
Bartók divorced Márta in 1923, and married a piano student, Ditta Pásztory. His second son, Péter, was born in 1924.
When World War II broke out Bartók criticized the Nazis. After they came into power in Germany, he refused to give concerts there and did not use his German publisher. His political ideas gave him a great deal of trouble in Hungary.
Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, Bartók felt he had to emigrate to the USA with Ditta Pásztory. They lived in New York City. Their son Péter joined them in 1942 and later joined the United States Navy. Bartók ‘s older son Béla stayed in Hungary.
Bartók did not feel comfortable in the USA, and found it very difficult to compose. He was also not very well known in America, and not many people were interested in his music. He and his wife Ditta gave concerts, and for a while, they were given some money to work on a collection of Yugoslav folk songs. They did not have very much money, although he had some friends who gave them enough to live on. Serge Koussevitsky asked him to write the " Concerto for Orchestra ". This soon became Bartók's most popular work, and brought him some money. He was also asked by Yehudi Menuhin to write a "Sonata for Solo Violin". This seemed to make him interested again in composing, and he went on to write his "Piano Concerto No. 3" and began work on his " Viola Concerto".
Bartók died by polycythemia in New York City from on 26 September 1945, aged 64. He left the Viola Concerto unfinished at his death; it was later finished by his pupil Tibor Serly.
Bartók’s music has many modern techniques such atonality, bitonality and modern harmonies. He often uses different kinds of scales (not just major and minor ones), and very complicated rhythms. A lot of these are inspired by the folk music he heard. He wrote a lot of piano music, including some easy pieces for people who are learning the piano. This includes a collection of pieces in six volumes called "Mikrokosmos" which are very popular with young musicians today.
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh, OM CH (born Lowestoft, 22 November 1913; died Aldeburgh, 4 December 1976) was probably the greatest English composer of his time. He came from East Anglia (a region in the East of England) and he often thought about the East Anglian landscape and the sea when writing his music. He wrote a lot of music for his long-term partner, the tenor Peter Pears. His operas include "Peter Grimes", "Billy Budd", "A Midsummer Night’s Dream", and "Death in Venice". His "War Requiem" was performed in Coventry Cathedral in 1962 after it had been rebuilt because the old cathedral had been destroyed in the war. He wrote music for children which sounds like proper, adult music. Britten started the Aldeburgh Festival. He was an excellent pianist and conductor.
Benjamin Britten started composing music at the age of five although he had no one to help him. When he was ten years old he took part in an amateur music festival in Norwich. A composer called Frank Bridge heard him and was so impressed that he offered to teach him composition. He helped Britten to compose using proper musical techniques. Britten started to get to know music by a lot of important modern composers including Schoenberg and Bartók. In 1930 he went to the Royal College of Music. He had excellent piano teachers but he did not learn much from his composition teacher John Ireland and most of the music he wrote was never performed. Britten was more interested in music from abroad than in English music. In 1934 he heard the opera "Wozzeck" by Alban Berg. He wanted to go to Austria to study with Berg but he was not allowed to. Meanwhile, some of his first proper compositions started to be performed. He wrote some music for movies that were being made by the General Post Office, including one about a train delivering mail. The music describes the rhythm of the train rushing along.
While working on the movie music he met the writer W. H. Auden. He started to be interested in political ideas. These can be heard in some works he wrote at this time such as "Our Hunting Fathers" (1936) and "Ballad of Heroes" (1939). When Auden emigrated to the United States Britten followed him. With him was the tenor Peter Pears who was to become a lifelong friend and partner, and who was to be the inspiration for many songs and operas.
Britten wrote several compositions in the USA including "Sinfonia da Requiem" (1940) and his "First String Quartet" (1941). The following year he was reading about the poet George Crabbe who came from Suffolk, the same part of England where Britten had grown up. Britten suddenly became homesick. He realized that he could not work and be himself in a foreign country. So he returned with Pears to England.
As soon as he was on the boat sailing back to England he started work on "Ceremony of Carols". Back in England, Britten and Pears gave concerts to audiences of all kinds and took part in opera productions of Sadler's Wells Opera Company, which was having a new theatre built. On the 7 June 1945 the new theatre was opened with a performance of Britten’s opera "Peter Grimes". This opera was to make Britten into the most famous English composer of his time. It was soon being performed abroad as well as in England.