Title Page | Collection Summary | Biographical/Organizational Note | Biographical/Organizational Note | Scope and Content | Arrangement
Biographical Note: Béla Bartók
Date | Event |
---|---|
1881 March 25 | Born in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (present-day Sînnicolau Mare, Romania) |
circa 1886 | Began studying piano with his mother, Paula Bartók |
1888 | Death of his father, Béla Bartók |
1890s | Composed his earliest works, many of which were dances |
1892 | Performed in his first public concert as a pianist in Nagyszölős, Ukraine |
1894 | Settled in Pozsony, Hungary (present-day Bratislava, Slovakia), with his family after several moves across present-day Ukraine, Slovakia, and Romania |
circa 1895 | Studied and worked as an organist at the Catholic Gymnasium in Pozsony |
1899 September-1903 May | Studied piano with István Thomán and composition with Hans von Koessler at the Budapest Academy of Music |
1904 May-November | Stayed in Gerlice Puszta, Hungary (present-day Ratkó, Slovakia), and notated the traditional Hungarian music of singer Lidi Dósa |
1905 March 18 | Met Zoltán Kodály, a scholar of Hungarian folksong, in Budapest |
1906-1934 | Worked as a piano professor at the Budapest Academy of Music |
1907 July-August | Traveled to Csík in Transylvania, recorded traditional folk music on two phonographs, and analyzed its musical characteristics |
1908-1910 | Composed and published his first collection of Hungarian and Slovak folk song settings, Gyermekeknek (For Children) |
1909 January 2 | Conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in his only appearance as a conductor |
1909 November | Married his student Márta Ziegler (divorced 1923; died December 2, 1957), who worked as his translator and copyist |
1910 August | Ziegler gave birth to his son Béla |
1911 | Composed the one-act opera A Kékszakállú herceg vára (Bluebeard's Castle) |
1913 | Traveled to collect Romanian folk music in Máramaros, Hungary (present-day Romania and Ukraine) |
1913 June | Traveled to collect folk music of the Berber people in Biskra, Algeria |
1914 | Composed Román nepi táncok (Romanian Folk Dances) |
1911 May 12 | Budapest Opera premiered his one-act ballet A fából faragott királyfi (The Wooden Prince) |
circa 1918 | Entered into a publishing contract with Universal Edition in Vienna, Austria |
1921-1923 | Completed a two-volume analytical study of 1,800 Slovak folk melodies that, along with a third volume from 1928, remained unpublished during his lifetime |
1924 | Finished orchestrating his pantomime A csodálatos mandarin (The Miraculous Mandarin) |
1918-1930 | Promoted his own works in more than 300 concerts in Hungary, Germany, France, Britain, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, and other countries |
1922 August | Performed in a chamber music festival, later known as the International Society for Contemporary Music |
1923 August | Married Ditta Pásztory, also a pianist (died November 21, 1982) |
1924 July | Ditta gave birth to his son Péter (died December 7, 2020) |
1927-1928 | Toured the United States while on sabbatical from the Budapest Academy of Music |
1929-1930 | Composed Húsz magyar népdal (Twenty Hungarian Folksongs) for voice and piano |
1931 January 13 | Became a member of the Permanent Committee for Literature and the Arts of the League of Nations’ Commission for Intellectual Co-operation |
1934 | Published his study on Hungarian folk music, Népzenénk és a szomszéd népek népzenéje Left his position at the Budapest Academy of Music and appointed as an ethnomusicologist in the Budapest Academy of Sciences |
1934-1940 | Collaborated with Kodály and other researchers on a comprehensive collection of Hungarian folk melodies |
1936 | Composed Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta for Paul Sacher and the Basel Chamber Orchestra |
1938 January 16 | Performed with his wife, Ditta, for the first time at the International Society for Contemporary Music |
1938 March | Sought a publishing contact with Boosey & Hawkes after Germany annexed Austria |
1938 April | Began transferring his manuscripts to Switzerland, London, and the United States to protect them from Nazi possession |
1939 November | Published a collection of 153 piano works, Mikrokosmos |
1940 April-May | Embarked on a tour of the United States, which including a concert with violinist Joseph Szigeti at the Library of Congress |
1940 October | Emigrated to New York with his wife Ditta |
1940 November | Awarded an honorary doctorate from Columbia University |
1941-1942 | Studied Milman Perry's collection of Serbo-Croatian field recordings at Columbia University |
1941 November 20-21 | Performed his last concert as a soloist |
1943 January 21-22 | Performed with his wife in his final concert appearance, the United States premiere of his Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Fritz Reiner |
1943 Spring | Appointed visiting professor at Harvard University Hospitalized for tuberculosis only a few weeks into the semester |
1944 December 1 | Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered his Concerto for Orchestra, which the Koussevitzky Foundation had commissioned the year prior |
1945 July-August | Composed his Third Piano Concerto, except for 17 measures that remained incomplete at the time of his death |
1945 September 26 | Died of leukemia in New York City |
1951 | Posthumous publication of A magyar népzene tára (Corpus of Hungarian Music), which Bartók had edited with Kodály |