Deryk Barker [[log in to unmask]] wrote:

>Simon Corley ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
>
>>Among (not already mentioned) unfinished (last) works, I'd like to point
>>out these four:
>>
>>Bartok: Viola concerto ...
>
>Not being a big fan I wouldn't know but wasn't it the 3rd piano concerto he
>was working on - and was within 17 bars of finishing - when he died?

Richti mister Barker!  Three works Bartok worked on after he was taken
into hospital [Saranac Lake] after those Harvard lectures.  He at that time
lost all interest and mainly the power for composing, as he was ill and
tired, but he got a kick when Sergej Kussewitzky - the conductor - came
and visited him at the hospital.  Kussewitzky ordered a work from Bartok,
to the memory of madame Kussewitzky who recently had died.  Bartok told
Kussewitzky that he was to ill and tired to compose.  But Kussewitzky told
him to take so much time he wanted and needed, and he laid 1000 dollars on
Bartoks table and left him.  Bartok started composing, when he had got the
injection he needed and in Oktober 1943 he had his "Consert for Orchestra"
finished.  This is one of the most approachable works by Bartok, not his
ususal style.  The other work was the Viola Concerto mister Corley
mentions, written for William Primrose.  However bartok never finished the
Viola Concerto, he gave it up when he had done half, in 1945, and worked
only on the 3rd Piano Concert.  It was a hectic race with the time, and he
didn't had time to complete that either.  I don't want to be nosy or
nitpicking, but he had 18 bars left, not 17 as mister Barker says (but as
Mister Barker was so close so I am not angry with him for that).  Anyway -
what a wonderful last piece Bartok created!  In the concerto there is a
"nachtstueck" - nightpiece - which may be the most beautiful of all Bartoks
works in that genre.  After a beautiful moody choral of strings and piano
in blessed dialogue, a window to the night is opened, with brief birdsongs,
sounds of insects and mysic knockings in the piano.  That movement is a way
- of many - into Bartok.

Has anybody already mentioned: Schoenbergs Psalm 131 and "Modern Psalm"?

James Zehm <[log in to unmask]>