Following the enlightening call for the workshop “Historical Perspectives on Musical Commissions” at the end of 2023, I searched for any comprehensive studies focusing on Béla Bartók and his commissions or Béla Bartók and his commissioners. Over the past century or so, numerous studies have been devoted to Bartók’s compositional output, utilizing a variety of approaches. This led me to believe that there should also be a number of studies on the subject in question. I was surprised to discover that, while one can read about the subject of commissions in works that examine the genesis and early history of individual compositions [1], and the correspondence between Bartók and Paul Sacher (one of his well-known patrons) was published in a dedicated volume a decade ago [2], there is currently no work that provides an overview of the works Bartók composed in response to commissions, competitions, and requests. This prompted me to apply for the workshop, prepare my paper and, subsequently, write a longer study on this subject. The latter is currently in progress and is expected to be published in Studia Musicologica – An International Journal of Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2025.
One of the most useful ways to begin a research project is to categorize the pieces of information already available. As the title of my paper and my blog post suggests, in the case of “Béla Bartók and musical patronage,” I have created three main categories, some of which are divided into smaller subcategories.
The first major category is competitions (see Table 1). It was mainly in his twenties that Bartók submitted six of his works to five different competitions for composers. However, not all of these works were composed or arranged for a specific event (these are marked with an * in Table 1), and some of them are reworkings or transcriptions. Thus, the only original work by Bartók that, to our present knowledge, was composed for a competition – and, by the way, the only one that actually succeeded – is the Third String Quartet. The fiascos, however, were significant from a biographical point of view: The failure of the early version of Duke Bluebeard’s Castle was one of the main reasons why Bartók composed little between 1912 and 1915 and why he was then living in almost total retreat, concentrating his energy on folk music studies.
| Work | Organizer | Submission | Results announced |
| Evening, for male choir (BB 30, 1903)* | (Hungarian) National Choral Association | December 1903 | April 1904 |
| Piano Quintet (BB 33, 1903–1904)* | Rubinstein Competition (Paris) | August 1905 | August 1905 |
| Rhapsody, op. 1, version for piano and orchestra (BB 36b, 1904–1905) [orig. for piano solo] | |||
| Petits morceaux for piano (BB 38, 1905) [= transcription of songs BB 37/2 and BB 24/1] | |||
| Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, op. 11, opera in one act (BB 62, 1911) – early version, with the 1st ending* | Lipótvárosi Kaszinó | October 1911 | July 1912 |
| ibid. – early version, with the 2nd ending | Rózsavölgyi & Co. | February 1912 | November 1912 |
| String Quartet no. 3 (BB 93, 1927) | Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia | December 1927 | October 1928 |
The actual commissions can be divided into three subcategories, the first of which is commissions from state institutions, consisting of five works (see Table 2). The two commissions from the Hungarian authorities resulted in major works. However, Bartók fulfilled the Royal Opera House’s commission for a one-hour ballet only in the hope that The Wooden Prince would be performed together with Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, which had previously failed in two competitions and had not attracted the Opera House’s attention either. (Bartók’s two-stage works were first performed jointly on a single evening in 1918, the year following the premier of the ballet.) The Dance Suite, written in honor of the 50th anniversary of the unification of Pest and Buda, could be seen as an act of compensation on the part of the new counterrevolutionary government, which, in the early 1920s, put Bartók (along with Zoltán Kodály and Ernst von Dohnányi) under pressure due to his (negligible) involvement in the Music Council of the 1919 Hungarian Soviet Republic. The Viennese commission resulted in less important works, but it was a defining moment in his career: after the successful concert in January 1918, Universal Edition entered into negotiations with Bartók.
| Work | Commissioner | Year of commission |
| The Wooden Prince, op. 13, ballet in one act (BB 74, 1914–1917) | Royal Opera House (Budapest) | 1912 |
| Eight Hungarian Folksongs, for voice and piano (BB 47, 1907–1917): Nos. 6–8 | Imperial and Royal War Ministry (Vienna) | 1917 |
| Romanian Folk Dances, for small orchestra (BB 76, 1917) [transcription of BB 68] | ||
| Slovak Folksongs, for male choir (BB 78, 1917) | ||
| Dance Suite, for orchestra (BB 86, 1923) | City Council (Budapest) | 1923 |
The second subcategory includes commissions from private institutions, foundations, and patrons of music (see Table 3). Focusing on the period 1903–1933, this category is almost synonymous with choral works commissioned by Hungarian, German, and Swiss associations for free or almost for free. There are, however, two important exceptions: Village Scenes (Bartók’s first overseas commission) and Five Hungarian Folksongs (a work for the 80th birthday of the Budapest Philharmonic Society, his last commission from a Hungarian organization or institution). The post-1933 works listed in the table are commissions in the most classical sense and were decisive in his career. Today, they are among Bartók’s best known and most highly regarded works.
| Work | Commissioner | Year of commission |
| Four Old Hungarian Folksongs, for male choir, early version (BB 60, 1910, rev. 1926) | Men’s Chorus of Szeged (Péter König) | 1910 |
| Four Slovak Folksongs, for mixed choir and piano (BB 77, 1916) | Budapest Chorus and Music Association (Emil Lichtenberg) | 1916 |
| Three Village Scenes, for 4 or 8 female voices and chamber orchestra (BB 87b, 1926) [transcription of Five Village Scenes, for voice and piano (BB 87a, 1924)] | The League of Composers, New York | 1926 |
| Four Hungarian Folksongs, for mixed choir (BB 99, 1930) | Stuttgart Madrigal Society (Hugo Holle) | 1927 |
| Székely Folksongs, for male choir (BB 106, 1932) | Prima parte: Choral Society “Bartók Béla”, Bratislava (István László Németh) Seconda parte: Swiss Workers’ Singing Association | Both 1932 |
| Five Hungarian Folksongs, for voice and orchestra (BB 108, 1933) [orchestration of Twenty Hungarian Folksongs, for voice and piano (BB 98, 1929), nos. 1, 2, 11, 14, 12] | Budapest Philharmonic Society | 1933 |
| String Quartet no. 5 (BB 110, 1934) | Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation | 1934 |
| Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (BB 114, 1936) | Basel Chamber Orchestra (Paul Sacher) | 1936 |
| Sonata for two Pianos and Percussion (BB 115, 1937) | ISCM Basel (Paul Sacher) | 1937 |
| Divertimento, for string orchestra (BB 118, 1939) | Basel Chamber Orchestra (Paul Sacher) | 1938 |
| Concerto for Orchestra (BB 123, 1943) | Koussevitzky Music Foundation (Serge Koussevitzky) | 1943 |
The commissions of the third subcategory were received from individuals. The list in Table 4 contains the second part of Bartók’s most important and most widely known pieces. Note that all the individuals who commissioned Bartók were musicians. A special case, therefore not included in the table, is the Viola Concerto (BB 128, 1945), for which Bartók received money in advance and on which he worked but was unable to complete it before his death.
| Work | Commissioner | Year of commission |
| Forty-four Duos, for two violins (BB 104, 1931–1932) | Erich Doflein | 1930 |
| Contrasts for violin, clarinet, and piano (BB 116, 1938) | Benny Goodman | 1938 |
| Violin Concerto (BB 117, 1937–1938) | Zoltán Székely | 1936 |
| String Quartet no. 6 (BB 119, 1939) | Zoltán Székely | 1939 |
| Sonata for Solo Violin (BB 124, 1944) | Yehudi Menuhin | 1943 |
This category only includes requests where financial matters were involved. There are, however, five more works that may have been requested by fellow musicians but that were probably personal gifts from the composer to his musician friends (see Table 5).
| Work | Person |
| String Quartet no. 2 (BB 75, 1914–1917) | Imre Waldbauer (Waldbauer–Kerpely Quartet) |
| Rhapsody no. 1 for violin and piano/orchestra (BB 94, 1928) | Joseph Szigeti |
| Rhapsody no. 2 for violin and piano/orchestra (BB 96, 1928–1929) | Zoltán Székely |
| Twenty-seven Two- and Three-Part Choruses (BB 111a, 1935–1936) | Zoltán Kodály, György Kerényi (Hungarian Choir Publishing House) |
| Seven Choruses with orchestra (BB 111b, 1937–1941) | Benjámin Rajeczky |
The third, and by far the thinnest main category consists of publishers’ commissions and requests (see Table 6). This includes pedagogical works from the 1900s and 1910s, which are related to Bartók’s editorial works (between 1913–1923, Bartók edited approximately 2000 pages of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Couperin, Scarlatti, Heller, Czerny, etc., for the publishing house of Károly [Karl] Rozsnyai). In the 1940s, partly for marketing purposes, Bartók transcribed one of his masterworks from the 1930s and wrote a short piano cycle from his previous sketches at the request of Boosey and Hawkes.
| Work | Commissioner | Year of commission |
| For Children for piano (BB 53, 1908–1910): vols. 1–2 | Károly Rozsnyai | 1908? |
| Bartók-Reschofsky, Piano Method (BB 66, 1913) | Rózsavölgyi & Co. | 1912 |
| Concerto for two Pianos and Orchestra (BB 121, 1940, after the Sonata for two Pianos and Percussion, BB 115, 1937)* | Boosey & Hawkes | 1940 |
| Three Hungarian Folk Tunes for piano (BB 80b, 1941, based on the unpublished parts of the Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs, BB 79, 1914–1918)* | Boosey & Hawkes | 1941 |
In general, musical patronage was an important factor in Bartók’s career as a composer, but it was not a primary driving force in his creative process. Bartók only accepted commissions if he found them artistically interesting and had the time and energy to fulfill them, as evidenced by the long list of commissions and requests he declined.[3] For him, commissions, competitions, and requests were vehicles that helped him realize his (often long-dormant) ideas. Therefore, the results sometimes did not fully satisfy the commissioner, primarily from a practical point of view, but sometimes also aesthetically, if they were not closely related to new music. It is perhaps for this reason that most of Bartók’s commissions and requests came from musicians or institutions headed by someone with a strong connection to modern art.
[1] See especially the already published volumes of the Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition (München and Budapest: G. Henle Verlag – Editio Musica Zeneműkiadó, 2016–).
[2] Béla Bartók – Paul Sacher: Briefwechsel 1936–1940, ed. and Hung. transl. by Ferenc Bónis (Budapest: Balassi, 2013).
[3] This blog post did not touch this topic and it was just shortly addressed in my workshop presentation, but will be detailed in the forthcoming study. This topic was previously addressed by György Kroó (“Unrealized Plans and Ideas for Projects by Bartók,” Studia Musicologica 12/1–4, 1970: 11–27) and László Somfai (“Nichtvertonte Libretti und andere Bühnenpläne Bartóks,” in: Documenta Bartókiana 2, Budapest: Akadémiai, 1965, 28–52).
Information on the author: Zsombor Németh (HUN-REN RCH Institute for Musicology, Budapest Bartók Archives)
is a musicologist and violinist. He pursued his studies at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest from 2008 to 2013. He embarked on his doctoral studies there in 2014 and defended his dissertation in September 2024, entitled “From choreae to aspirationes: Ferenc Farkas’s Rákóczi-themed compositions.” Since September 2017, he has been associated with the Budapest Bartók Archives (part of HUN-REN Research Center for the Humanities, Institute for Musicology). Together with László Somfai, he was co-editor of Volume 29 (String Quartets Nos. 1-6) and main editor of Volume 30 (String Quartets Nos. 1-6, Critical Commentary) of the Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition, published by G. Henle Verlag and Editio Musica Budapest Zeneműkiadó. Németh’s primary research interests are source and notation studies, Hungarian music of the twentieth century (especially the life and work of Béla Bartók, Ferenc Farkas, and Imre Waldbauer), and music for violin family instruments from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including its reception history. In addition to his scholarly activities, Németh is also an active musician, primarily performing on period instruments. He pursued an MA in Historical Violins at the University of Music and Arts of the City of Vienna from 2015 to 2019. Since 2012, he has been the artistic leader of the Budapest-based early music group Simplicissimus Ensemble. Contact: nemeth.zsombor@abtk.hu
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Zsombor Németh (October 2, 2024). Music for Commissions, Competitions, and Requests: Béla Bartók and musical patronage | by Zs. Németh. Performers as Patrons of New Music. Retrieved January 18, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12edn