Innovation or Integration in Bartok String Quartet No.6?

To What Extent is Bartók’s String Quartet No.6 a Work of ‘Integration rather than Innovation’?

In his 1993 book ‘The Bartók Companion’, Malcolm Gillies claims that the Sixth String Quartet is a work that integrates many  of the techniques that Béla Bartók has used in the past, rather than being overly innovative or experimental in its composition.^[1] In following on from the intensely chromatic and atonal Fourth and Fifth Quartets, the Sixth appears to be of a more refined and simple nature. This evolution in Bartók’s style can be seen as a curve back towards the late romantic style – something which is evident in the Violin Concerto and Divertimenti, but is more obvious in this work and, later, his Third Piano Concerto.^[2] The two outer movements in particular demonstrate this, as their textures, form and tonal structures are quite clear in comparison to the dense tonal ambiguity that Bartók is known for in his previous Quartets. With the Sixth, Bartók returns to using extended themes, and his writing appears to have gained a homogeneity that integrates ideas executed in previous compositions.^[3]

Bartók abandons the symmetrical five-movement ‘arch’ that he utilises for his Third and Fourth Quartets in favour of a four-movement structure with a symmetrical tonal plan centred on a ritornello melody, or an idée fixe, which gives the music a cyclic form, as well as providing the tonal scheme (bars 1-3 outline the pitches G#-B-F-D, while each movement is loosely based on the pitches D-B-F-D respectively).^[4] Although the idée fixe was at its most popular during the 19th century, he uses it here in a new and innovative way, and it is primarily the use of a ritornello which makes the Sixth Quartet unique from Bartók’s others. However, it is not the first time Bartók has used this device – his ‘Dance Suite’ from 1923 features an eight-bar Hungarian folksong ritornello motif. The reoccurring theme here is a mournful folk-influenced melody marked ‘Mesto’ each time and originally played on the solo viola of which the first three bars, typical of Bartók’s writing, outline a tritone. In bar 2 one can also see that Bartók immediately fills in the interval of a tone with the missing middle semitone – a technique that he uses in most of his works, as semitones are an integral part of his compositional process. This slow opening can be directly compared to his String Quartet No. 1 where the two violins have slow chromatic movement, but it could also be said that from the late 1930s slow openings seem to have become increasingly favourable to Bartók in his writing, as his Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion and Orchestra and his Concerto for Orchestra also feature them.^[5]

 The ritornello introduces each of the four movements, and for the first three it acts as nothing more than a prelude. Thematically, it is separated from the material in the movements (with the fourth movement excepted), but structurally it is central to the entire work. Gerald Abraham describes it as an ‘idée fixe three times shaken off’^[6] but with each movement it grows in length, from fifty seconds in the first movement, to sixty in the second, eighty in the third and a huge three minutes in the fourth, according to Bartók’s own score markings. Its importance grows not only in length, however – the density of the ritornello also develops each time. From the monophonic viola at the opening, it becomes a two-part texture in the second movement with the cello leading against a shimmering violin accompaniment, a three-part texture in the third movement and in the finale all four parts move independently.

Similarly, the ritornello melody never returns exactly as it is first heard. Bartók himself said in an interview in 1937, ‘I do not like to repeat a musical thought identically … I never bring back a single detail exactly as it was the first time’.^[7] This ideology remains true here, integrating his usual compositional principles still further into the work. The melody itself is made up of three sections – motif ‘a’ which can be seen from bars 1-3, ‘b’ which lasts for bars 4-8 and ‘c’ which is the motif from bars 9-13. For the second movement, the ‘a’ section changes to a duple rhythm as a reference back to the first movement, while the ‘c’ section is extended from a total of five bars to seven. The ritornello before the third movement undergoes further changes – section ‘b’ breaks off suddenly in bar 7 to begin a swift development of the first part of the theme, returning in bar 14 in a completely different tonal environment.^[8] The tonality of the ritornello derives from a cycle of perfect 5ths: the first movement begins on G#, the second on Eb, and the third on Bb, before returning to G# for the final movement.^[9]