Hungarian composer B幨a Bart鏦 declared his
Cantata profana, composed in 1930 and premi鋨ed in London in 1934, his "credo," the composition of which was inseparable from the history of his involvement with folklore. Not only was Bart鏦 one of the twentieth century's most important composers, he was also one of the founders of comparative musicology, the precursor to the field of ethnomusicology. His collection and analytical studies of Hungarian, Romanian, and Slovak folk musics shaped his distinctive musical style, as well as complex scholarly publications. In this volume of the Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation series, L嫳zl?Vik嫫ius, a leading authority on Bart鏦, uncovers the many layers of ethnographic, historical, and personal meaning embedded in the
Cantata profana.
The work's libretto was based on a Romanian folk ballad from his collection, and the mystical story of a hunter's nine sons who turn into stags--never to return home--was close to the composer's heart. Vik嫫ius analyzes the origins of the piece, rooted in one of Bart鏦's most intensive periods of collecting activities in Transylvania just before the outbreak of World War I. The multi-ethnic folkloric landscape of "historic" Hungary (part of Austro-Hungary at the time) is embodied by the source materials for
Cantata profana that survive in full to be analyzed, from the sketches to the various translations of the libretto. As Vik嫫ius demonstrates, the choice of a Romanian winter solstice ceremonial text as libretto for
Cantata profana combines Bart鏦's folklorism with a markedly neoclassical allusion to J. S. Bach's
St Matthew Passion and is necessarily underpinned by the severe criticism Bart鏦 faced because of his interest in and work on Romanian folklore. Throughout the book, Vik嫫ius reveals numerous hidden details that prove crucial to the concept of the work and explores how its ideologically charged text underlines the aesthetic concept behind the musical decisions.
