WHOSE MUSIC IS IT?: With Bartok

I would not be a Hungarian musician if I did not write a few lines on one of my favourite composer's birthday, who is also Hungarian and had a lot of connection with him through my music teachers and lecturers. However, the most connection I had with him as a composer and as a human being is through his music. But not just the very known music of his but those compositions he wrote for children, for children's voices. The pieces that are still not accessible to foreigners because they are so intimate, so human, so Hungarian and so private that most foreigners simply don't get it.

They are my treasures. They are the pieces I grew up singing in my school choir and performed abroad. They are the ones we sang in duets or trios with my friends and recorded for CD-s and performed at TV broadcasts. They are the ones I want my friends to play at my memorial after being cremated and my ashes scattered in the sea if and when I pass away.

This book of short choral pieces are incredibly beautiful and sometimes strange and ahead of its time type of compositions that are the real gift of Bartok Bela to the nation and to the world.

On these pictures you see my pages from Bartok score that is worn. This is not my first book I had. Many times we had to write out our parts by hand in those times. We had extra choir rehearsals at 7am in the morning. We had choir rehearsals during the day as part of the timetable a few times a week. We loved choir. Adored some of our conductors. Choral singing allowed us to travel the world from a very early age. In times when most Hungarians were not allowed or could not cross the boarders. We were like the singing birds flying everywhere.
On the right is the score of Ne hagy itt by Bartok - Don't leave me here by Bartok on this recording with the additional orchestra accompaniment.

As I looked for this Bartok score and I found it on the bookshelf together with Kodaly's choral compositions, I saw the old paper cover that was a Hungarian Christmas wrapping paper. Torn and scrambled. This book is from 1988. This was the book that I used to pass on the traditions to my own students, to my own fabulous children's choir. For them choir meant the same. Incredible musical experiences, travel and fun. We did it together. Incredible years, unforgettable memories.

Sadly, a thought comes into my mind as I am writing. How little attention we are paying to the Arts in general in our education. How little mention the Arts is getting in Australia by our politicians. How little of our resources is spent on arts. In the end, there is nothing else left to mention when everything else is gone. But the books, the paintings, the sculptures and music. They make us human. They are the ones that deserve preserving. So Arts is the one our children and students should be cultivating.

I look at the elderly, the retired. Once they finish working they reach out for creative activities to fulfil their old yearnings of writing, reading, dancing, yoga, painting, doing pottery, go back to sing in a choir, play in a band and orchestra. There is no life without the Arts. Until we breath we want to create.

Some people have more talent than others. Some, like Bartok, can give gifts to the world that have transformational power and the recipients carry all in their lives.

Happy birthday Bartok Bela! The world is a better place because of your music.

The photo was taken at the Acropolis of Athens, Greece in August 1989 during the 9th International Kodaly Symposium and the inauguration of the Kodaly Conservatory. Although I have never met Bartok himself, he died earlier than I was born, I was lucky enough to have met his son, Bela Bartok Jr. On this picture I am in very famous company, with Bela Bartok Jr in the middle and Professor Peter Erdei on the right.