I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.
BELA BARTOKFolk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means.
More Bela Bartok Quotes
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Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An “atonal” folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.)
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Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type.
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Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means.
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I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable.
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Competitions are for horses, not artists.
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His pagan barbarity, his explosive and angrily defiant melancholy, his demoniacal instinct . . . these are all echoes . . . of the thousand-year-old Hungarian psyche.
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I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.
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In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution.
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It may well be that some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach.
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With maturity comes the wish to economize – to be more simple. Maturity is the period when one finds the just measure.
BELA BARTOK