Different Images: A Case Study on Bartók Reception in Denmark

Abstract

This paper addresses the early Bartok reception in Denmark in the 1920's and 1930's. The Danish Bartok reception undergoes significant changes and constitutes at least two distinct Bartok images. First we meet the 'international', 'modernist' Bartok, seen as one of the representatives of the 'Neue Musik', in the German sense of genuinely new, contemporary music. This is due to the fact, that Bartok's music from the first moment on was well represented in the repertoire of the Danish societies for contemporary music. The second image is quite different. It emerges in the late 1920s and is present at the latest in the reception of the three concerts, Bartok gave in Copenhagen in 1929. This is an image referring to Bartok as one of the leaders of what is referred to as the 'real new music', which has overcome the destructive powers of modernist expressionism and has formed a genuinely new music founded on the vital forces of unspoiled, original folk music. This second image includes other works as important ...