The Unfolding of Tonality in the Music of Bela Bartok

Abstract

The music of Bela Bartok has attracted interest from analysts because of its apparent retention of residual tonal centricity within a musical context which is sometimes densely chromatic. The means by which such residual tonality is expressed in Bartok's music has been considered by a number of writers including George Perle, Elliott Antokoletz and PaulWilson.l In 1943 the composer remarked that his music was 'always based on a single fundamental tone, in its sections as well as its whole', and alluded to a technique he described as 'polymodal chromaticism', which allowed the construction of chromatic melodic lines and chord structures by the superimposition or folding together of different modes that share the same final - the diatonic folk modes, 'model' scales such as the octatonic, and the whole-tone scale.2 Wilson, however, warns that 'the application of the concept of mode to non-linear passages or to contexts in which a final is difficult to select can raise more questions than it answers', citing as an example the opening of the Fourth Quartet.3 As a special and extreme case of the use of the polymodal-chromatic method, consider the twelve-note theme from the Second Violin Concerto of 1937-8. Ex. 1 shows the idea in its first manifestation at bars 73-5 of the first movement, where it is played by the solo violin. Throughout this short section, a sustained A, played in octaves by first and second horns, supports the melody and affirms its tonal orientation. In each of the three bars, the melodic line can be shown to derive from a different mode whose final is A,