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The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók wrote six string quartets, for two violins, viola and cello:

List

• String Quartet No. 1 (1909), Op.7, Sz. 40, BB 52
• String Quartet No. 2 (1917), Op.17, Sz. 67, BB 75
• String Quartet No. 3 (1927), Sz. 85, BB 93
• String Quartet No. 4 (1928), Sz. 91, BB 95
• String Quartet No. 5 (1934), Sz. 102, BB 110
• String Quartet No. 6 (1939), Sz. 114, BB 119

Posterity

Notable composers who have been influenced by them include:

• Benjamin Britten, particularly in the Sonata in C for Cello and Piano
• Elliott Carter, who refers in the opening of his own First String Quartet to Bartók's Sixth Quartet
• Chen Yi
• Edison Denisov, whose Second Quartet is closely related to Bartók's Fifth Quartet
• Franco Donatoni, who was deeply impressed when he heard a broadcast of Bartók's Fourth Quartet
• Robert Fripp, who mentions them as an influence on the band King Crimson
• Miloslav Ištvan
• György Kurtág, whose Opp. 1 and 28 both owe a great deal to Bartók's quartets
• György Ligeti, whose two string quartets both owe a great deal to Bartók's quartets
• Bruno Maderna
• George Perle, who credits the Bartók Fourth and Fifth Quartets as precedents for his use of arrays of chords related to one another by different types of symmetry
• Walter Piston
• Steve Reich, who described them in an interview as "the greatest set of quartets since Beethoven"
• Kim Dzmitrïyevich Tsesakow
• Wilfried Westerlinck [nl]
• Stefan Wolpe, who explained in a public lecture how he had derived ideas from Bartók's Fourth Quartet
• Xu Yongsan
• Jouni Kaipainen, credited openly Bartók's quartets as his model.

Recordings

Key recordings of the complete cycle include:

• Emerson String Quartet, Deutsche Grammophon, released 1990.
• Hagen Quartet
• Juilliard String Quartet:
  • Recorded 1949, New York. Robert Mann and Robert Koff, violins; Raphael Hillyer, viola; Arthur Winograd, cello. Three LPs, 12 in., monaural. Columbia Masterworks ML 4278/4279/4280.
  • Recorded May and September, 1963, Columbia 30th Street Studios, New York. Robert Mann and Isidore Cohen, violins; Raphael Hillyer, viola; Claus Adam, cello. Three LPs, 12 in., stereo. Columbia Masterworks D3L 317 (set): ML 6102, 6103, 6104. New York: Columbia Masterworks, 1965.
  • Recorded 13–23 May 1981, Columbia 30th Street Studios, New York. Robert Mann and Earl Carlyss, violins; Samuel Rhodes, viola; Claus Adam, cello.
• Lindsay String Quartet
• Takács Quartet, Decca 289 455 297-2. Released 1998.

See also

• List of compositions by Béla Bartók

References

1. Rupprecht 1999, 250.
2. Whittall 2013, 189.
3. Schmidt 2012, 172.
4. Wong 2007, 237.
5. Čigareva 2007, 231.
6. Osmond-Smith 2001.
7. Tamm n.d.
8. Němcová 2001.
9. Sallis 2014, passim.
10. Sanderson & .
11. Iddon 2014, passim.
12. Satory 1990, 101–103.
13. Palazzetti 2015, passim.
14. Lansky 2001.
15. Donahue 1964, passim.
16. Manheim n.d.
17. Shcherbakova 2001.
18. Volborth-Danys 2001.
19. Babbitt n.d.
20. Wong 2007, 238.
21. "Sibelius, Bartók, and the "Anxiety of Influence" in Post World War II Finnish Music". 26 March 2006.
22. Anon. 1988.

Sources

• Anon. 1988. Bartók, Lindsay String Quartet – The 6 String Quartets at Discogs (Listing of the 1988 reissue)
• Babbitt, Milton. n.d.. untitled essay. In "Recollections of Stefan Wolpe by Former Students and Friends", edited by Austin Clarkson. Ada Evergreen website (Accessed 18 April 2014).
• Čigareva, Evgeniâ Ivanovna. 2007. "Zur Bartók-Rezeption in Russland". Studia Musicologica 48, nos. 1–2 (March): 225–236.
• Donahue, Robert L. 1964. "A Comparative Analysis of Phrase Structure in Selected Movements of the String Quartest of Béla Bartók and Walter Piston". DMA thesis. Cornell University.
• Iddon, Martin. 2014. "Bartók's Relics: Nostalgia in György Ligeti's Second String Quartet". In The String Quartets of Bela Bartok: Tradition and Legacy in Analytical Perspective, edited by Daniel Péter Biró and Harald Krebs, 243–260. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-993619-9.
• Lansky, Paul. 2001. "Perle, George". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
• Manheim, James. n.d. "Harlem Quartet: Walter Piston: String Quartets Nos. 1, 3, and 5". AllMusic (accessed 18 April 2014).
• Němcová, Alena. 2001. "Ištvan, Miloslav". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
• Osmond-Smith, David. 2001. "Donatoni, Franco". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Palazzetti, Nicolò. 2015. "Italian Harmony during the Second World War: Analysis of Bruno Maderna's First String Quartet". Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale 21, no. 1: 63–91.
• Rupprecht, Philip. 1999. "The Chamber Music". In The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Britten, edited by Mervyn Cooke, 245–259. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Sallis, Friedemann. 2014. "Recycled Flowers: Quotation, Paraphrase, and Allusion in György Kurtág's Officium breve in memoriam Andreæ Szervánsky, Op. 28, for String Quartet". In The String Quartets of Bela Bartok: Tradition and Legacy in Analytical Perspective, edited by Daniel Péter Biró and Harald Krebs, 285–305. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-993619-9.
• Sanderson, Blair. . "Armida Quartett: Bartók, Kurtág, Ligeti: String Quartets". AllMusic (Accessed 18 April 2014).
• Schmidt, Dörte. 2012. " 'I Try to Write Music That Will Appeal to an Intelligent Listener's Ear': On Elliott Carter's String Quartets", translated by Maria Schoenhammer and John McCaughey. In Elliott Carter Studies, edited by Marguerite Boland and John Link, 168–189. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Satory, Stephen. 1990. "Colloquy: An Interview with György Ligeti in Hamburg". Canadian University Music Review/Revue de musique des universités canadiennes 10:101–117.
• Shcherbakova, Taisiya (2001). "Tsesakow, Kim Dzmitrïyevich". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.44810.
• Tamm, Eric. n.d. "Fripp the Listener", chapter 3 of Robert Fripp – From Crimson King to Crafty Master. Progressive Ears website (Accessed 18 April 2014).
• Volborth-Danys, Diana von. 2001. "Westerlinck, Wilfried". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan.
• Whittall, Arnold. 2013. "Britten's Rhetoric of Resistance: The Works for Rostropovich". In Rethinking Britten, edited by Philip Ernst Rupprecht, 181–205. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-979481-2.
• Wong, Hoi-Yan. 2007. "Bartók's Influence on Chinese New Music in the Post–Cultural Revolution Era". Studia Musicologica: An International Journal of Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences 48, nos. 1–2 (March): 237–243.

External links

• Performance guide, Bartók Quartet

• Classical music

• String quartets by Béla Bartók
• Lists of string quartets by composer
• Lists of compositions by composer