Bartók’s Sonatas for Violin and Piano nos. 1–2: The Compositional Process

Abstract

In the focus of this paper a survey of the draft score will disclose major corrections of the concept and discuss deleted and rewritten sections in both Sonatas for Violin and Piano no. 1 (1921) and no. 2 (1922). A close study of the unusual-type preliminary sketches of the First Sonata in his so-called Black Pocket-Book (facsimile edition: 1987) already gave insight into Bartók’s atypical composition when he had to work without a piano at hand for shaping and refining a new major work (see Somfai, “‘Written between the Desk and the Piano’: Dating Béla Bartók’s Sketches,” in A Handbook to Twentieth-Century Musical Sketches, ed. by Patricia Hall and Friedemann Sallis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). The two draft scores (no. 1 = 34 pages, no. 2 = 21 pages, including discarded and rewritten sections) open new vistas in understanding the concept of the individual compositions. The next stage of manuscripts provides a significant source: the score and violin part used at the first performances, the latter with fingering and bowing contributed by the hand of Jelly Arányi and Imre Waldbauer in the First Sonata, Waldbauer, Ede Zathureczky, Zoltán Székely, and Jelly Arányi in the Second. A study of the revision of metronome numbers will conclude the investigation.