The Fourth of the Fourth: On the Genesis and the Early Performances of the Allegretto, pizzicato Movement of Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 4

Abstract

As already pointed out by László Somfai in the late 1980s, Béla Bartók's first fully developed five-movement realization of the so-called “bridge” or “palindrome” form was only an afterthought, a further development of a composition originally intended as a cycle of four movements only. As also discussed briefly by Somfai, the evolution of the Allegretto, pizzicato movement itself had distinct stages. A recently surfaced source further clarifies these compositional phases, among others confirms the existence of a 140-measure-long version without a proper conclusion, which, at one point, the composer considered as a definitive version (for which only the ending needed to be composed) and tested with the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet. The present article re-examines the compositional process of Bartók's String Quartet no. 4 with an emphasis on its additional fourth movement and discusses the different compositional phases of the Allegretto, pizzicato.