Composers before originality....

[Luke]

Yes, the bagatelles come first, followed by the first string quartet, the two elegies, the Romanian dances for piano, the sketches, the dirges and finally the burlesques. All this music takes straight off Debussy's etudes, which is no mean thing. At some point after the second string quartet he comes under the influence of Stravinsky, which is where his final style stems from. The music gets harder, but not necessarily that much more complex. It was always complex.

There is a noticable Debussy influence on early-ish Bartok - the Two Pictures most obviously. But it isn't in the Bagatelles, which, it could perhaps be argued, contain in microcosm most of the the sort of techniques Bartok was to continue to explore for the rest of his life. Specifically there can be no way in which the Bagatelles 'take straight off Debussy's etudes' as they were written in 1908 and the Debussy in 1915. I'm not hugely up on my Bartok chronolgy but if, as you imply, the Burlesques are the last-written of the works you cite as taking off from the Debussy Etudes, then none of them can do so, as the Burlesques were completed in 1911.

Re the Bagatelles (the pieces I know best of all these) - I really can see almost no trace that Debussy is anywhere near. The very first one is an adventurous experiment in folk-inspired parlando-rubato bimodality - two key signatures, one for each hand, and OTTOMH I can't think of an earlier example of this. There is nothing in Debussy like that. The third, with its quiet skirling quintuplet ostinato, comes closer to Debussy - some of the piano preludes, such as Voiles, perhaps. No 12 also perhaps comes from a world in which there has already been a faune and a flute though transformed into very personal, Hungarian-folk (again parlando-rubato) terms. But scarcely a note of the others bears the slightest trace of Debussy to my ears, eyes and hands. Each one, though, looks very much like mature Bartok on the page, feels like it under the hands, and sounds like it too, in a more-than-just-nascent form. There is a big use of parallelism in e.g. no 4 which someone with eyes but no ears might relate to Debussy's trademark parallel chords. But where CD uses such chords for sensuousness of harmonic coour, BB uses them for percussive impact, big, bold and brassy.

[Josquin des Prez]

There is a noticable Debussy influence on early-ish Bartok - the Two Pictures most obviously. But it isn't in the Bagatelles, which, it could perhaps be argued, contain in microcosm most of the the sort of techniques Bartok was to continue to explore for the rest of his life. Specifically there can be no way in which the Bagatelles 'take straight off Debussy's etudes' as they were written in 1908 and the Debussy in 1915. I'm not hugely up on my Bartok chronolgy but if, as you imply, the Burlesques are the last-written of the works you cite as taking off from the Debussy Etudes, then none of them can do so, as the Burlesques were completed in 1911.

I stand corrected. I was not really paying attention on the chronology (apparently it was the Images Bartok heard when he came under the influence of Debussy). This is quite remarkable then. Seems Bartok achieved maturity at an early age and without any particular outside help.

[Luke]

Agreed, he's a remarkable composer, and those Bagatelles in particular are remarkabe pieces. As I said, Jim Samson's writing on their importance has stuck with me in general, though I need to read again for the specifics. He places similar importance on Busoni's Elegies and his Second Sonatina FWIW. The implication is also that a composer will experiment more easily in piano pieces than in larger scale works, and that is is therefore in such pieces that one should look for turning points and first appearances of personal styles, as well as of larger trends such as those on the path towards atonality that Samson finds in these works.

[jochanaan]

From the little I know about Hungarian and Balkan folk music (gained from such recordings as those by the Bulgarian Nat'l Women's Chorus), Bartok's music is actually closer in style and spirit to it than Kodaly's; less "prettied up" for concert audiences. And while Kodaly wrote some pretty high-energy music, the energy in Bartok's music, especially his "middle-period" music from about The Miraculous Mandarin to the Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion, is really remarkable!

Going back to the original topic : My interest in a composer's early work is somewhat limited; I like to listen for characteristics of his/her maturity.  One fascinating example of early vs. mature is Edgard Varèse's early song Un grand sommeil noir, a delicate, impressionistic, rather Debussyish song with absolutely no hint of his later, almost completely original music.

[Mirror Image]

From the little I know about Hungarian and Balkan folk music (gained from such recordings as those by the Bulgarian Nat'l Women's Chorus), Bartok's music is actually closer in style and spirit to it than Kodaly's; less "prettied up" for concert audiences. And while Kodaly wrote some pretty high-energy music, the energy in Bartok's music, especially his "middle-period" music from about The Miraculous Mandarin to the Sonata for 2 Pianos and Percussion, is really remarkable!

Going back to the original topic : My interest in a composer's early work is somewhat limited; I like to listen for characteristics of his/her maturity.  One fascinating example of early vs. mature is Edgard Varèse's early song Un grand sommeil noir, a delicate, impressionistic, rather Debussyish song with absolutely no hint of his later, almost completely original music.

I guess that's why Kodaly's music never appealed to me. Folk music is supposed to rough and edgy. Bartok understood this and I like the grittiness of his music. His music speaks directly to me.

[eyeresist]

Folk music is supposed to be rough and edgy.

Now there's a controversial statement...

[starrynight]

.. No. It's the kind of observations people make when they have the ears to distinguish between the creative phase of a historical movement and it's senility - between youth and old age.

In the post-modernist universe perhaps things can be slightly different.  People can pick from a wide variety of styles and bring their own creativity to them.  This has happened in popular music.  There doesn't have to be just one style that everyone writes in now.

[starrynight]

I think it can work the other way. Beethoven's earliest works like his piano trio are more refined than anything he wrote after. I like his later music but nothing matches these works and also his Septet. Same with Bartok, after about the end of the first war he lost his way, his music became ugly and harsh. Before that he was at the level of Debussy, after he just made things very hard for listeners more interested in refined music.

Composers can dismiss their earlier works, often not fairly.  Maybe they move on to a different style and also have a vested interest in people being more interested in their newer works?  But some of the best composers did quality work early on as well as later. 

As for music being refined or not I think that is often of a matter of taste and what music someone is used to listening to.  JS Bach wouldn't have thought some Beethoven that refined.  But someone listening just to modern popular music might think Beethoven sounds too formal.  All a matter of perspective.

[starrynight]

Total sense, MI, yes. But - and you know this, of course - one of the many attractions of solo instrumental music is that the opposite can take place: that from one single source can come a whole world of sounds, an entire drama enacted by a single player. The great, great Kodaly Cello Sonata (his best piece, surely?) is a perfect example of this, and of a similar thing - the making of a single instrument into a whole orchestra  (the corollary and complement to your equally valid 'blending musicians so well that they becomes the voice of one', to almost-quote.)

The piano must be the supreme example of an instrument developing over time to give it more range and the ability to imitate a much broader sound under a gifted composer and performer.  This is why it became, perhaps, the most popular instrument.  This could have been more of a later development within music, the creation of an orchestra to join instruments in a kind of unity was something from the baroque I think.

[karlhenning]

. . . Folk music is supposed to [be] rough and edgy.

Right. How inauthentic "Greensleaves" and "Frère Jacques" are!

[eyeresist]

The shepherdess serenaded by her swain with a ROUGH AND EDGY ballad

[Luke]

Well, of course, and much folk music is clearly delicate, refined and lyrical. That is pretty obvious. Nevertheless, the gist of MI's statement seems to me correct - folk music of the type that Bartok was concerned with is in its natural state replete with rhythmical complexities of the most outrageous sort, with heterophonic intertwinings, microtonal deviations, and so on and so forth. Much of the vigour of Bartok's mature style comes from the absorbtion of these types of features into his music. And it's true to say that Kodaly went less far in this direction than Bartok did, though once again that magnificent, perfect Cello Sonata is a gigantic exception to the rule.

Amongst other composers, de Falla is another who springs to mind as one who explored the glossier, more postcard-pretty (or maybe prettified?) edges of folk music in some works (Three-Cornered Hat, Nights in the Gardens of Spain)...but who then dived into a world of vibrant folk-derived roughness and complexity in more experimental later pieces such as the wonderul Fantasia Baetica (for piano, once again). Despite the deserved popularity of the former works (which I love, of course), it is the latter which seems to me both more original and more personal, more truly 'Falla'.

[karlhenning]

Well, of course, and much folk music is clearly delicate, refined and lyrical. That is pretty obvious. Nevertheless, the gist of MI's statement seems to me correct - folk music of the type that Bartok was concerned with is in its natural state replete with rhythmical complexities of the most outrageous sort, with heterophonic intertwinings, microtonal deviations, and so on and so forth. [...]

Certamente.  Agreed that what MI meant to express, is reasonable . . . and that it just came out in the form of a somewhat wrong-headed universal principle.

[eyeresist]

"Outrageous" and "original" might apply to the composer's method of using folk material, but rarely do such epithets apply to the material itself.

[jowcol]

The shepherdess serenaded by her swain with a ROUGH AND EDGY ballad

Think of the Quentin Tarrentino version, and it will make sense.

[starrynight]

I wonder if this view of music being rough, edgy and direct is a result partly or indirectly of the twentieth century developement in popular music with the influence of folk styles like r&b from the mid-century.  For many centuries I'm sure music was seen as a refined pursuit, like any other art, by nearly everyone.