1 Introduction

Dénes Bartha (1908–1993) was an outstanding figure in twentieth-century Hungarian musicology, who was also renowned internationally. The versatile music historian is most familiar to us today as a significant Haydn scholar, and his best-known book in Hungary is perhaps the several times republished Beethoven's Nine Symphonies,¹ while his editions of musicological sources are also frequently used by music historians. Those from my generation did not have the chance to know his personality, which, in addition to his scholarly achievements, also contributed to his leaving a lasting imprint on Hungarian music life – as my interviews with his former pupils and fellow music historians have shown. According to these recollections, Bartha's dynamic and humorous presentation style made him a legendary professor of the Liszt Academy of Music. In his General Music History classes he effortlessly imparted his vast knowledge and his passion for music, while his musicology students also learnt his research principles and methods as well. His contemporaries told me in the interviews that the most important thing for Bartha was the study of authentic sources and the up-to-date knowledge of specialist literature. He also considered it essential as a scholar to remain in close contact with the practice of music-making, and he felt it his duty to disseminate high-level knowledge to a broad audience. All those who knew him agreed that he had not at all been conceited and had never emphasized his authority; he had rather regarded himself with a serene self-irony. His helpfulness both in his professional and his private life, as well as his approachable and playful nature, made him universally loved.

Bartha's career began between the two world wars: after finishing secondary school in 1926 he went to Berlin to study classical philology and then musicology with a Collegium Hungaricum grant. His twenties were overshadowed by two family tragedies: his father passed away in 1927 and his only brother died in the early 1930s, so when he returned from Berlin to Budapest, he had to make a living on his own and take care of his widowed mother as well. He enthusiastically threw himself into research as an employee of the National Széchényi Library, which at that time was housed in the building of the National Museum. The large number of his publications on several topics appearing from 1934 onwards testifies to his incredible productivity.² Most of his work deals with different periods of Hungarian music history: from his presentation on the double whistle from the Avar period³ through his publication of the student songbooks of eighteenth-century colleges⁴ and the music history of Transylvania⁵ to Franz Liszt.⁶ He also played an important role in folk music research when Béla Bartók entrusted him with editing the booklet accompanying a set of gramophone recordings.⁷ In 1939 he published a monograph on Beethoven: in his book Bartha described the composer's life and environment, and in the longer part of the volume he analyzed the characteristics of the composer's musical language in an easily accessible style, while also presenting the latest scholarly approaches.⁸ In addition to working in the library, he established on his own initiative a journal entitled Magyar Zenei Szemle [Hungarian Musical Review] in 1941,⁹ and he taught as an external lecturer at the Faculty of Humanities of the Budapest University and at the Liszt Academy. He was appointed full professor in 1943–1944 at the latter institution. In 1938, at the age of thirty, he married Zsuzsanna Barta, a teacher of Hungarian and German. The couple had three children; the first two were born in 1941 and 1942. The young music historian received another important task during the years of World War II: in 1939 he was offered the position of music critic for the German-language daily newspaper, Pester Lloyd.

Among Bartha's publications during the post-war decades, two stand out distinctly: the book entitled Haydn als Opernkapellmeister appearing in 1960 (published together with László Somfai), which became a seminal work in Haydn-research,¹⁰ and the first German-language edition of Haydn's correspondence.¹¹ Both books were a great international success and resulted in further commissions including the preparation of three volumes of the Haydn complete edition. At the same time, however, from the 1949 communist takeover onwards, his opportunities in Hungary became increasingly limited and he was somewhat sidelined behind his also excellent colleague, Bence Szabolcsi (nevertheless the good professional relationship between the two scholars never soured). This is shown by the events that his contract with the Budapest Metropolitan Orchestra, where he had been the artistic director since 1947, was not extended in 1949, that he became co-editor of his own journal next to Szabolcsi (which was restarted after the war with the title Zenei Szemle) and that after founding the Department of Musicology at the Liszt Academy in 1951, Szabolcsi became the Head of Department in 1953. All these circumstances also played a role in the fact that when, after several highly successful conference presentations,¹² he was offered teaching positions for shorter or longer periods at different US universities, he gladly accepted the opportunities. Thus, between 1964 and 1981 he appeared on the faculty of Smith College, Harvard University, Cornell University, then for the longest period, 11 years, at the University of Pittsburgh, and finally at the University of Washington in Seattle. Especially in the earlier years of this period, when he returned to Budapest, he continued teaching at the Liszt Academy. This gave him the opportunity to share his vast international experience – a rarity at the time in Hungary.

During the last active period of his career, he was mainly concerned with the thematic structures developed by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, which he described with the quatrain model he had created:¹³ almost all of his writings published at that time deal with this topic. Eventually, he returned to Budapest in 1981, but his declining health meant that he was no longer able to participate in musical life with the same intensity as before.

2 Dénes Bartha, the music critic of Pester Lloyd

The articles that Dénes Bartha wrote in German for Pester Lloyd between September 1939 and June 1944¹⁴ comprise a very important part of this colorful oeuvre. The newspaper, founded in 1854, was the daily of the German-speaking bourgeoisie of Pest, and the high quality of the cultural section is reflected in the fact that in the 1930s and 1940s writings of such significant authors were published here as Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel, Felix Salten and Stefan Zweig, as well as Hungarian writers Dezső Kosztolányi and Ferenc Molnár.¹⁵ In the column entitled Theater, Musik, Kunst, Bartha published mainly reviews of concerts, opera and ballet performances, but also a few interviews and longer theoretical and music-historical articles.

Bartha, as a young music critic, found it a real challenge to work in the inspiring intellectual environment of Pester Lloyd, as he emphasized in an interview he gave on the occasion of his eightieth birthday.¹⁶ He had excellent colleagues there, such as the writer Iván Boldizsár, the literary historian Dezső Keresztury and the art historian Ernő Kállai. He said that there was even a slight competitive spirit among these distinguished critics and he “tried to do his best, sometimes even to the point of writing in an almost stilted style.”¹⁷ From his recollection, almost five decades later, we can also learn that Dénes Bartha dictated his articles in the editor's office between eleven o'clock and midnight – perhaps after the concert or performance he had just heard.¹⁸ This comment is particularly peculiar given the style of the articles: the writings do not give the impression of spontaneous dictation. The form is always well thought out, the content is clear, the sentences are mostly very long and complex, and he uses an incredibly rich and sophisticated vocabulary. Bartha's brilliant German came from his family: his grandparents were German-speaking townspeople in the Central-Eastern part of what is now Slovakia, which is why he could wittily say – also in the interview quoted above – that “my mother tongue is Hungarian … but my ‘grandmother tongue’ is German.”¹⁹

Even the number of Bartha's articles is astonishing: from five concert seasons (with few or no articles in the summer months) I managed to collect four hundred and sixty-five pieces of writing from the pages of Pester Lloyd (for a chronological catalog of these writings, see the Appendix).²⁰ It occurred as many as sixty times that the paper, which appeared both in the morning and evening, published two articles from him in one day (and on six occasions as many as three articles on the same day), and there were months when he wrote a total of twenty or more articles. Most of the reviews were printed the day after the performances (and within two or three days at the latest), so they were usually written within a very short time. This is a creditable achievement in itself, and he did it during the busy period described above, when he was also occupied with library work, teaching, editing his journal and raising two young children.

Bartha's pieces – together with many other high-quality articles in Pester Lloyd's cultural column – are unique, as they present the Budapest music scene in a widely known language. Thus, in my opinion they would be of interest to a considerable foreign readership and publishing the articles in their original language would be useful and important. However, Bartha's writings have not received the attention they deserve – this may have been due to the language barrier in Hungary, but the most important aspect is the accessibility of the writings: although most issues of the newspaper are now available in digital format,²¹ the articles can still only be found by scrolling through individual issues, and the sheer number of articles means that it is a major undertaking to review all of them. The first researcher to study the material was János Breuer in the 1980s, and his collection of one hundred and twenty-six articles was published in Hungarian translation in 2008.²² Over the past few years I have collected all the Bartha-articles from Pester Lloyd, compiled a catalog of the complete material, and then – in addition to the 2008 publication – selected and translated another one hundred and twenty articles into Hungarian. My main criterion was to choose the most significant and interesting works, and to give as complete a picture as possible of the writings not yet published in Hungarian. In this selection, my personal interest has contributed to the focus on the instrumental genres: the volume provides a practically complete picture of the notable reviews on chamber music, symphonic concerts and piano recitals. Besides these, a full range of theoretical articles and of the more important and extensive reviews of song recitals and oratorio concerts have been selected. In addition, the most significant reviews on the major performances and premieres of the Hungarian State Opera (then called Hungarian Royal Opera House) are also included in the volume. Those who would like to know more about Dénes Bartha's views on the everyday opera and ballet performances of this period can still find a number of other interesting articles in the journal.

The surprisingly vibrant and very high-quality Budapest concert life during the war years between 1939 and 1944 makes the reviews of the performances particularly important. Bartha's reviews commemorate, among others, the performances of such outstanding Hungarian musicians as Béla Bartók, Ernst von Dohnányi, János Ferencsik, Emil Telmányi, Ede Zathureczky, Mária Basilides or the Waldbauer–Kerpely String Quartet and the Végh Quartet. It is very moving to think of the many musicians for whom those were the last performances before leaving Hungary for good, or even worse, perishing in the war or during the Holocaust. In addition to Hungarian musicians, the reviews also documented Budapest guest appearances of great foreign performers such as Herbert von Karajan, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Willem Mengelberg, Hans Knappertsbusch, Clemens Krauss, Edwin Fischer and Walter Gieseking.

Contemporary politics and the war were rarely reflected in the music reviews, only through a couple of occasional comments. As early as in 1941, for example, Bartha reported that “it was a beautiful gesture worthy of imitation on the part of the concert organization to offer the spare rows of seats to our wounded soldiers, thus giving them a musical enjoyment of rare purity.” (Es war eine schöne und nachamungswerte Geste von Seiten des Konzertunternehmens, dass es die freibleibenden Sitzreihen des Verwundeten unserer Honvéd zur Verfügung gestellt und ihnen damit zu einem musikalischen Genuss von seltener Reinheit verholfen hat.)²³ In October 1943, he considered the stage decorations of Ede Poldini's one-act opera “sinfully lavish” (sündhaft üppig) with regard to wartime austerity (and also to the quality of the work).”²⁴ He mentioned the appearance of high-ranking politicians at some representative concerts: in March 1944, for instance, Regent Miklós Horthy attended a guest performance by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra;²⁵ and a few months later, Prime Minister Döme Sztójay was present at the celebration of Richard Strauss' birthday at the Opera House.²⁶ One of his last reviews written in June 1944 suggests a somewhat emotional tone when he noted that the music-loving audience filled the Vigadó at a sonata recital by Dohnányi and Zathureczky “almost to full capacity even in such troubled days as these” (im nahezu vollbesetzten Redoutensaale … selbst in diesen sorgenschweren Tagen).²⁷

What is even more striking than the number of articles and the subject matter of the reviews is the richness of the content: whatever the topic, Bartha went far beyond the standards expected in a daily newspaper, he always analyzed the concerts from many different angles, and his friendly personality and his knowledge of human nature were also reflected in his writings. He never evaluated individual performances in isolation, but made comparisons between concerts and artists creating a subtle web of connections between articles. In some cases, he also included his concert experiences from abroad in these comparisons, giving readers even broader perspectives. In my article below I will present the main features of Dénes Bartha's perspective as a music critic, taking examples from the writings I have selected and translated.

It is certainly not a surprise that one of the main strengths of the articles is the discussion of music history, musical styles or even music aesthetics. Bartha did not confine himself to a dry presentation of data, he rather outlined interesting connections. He presented his thoughts in a very concise yet instantly comprehensible way, encouraging readers to engage in further research. For example, in 1943, at the jubilee concert of the Budapest Philharmonic Society, he wrote an apt comparative description of the styles of four great Hungarian composers: Liszt, Dohnányi, Bartók and Kodály.²⁸ In the same year, Bartha included a remark on the affinity between the music of Debussy and Bartók in his review praising Walter Gieseking's concert²⁹ – an idea he later elaborated on at length in a conference in Paris in the early 1960s and also in a lecture given at Hungarian Radio.³⁰ As mentioned above, Bartha's Beethoven monograph was published in 1939, so he was particularly keen to write in detail about this composer in Pester Lloyd, too. Especially noteworthy are his two series of articles from 1941: one on the concerts in which the Budapest Metropolitan Orchestra performed Beethoven's nine symphonies under the baton of Willem Mengelberg,³¹ and the other on the three chamber concerts by Ernst von Dohnányi and Emil Telmányi, in which the two artists performed the complete sonatas for violin and piano by Beethoven.³²

Even more interesting are the articles in which Bartha wrote about composers who did not belong closely to his field of expertise, and thus were not dealt with elsewhere in his academic writings and books. In 1941, for example, on occasion of the premiere of Guillaume Tell at the Opera House, he gave an overview of Rossini and the genre of the Parisian grand opéra;³³ in 1942 he wrote a separate article on Leoncavallo's Pagliacci;³⁴ and in 1944 he contextualized three orchestral works by Richard Strauss in the composer's oeuvre with a brief analysis of their style and significance.³⁵

As the so-called early music movement gained real momentum after World War II, at the time of the articles Bartha could not have been aware of the research results that have become fundamental since then, so many of his ideas on this topic can be considered particularly progressive. He repeatedly mentioned, for example, that the sound of the modern piano cannot blend with that of the violin in the same way as that of the fortepianos of Beethoven's age, and that the balance between the two instruments had also been disrupted by the increased volume of the modern piano.⁴⁰ The Kölner Trio's concerts with period instruments in Budapest in 1942 and 1944 were – in Bartha's words – a real specialty in the “Hungarian concert life that is highly ahistorical and is focused one-sidedly on romanticism” (unser stark ahistorisch und einseitig auf die Romantik eingestelltes ungarisches Konzertleben).⁴¹ He was impressed not only by the old instruments and their delicate sound, but also by the way the artists performed: “it is possible to achieve a deeply felt, exceptionally intimate and excitingly expressive performance even without a trace of the romantic, swelling espressivo so popular and seemingly indispensable on our stages” (ohne jede Spur des bei uns so beliebten und anscheinend unentbehrlichen, romantisch schwellenden espressivo, dennoch ein tiefgefühlter, ausnehmend inniger und spannend ausdrucksvoller Vortrag erzielt werden kann) he wrote with great enthusiasm. Monteverdi's Orfeo was performed in 1943 at the Opera House in an orchestration prepared by Ottorino Respighi eight years before. Bartha suggested that Monteverdi's music could be much more colorful using the original seventeenth-century instruments, as he found the sound of the modern instruments too monotonous. The decades that have passed since then have definitely confirmed Bartha's conclusion, which he had drawn without ever having heard a chitarrone, a regal or a theorbo.⁴²

On a few occasions, Bartha had the opportunity to write at length about a music historical or theoretical topic, independently of any performance. According to the interview quoted above, for him, these were the highlights of his journalistic work: “… from one day to the next or from one week to the next, well, it's a bit of a treadmill, but it was most exciting, when there was an opportunity for big and theoretical articles. One of my most favorite articles was written when Debussy had his anniversary.”⁴³ This essay on the music of Debussy is one of the most significant works in my collection, and it displays all of Bartha's virtues as a music historian and writer to the highest degree. Another noteworthy article is the subtly nuanced portrait of Kodály written for the composer's 60^th birthday in 1942, and the article with the title Hungarian folklore – Hungarian music, which explores the subject of “Hungarianness in music” based on Kodály's ideas.⁴⁴

The reviews of contemporary music are of particular importance among Bartha's articles. He always encouraged the presentation of new music, listened with palpable curiosity to compositions which had been previously unfamiliar to him, and then presented his impressions filtered through his wide knowledge, making references to other composers and works as well. Between 1939 and 1944, foreign contemporary music could reach Hungary only from areas restricted by war and politics. In 1941, for instance, Bartha had the chance to write about new Italian chamber music pieces, and he could hear fresh German orchestral works in Budapest during Wilhelm Furtwängler's guest appearances (Max Trapp's orchestral Concerto in 1939 and Hans Pfitzner's symphony in 1944).⁴⁵ Of the new Hungarian works, Bartha praised particularly highly the string quartets of Endre Szervánszky⁴⁶ and Sándor Veress, and two compositions by the prematurely deceased Dénes Tóth (Andante and Allegro, Dorothea).⁴⁷ Bartha's reviews also include a summary of the 1941 premiere of Dohnányi's oratorio Cantus vitae,⁴⁸ and separate articles on compositions by Miklós Laurisin,⁴⁹ Rezső Kókai⁵⁰ and György Pázmán.⁵¹ In addition, he briefly mentioned the works of Zoltán Horusitzky, Mihály Hajdu, Elemér Gyulai,⁵² Jenő Takács, Ferenc Farkas, Tibor Kazacsay and Géza Szatmáry (Sauerwald).⁵³

It is particularly enjoyable that Bartha not only shared his views on the history and aesthetics of music in his reviews but also portrayed the personalities of the performing artists with excellent insight into the human characters. He captured particularly vividly, for example, Furtwängler's unique conducting qualities (particularly in the article written in November 1941)⁵⁴ but also depicted very convincingly the artistic character of Walter Gieseking,⁵⁵ Edwin Fischer,⁵⁶ Herbert von Karajan⁵⁷ and the celebrated Swedish tenor Set Svanholm.⁵⁸ This kind of detailed description was less frequent for Hungarian artists, who had already been well known to the public. There are some exceptions: Bartha repeatedly praised Mária Basilides,⁵⁹ whom he held in high esteem, as well as the art of Ede Zathureczky,⁶⁰ Sándor Végh⁶¹ and Béla Böszörményi-Nagy.⁶² Due to Bartha's benevolence and empathy, his negative criticisms do not have a hurtful overtone, but rather suggest a pedagogical intention.

As a born educator, he also paid close attention to young musicians. In his lines of encouragement, he often acknowledged their progress, highlighted their strengths and even gave them advice for their future careers. For instance, he suggested the field of film music to György Pázmán because of his light-hearted songs and slightly jazz-style piano-playing.⁶³ At Ede Banda's graduation concert at the Liszt Academy of Music he observed with excellent judgment that for Banda (the future cellist of the outstanding Tátrai Quartet) “high-level chamber music will be the field best suited to his artistic temperament” (in der hochwertigen Kammermusik das seinem küstlerischen Temperament am meisten entsprechende Gebiet finden wird).⁶⁴

It is a particular feature of Bartha's approach as a music critic that he often placed individual performances in the broader context of musical life. In many cases, as we will see below, Bartha also made suggestions for the invisible participants of the concerts – the organizers, the designers of the programs, the editor of the program notes, or even the piano tuner. These insights reflect his practical sense, but he is true to his nature as a pedagogue, too: the obvious aim of Bartha's proposals is always to promote development.

Not even details such as the acoustics of concert halls escaped Bartha's attention – over the years he made several comments on the less-than-ideal conditions of the Municipal Theater (today Erkel Theater) in this respect. “We would have voted to reduce the overly robust string section in relation to the woodwinds – as far as the specific acoustic conditions of the Municipal Theater allow” (Das Ensemble betreffend, würden wir … für eine dem Stande der Holzbläser angepasste Reduktion des allzu zahlreichen Streichkörpers stimmen, – sofern die besonderen akustischen Verhältnisse des Stadttheaters dies erlauben) – he wrote about the Municipal Theater.⁷⁵ Similar criticism was addressed to the Redoute (Vigadó): Sándor Végh's Stradivarius violin “could not completely fill the acoustically unfavorable large hall of the Vigadó with its sound” (den akustisch ohnehin ungünstigen Grossraum des Redoutensaales nicht durchaus mit seinem Ton zu füllen vermochte).⁷⁶

Almost all Bartha's reviews describe at least in a few words the audience of the concerts: the number of people present, and sometimes even the composition of the listeners. For example, on April 16, 1943, he reported about an “audience, consisting predominantly of the most prominent representatives of Hungarian intellectual life” (vorwiegend aus prominenten Vertretern des ungarischen geistigen Lebens bestehende Hörerschaft);⁷⁹ on the occasion of a concert of the Waldbauer–Kerpely Quartet, he mentioned “the musically literate regular audience of the Waldbauer Quartet” (das musikverständige Stammpublikum des Waldbauer-Quartetts);⁸⁰ while on January 9, 1944, he wrote about “the audience of the Philharmonia (which has always been a bastion of Hungarian ‘Brahmins’)” (das Publikum der Philharmonie [seit jeher eine Hochburg der ungarischen “Brahminen”]).⁸¹ Many of the reviews end with a description of the audience's reaction – in these concluding sentences we never find truly negative statements, however, the subtle differences between the adjectives used certainly express not only the audience's but also the reviewer's opinion.

Perhaps it is clear from these few excerpts that Dénes Bartha did not use his vast theoretical and historical knowledge as an outsider with an overlooking perspective on the musical life in Budapest and its participants: he was an active member of this community. After listening to such a large number of performances over five concert seasons, he had a unique insight into the functioning of the whole system and a clear idea of its strengths and weaknesses and the areas that needed reforms. He formulated his suggestions and criticisms concerning program policy, the selection of performers and even the organization of certain major musical institutions very politely, but courageously and honestly without any prevarication.

His experience as a critic must have influenced him throughout his career, but already in the 1940s his work had two important outcomes. One of these is the book he wrote together with Zoltán Kodály in 1943 with the title Die ungarische Musik. The book was published as part of the German-language series Probleme des Donauraumes, which aimed to present the culture and history of the region to the rest of Europe.⁸² In the first chapter, which makes up a third of the volume, Kodály summarized the results of Hungarian folk music research, while in the remaining, larger part, Bartha gave an overview of Hungarian music history. Starting from the Middle Ages, he reached his own time, where in the chapter entitled “The Hungarian Musical Life of the Present,” he described the country's main musical institutions and ensembles, including education, opera, symphony orchestras and choruses. A separate section discusses the young generation of Hungarian composers and their most important works. Thus, in contrast to the brief statements made in various articles in Pester Lloyd, Bartha was able to paint here a comprehensive and complete picture of Hungarian musical life, clearly drawing on his unique insight as a critic.⁸³ The chapter echoes several ideas which he had written down in Pester Lloyd – for instance, Bartha highlighted the important role played by guest conductors in the development of the Budapest Metropolitan Orchestra, and placed great emphasis on the presentation of young composers. (Given the reviews, it is not surprising that of the new generation he praised Sándor Veress the most.)

On the other hand, Bartha's accomplishments and approach as a music critic may have played a major role in his appointment as artistic director of the Metropolitan Orchestra in August 1947. Although he held the post for only two concert seasons, the surviving documents show that he managed to design ambitious projects of a very high standard in the short time he had.⁸⁴ In my opinion, the reason he was able to develop such a distinctive orchestral profile so quickly is that his main principles and the directions he wanted to take had already crystallized during his years as a critic. These included performances of high-quality works displaying a large variety of styles and genres, special support for contemporary music, inviting distinguished guest performers, employing the full range of Hungarian conductors and soloists, and promoting young performers and composers. In other words, Dénes Bartha had the opportunity to actually implement the ideas articulated in the reviews in the practice of Hungarian musical life – unfortunately only for a brief period.

András Wilheim called Dénes Bartha's writings in Pester Lloyd “perhaps the most impressive oeuvre of Hungarian music criticism in the twentieth century.”⁸⁵ Indeed, everything was in place for an outstanding, internationally notable achievement: a young and ambitious music historian, educated in Berlin and writing in native-like German, and the vibrant musical life in Budapest featuring an array of illustrious musician-personalities day after day. I hope that the brief biography presented here has evoked Dénes Bartha's versatile personality and rich career, while the discussion of Bartha's Pester Lloyd articles has shown that the valuable and diverse texts he left behind in the daily newspaper are still of special interest for today's readers and researchers alike.