Benny Goodman requested Bartók's Contrasts to be no longer than ten minutes so it could be recorded on a 78 rpm disc, but Bartók only partially fulfilled this, composing three movements.
Composer's Artistic Vision
For both Bartók and Stravinsky, the path to polyrhythm and polytonality was prepared by a musical language developed from folk music, treated as an experimental substratum.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Bartók and Stravinsky both used traditional music to renew learned music, rescuing it from post-romantic excess and liberating it from conventional constraints.
Composition History
Bartók's Sonata for solo violin was commissioned in 1944 by the young virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin, while Bartók was in exile in the United States and suffering from illness.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Bartók and Stravinsky are defined by contrasts resolved through synthesis: between learned and popular music, tradition and innovation, and Eastern European and Western music.
Composition History
Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat was conceived in 1917 for seven musicians as a traveling theater piece, designed to be easily transportable and inexpensive to stage.
Composition History
Bartók's Contrasts was commissioned in 1938 by American jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, at the suggestion of violinist József Szigeti.
