Bla Bartk Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin, Pantomime in one act, Opus 19 BLA BARTK was born

in Nagyszentmikls, Transylvania (then part of Hungary but now absorbed into Romania) on March 25, 1881, and died in New York on September 26, 1945. He began sketching his ballet The Miraculous Mandarin, based on a play by Menyhrt (Melchior) Lengyel, in August 1917 and composed the first version of the ballet between October 1918 and May 1919, though he did not orchestrate it until the summer of 1923. He revised and shortened the score from April to November 1924 and continued to tinker with the ending between 1926 and 1931. In February 1927 he completed an orchestral suite comprising about two-thirds of the score. The first public performance of any of this music came on Budapest Radio on April 8, 1926, when Bartk and Gyrgy Kosa performed a part of the score in the original version for piano four-hands. The full ballet was first performed on November 27, 1926, in Cologne, Germany, with Jen Szenkar conducting. The suite was premiered in Budapest by the Philharmonic Society Orchestra, Ern Dohnnyi conducting, on October 15, 1928. THE SCORE OF THE MIRACULOUS MANDARIN calls for two flutes and piccolo (doubling third flute), three oboes (third doubling English horn), three clarinets and bass clarinet, three bassoons and contrabassoon (doubling fourth bassoon), four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, timpani, large and small side drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, xylophone, celesta, harp, piano, organ, and strings. (A mixed chorus, offstage, is required for the complete ballet score, but not for the suite.) The Miraculous Mandarin was the third and last of Bartks major compositions for the theater; though still in his thirties when he completed the draft score, with almost half his life yet to live, he never again attempted to write for the stage. Evidently the difficulties he suffered in attaining a full theatrical performance soured him forever on the theater, whether opera or ballet, and turned him decisively toward abstract instrumental composition. His two earlier works for the stageBluebeards Castle, a one-act opera for two characters, and The Wooden Prince, a balletboth showed signs of genius, though not always uniformly throughout. With The Miraculous Mandarin (and the Second String Quartet, which immediately preceded it), we find the composer fully matured in his musical style. He had absorbed the folk elements of his native country as well as the latest trends in avant-garde music from elsewhere in Europe, and his powerful musical intellect fused these elements into a personal and tremendously expressive style. Bartk encountered Menyhrt Lengyels scenario for The Miraculous Mandarin when it was published in the magazine Nyugat in 1917. What he made of it was not a ballet, in the sense of a work composed of big dance numbers, but rather a pantomime, a story told in gesture and movement, but movement that might be called, for the most part, prose rather than poetry. This created structural problems for the composer. A series of full-scale dance numbers in a ballet would require a corresponding series of musical numbers, each with its own character and musical shape. A plot that slithers on from one incident to another is more problematic. Bartk saw the difficulty and so adapted Lengyels scenario to give himself a basis for a musical structure, to provide some kind of symmetrical design to the story. He takes two scenes of violent movement and links each of them with three stages of action to be carried in dance. The tale is lurid and violent, set in a brothel bedroom. At the rise of the curtain, three ruffians enter with a girl. Finding no money in her flat, they order her to go to the window and attract a customer. Three times she lures men into the room; the first two have no money, and the ruffians unceremoniously throw them out. But finally a mysterious and exotic mandarin enters, a man whose face reveals no sign of emotion except for his burning eyes, which stare ceaselessly at the girl. She begins dancing for him, gradually dancing more and more sensuously. She falls into his lap and he embraces her, trembling with passion. Now frightened, she tries to elude him, and he pursues her. Just as the Mandarin reaches the girl, the ruffians attack him and take his jewels and money. Then they decide to kill him. Three times they attack him in different ways. They smother him, but he will not die, and continues staring at the girl. They stab him; he does not fall or bleed. They hang him from the chandelier; it comes crashing down, and his body begins to glow with a greenish light. Finally the girl feels some pity for this strange man. She embraces him, and her act of compassion releases him from the longing that has driven him. His wounds begin to bleed, and he finally dies. Even in the form of the concert suite, Bartks music so clearly reflects the scenario that it is not difficult to follow the intended course of events. In fact, except for a few very small cuts, the suite is essentially two-thirds of the entire score, up to the moment when the ruffians leap out and seize the Mandarin. The last few measures are a concert ending that Bartk provided for the purpose.

The prologue suggests the noisy bustle of a busy street, heard through the window of the dingy room. The bustle dies down, and the three ruffians are introduced by a jerky chromatic figure in the violas. The music associated with the girls standing at the window and luring the passing men to enter is, each time, presented by the solo clarinet. The first man, an elderly rake, is parodied in trombone glissandi. The second is a shy, handsome youth, represented by the oboe. The dance turns passionate briefly before the thugs enter again and drive the hapless fellow into the street. The arrival of the third victim, the Mandarin, is marked by the simplest musical moment in the score, the blaring brass instruments snarling out a single minor third, B-D. Woodwinds and strings utter wild trills. After the briefest of pauses, the girl begins a hesitant dance before this strangely unresponsive newcomer. From this point the music builds in tension to almost unbearable levels, with a halting waltz that grows more and more abandoned until she throws herself into the Mandarins lap. Bartk introduces an exotic theme on the trombone to suggest the Mandarins reaction. A pounding ostinato turns into a tense fugue on a subject of oriental tinge. This is roughly the point where the orchestral suite ends, bringing us to the moment when the ruffians leap out and seize the Mandarin. The composer no doubt chose this point to end the suite because it provided a symmetrical pattern in which the scores wildest orchestral music frames the three attempts at luring victims. Once the fugue has built to its grand climax, the opening woodwind chords return, bringing the suite to its shattering conclusion. Steven Ledbetter