The aim of the Barto´k's Mikrokosmos Is to teach students the elements of music composition by means of contemporary produces. In fact, a considerable number of sources refer to the work as a textbook for composers.
His tonal system grew out of func...
The aim of the Barto´k's Mikrokosmos Is to teach students the elements of music composition by means of contemporary produces. In fact, a considerable number of sources refer to the work as a textbook for composers.
His tonal system grew out of functional music. An uninterrupted line of evolution can be followed from the beginnings of functional concepts, through the harmonies of Viennese classism and the tone-world of romanticism to his AXIS SYSTEM.
By an analysis of his compositions, this axis system can primarily be shown to possess the essential properties of classical harmony i, e. ① The functional affinities of the fourth and fifth degrees, ②the revolutionship of relative major and minor keys ③the overtone relations ④the role of leading notes ⑤the opposite tension of the dominant and subdominant ⑥the duality of tonal and distance principles.
In his music, GOLDEN SECTION and FIBONACCI SERIES are used very frequently. In the use of chords and intervals of his music, there are two kinds of systems. One is the chromatic system and the other is the diatonic system. His chromatic system is based on the laws of Golden Section and especially, Fibonaccis numerical series. His diatony is simply an exact and sytematic inversion of the laws of his chromatic technique, ie, the GS rules.
What role did Barto´k's art play in the music of our country? His chromatic system has its roots in Eastern folk music and in pentatony : his acoustic he owed to Western harmonic thinking. He himself admitted his indebtedness to folk music and the French impressionists as the two most descisive influences on his art.
Should his position in music be summed up in a single sentence it might run as follows : Barto´k achieved something that no-one had before his time, the symbolic handshake between West and East : a synthesis of the music of Orient and Occident.