Dance Suite
Composed 1923; Duration: 18 minutes
First BPO Performance: October 5-6, 1974 (Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor)
Last BPO Performance: April 8-9, 2006 (JoAnn Falletta, conductor)
Béla Bartók and his colleague Zoltán Kodály were early practitioners of ethnomusicology, traveling through the villages of their native Hungary to record and catalogue the folk music of a variety of peoples. This corresponded to the early 20th-century rise in interest in preserving pre-industrial tradition, and both composers incorporated the melodies, rhythms, and harmonies in their own modern works.
In 1873, the cities of Buda and Pest flanking the Danube, and Óbuda to the north, merged into a unified metropolitan capital. In celebration of the 50-year anniversary of the unification of Budapest, the Hungarian government tapped Bartók and Kodály for a celebratory concert. Hungary was reeling from the wounds of World War I, and the interwar period was characterized by an authoritarian nationalism that would lead the country into the Axis powers during World War II—all of which Bartók vehemently opposed.
For the commission, Bartók composed his six-part Dance Suite, but instead of exploring specifically Hungarian themes, he was inspired instead by the culturally disparate history of Budapest. Every melody in the work is original, but the influences are far and wide, including Arabic, Romanian, Romani, Slovak, and Hungarian.
The work opens with a pulsating martial chromaticism. The opening movements are bound by a sweet violin melody that recurs between each movement as the ritornello theme. The violent second movement rages with disjoint rhythms and garish trombones. The third movement is a rousing pastoral dance with off-kilter syncopations. The fourth movement is an idiomatic example of Bartók’s haunting night music, and here eerie strings alternate with a snaking woodwind melody. The brief, suspense-laden fifth movement sets up the finale, where ideas from throughout the work melt together in a wild dance.