World Premiere: October 15, 1928
Last HSO Performance: February 1, 1994
Instrumentation: 3 flutes with 2nd and 3rd doubling piccolo, 3 oboes with 3rd doubling English horn, 3 clarinets with 2nd doubling E-flat clarinet and 3rd doubling bass clarinet, 3 bassoons with 3rd doubling contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, celesta, piano and strings
Duration: 20 minutes

Béla Bartók

Bartók composed three works for the stage. The first, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1911), is a powerful one-act opera packed with symbolism in which the composer combined his interest in French Impressionism (especially Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande) with his vast knowledge of folk songs and legends and Hungarian prosody. The ballet The Wooden Prince (1915), Bartók’s second theater piece, is built around a silly fable in which a beautiful princess falls in love — with the walking staff of a handsome prince! Both of these works were banned after some initial success because their librettist, Béla Balázs, had been forced into political exile. Bartók’s third and final stage effort was the ballet The Miraculous Mandarin (1918-1919).

The following synopsis of the plot appears in the score: “In a shabby room in the slums, three tramps, bent on robbery, force a girl to lure in prospective victims from the street. A down-at-the-heels cavalier and a timid youth, who succumb to her attractions, are found to have thin wallets, and are thrown out. The third ‘guest’ is the eerie Mandarin. His impassivity frightens the girl, who tries to unfreeze him by dancing — but when he feverishly embraces her, she runs from him in terror. After a wild chase he catches her, at which point the three tramps leap from their hiding place, rob him of everything he has, and try to smother him under a pile of cushions. But he gets to his feet, his eyes fixed passionately on the girl. They run him through with a sword; he is shaken, but his desire is stronger than his wounds, and he hurls himself on her. They hang him up; but it is impossible for him to die. Only when they cut him down, and the girl takes him into her arms, do his wounds begin to bleed, and he dies.”

The Miraculous Mandarin vividly etches the characters and episodes of the story: the opening rush of traffic on a gritty city street, the thrice-repeated propositions of the girl, the quasi-Oriental music introducing the Mandarin, the almost unbearable tension of the chase. Bartók intended that this work arouse listeners not just because of its sordid story but also because of the cogency of its artistic conception and the excellence of its execution. The fearsome and astonishing power of the music is evidence that he succeeded.