Bartók and the Grotesque: Studies in Modernity, the Body and Contradiction in Music (Royal Musical Association Monographs)

The grotesque is one of art's most puzzling figures - transgressive, comprising an unresolveable hybrid, generally focussing on the human body, full of hyperbole, and ultimately semantically deeply puzzling. In Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1916/17), The Miraculous Mandarin (1919/24, rev. 1931) and Cantata Profana (1930), BartA3k engaged scenarios featuring either overtly grotesque bodies or closely related transformations and violations of the body. In a number of instrumental works he also overtly engaged grotesque satirical strategies, sometimes - as in Two Portraits: 'Ideal' and 'Grotesque' - indicating this in the title. In this book, Julie Brown argues that BartA3k's concerns with stylistic hybridity (high-low, East-West, tonal-atonal-modal), the body, and the grotesque are inter-connected. While BartA3k developed each interest in highly individual ways, and did so separately to a considerable extent, the three concerns remained conceptually interlinked. All three were thoroughly implicated in cultural constructions of the Modern during the period in which BartA3k was composing. In Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1916/17), The Miraculous Mandarin (1919/24, rev. 1931) and Cantata Profana (1930), Bartók engaged scenarios featuring either overtly grotesque bodies or closely related transformations and violations of the body. In a number of instrumental works he also overtly engaged grotesque satirical strategies, sometimes - as in Two Portraits : 'Ideal' and 'Grotesque' - indicating this in the title. Julie Brown argues that Bartók's concerns with stylistic hybridity (high-low, East-West, tonalatonal-modal), the body, and the grotesque are interconnected. While Bartók developed each interest in highly individual ways, and did so separately to a considerable extent, the three concerns remained conceptually interlinked. All three were throughly implicated in cultural constructions of the Modern during the period in which Bartók was composing Bartók and the nineteenth-century grotesque Bartók and the body The mandarin's miraculous body : 'expressly for our vexation'? The third string quartet as grotesque Conclusion and coda : on Adorno and the grotesque