Béla Bartók: Divertimento

In today’s performance I’d like to present one of the most outstanding and best-loved works in Bartók’s output: the Divertimento. It is Bartók’s only work for string orchestra, commissioned by Paul Sacher.1 The date of its composition is especially telling: the summer of 1939. A few of Bartók’s affectionate letters to his son survive, in which he relates that it had been a long time since he had worked under such favourable conditions:

‘Somehow I feel like a musician from a bygone age, invited as a guest by his patron. I live alone in a typical farmhouse,2 furnished with the utmost comfort.’

(It cannot be ruled out, incidentally, that this had something to do with the work turning out a little more cheerful than Bartók might originally have intended.) For a long time he held back from naming the work, from giving it a title. He told his commissioner only that it would be a piece of twenty, at most thirty minutes, the genre perhaps a concerto, perhaps something else. In the end he settled on the title Divertimento. This piece brings to a close the series of major works of the 1930s. The two defining compositions that followed in Bartók’s output—the Concerto and the Piano Concerto No. 3—were written in America. So the Divertimento essentially closes Bartók’s European career. The 1930s were a very productive period for Bartók. The Cantata profana (1930) opens the series as a work of defining spiritual weight, followed by the Piano Concerto No.

2 (1931), perhaps the most significant of his concertos—a piece written for himself, and a kind of summing-up of his output. The String Quartet No. 5 (1934) is probably less well known, yet it too is a key work; harder to digest, but after several hearings an incredible world opens up before us. Also highly significant is the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion (1937), of which Bartók made a version with orchestral accompaniment as well. And let us not forget the work called Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936), nor the Violin Concerto No. 2 (1938). These, then, are the works of the 1930s, and the crowning achievement of the period is the Divertimento, written in 1939. ¹ Paul Sacher: director of the Basel Chamber Orchestra. The Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, as well as the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, were also written at his request.

² Bartók wrote the Divertimento in the small Swiss village of Saanen, where the commissioner, Paul Sacher, had rented a house for him. The title ‘Divertimento’ is unusual in Bartók’s output, since the composer took great care that the titles of his works should raise no expectations in anyone. In that light the title ‘Divertimento’ carries a special weight, for the genre comes with a very strong musical tradition. The word means ‘entertainment’ or ‘amusement’. I’d point you to Mozart’s divertimentos, which, true to the conventions of the age, are indistinguishable from his serenades or cassations.3 Among them we find pieces lasting from ten minutes to three quarters of an hour. In the twentieth century, divertimentos are written less often, and even when they are, the title is more of a nod, since the music is not actually meant for entertainment.

So we may take Bartók’s choice of title as carrying symbolic weight, a deliberate, unmistakable message: whatever people may think, ‘I meant the music to be entertainment’. And lo and behold, Bartók has indeed written a work that is decidedly entertaining! I might even go so far as to say I can’t think of another work of his packed with so many entertaining ideas, so set on steering clear of serious themes. In this work Bartók goes for simplicity in every respect. The piece is in three movements, the simplest cyclical structure in the history of music. In connection with Bartók’s output I have often spoken of the difference between symmetrical and four-movement cyclical forms. The four-movement structure reflects the logic of the four-line structure that lives on in European folk music, while three- and five-movement pieces are built on strict symmetry.

The three-movement works are almost exclusively concertos, which essentially convey a kind of symmetry through the three-part structure of the slow movement; so, looking at these works from a slightly broader angle, a five-fold symmetry like that of the Concerto emerges here too. On my reading, the Divertimento, interestingly, meets none of these criteria. It does not, of course, have an even number of movements, nor can we detect in it the symmetry characteristic of Bartók’s output. Many analysts speak of symmetry in connection with the work, but I find that a little far-fetched. The Divertimento is Bartók’s only symphonic work written in concerto form—though this is no surprise after all, since the work is in fact a concerto grosso.4 In essence every part has a soloist, so the first and second violins, the viola, the cello and the double bass each take a turn leading the section, set in sharp contrast to the tutti players.

Let us examine the work movement by movement! ³ Cassation: street music. The divertimento, the serenade and the cassation were, in fact, the rock music of their day, written for balls, open-air social occasions or night-time revelries; they were functional music just as much as the dance music of the Renaissance and Baroque. It was a golden age, when ‘classical’ and ‘entertainment’ music were still written by the same hands. ⁴ The concerto grosso differs from the concerto in that, in the concerto, a single instrument is set against the full orchestra, whereas in the concerto grosso a small group of instruments is set against the full orchestra. Perhaps the first movement best meets the demand for entertainment—or at least the centuries-old tradition of the divertimento. The movement is marked by a triple pulse: ‘one by one, two by two, three by three’.

There is no more uplifting rhythm in the history of music. The duple rhythm always points to the human, whereas the triple rhythm expresses a kind of sacredness, precisely because of the sense of weightlessness it creates. In the triple beat, the alternation of heavy and light beats familiar from the pair is rounded out by a second light beat, and this gives a sense of rising off the ground in even the smallest movement. The triple-pulse dances of music history, measured and elegant at first, gradually turned into the intoxicating dance that culminates in the waltz. The triple-pulse-in-threes that marks the first movement of the Divertimento is relatively rare in music history. Imagine that I am flying, flying, and flying a third time—this is, in fact, a kind of super-ecstatic lightness, so it isn’t worth writing ugly or sad music in 9/8.

The triple-three of the movement does, of course, often narrow to 6/8 or widen to 12/8, meaning the inner triplets are gathered into an even logic. So in this movement Bartók leads us into an exceptionally light pulse, and the theme itself is a string of elegant, almost Baroque gestures. There can be no doubt, of course, that Bartók is not writing dance music; the melody is almost endless, and we do meet certain changes of metre. That is no surprise in the twentieth century, but the composer spares us the labyrinth of asymmetrical rhythms. The structure of the theme can, in fact, be called regular, each phrase made of a question and an answer. And although the 22-bar span far exceeds the eight bars typical of traditional question-and-answer passages, the thematic identity familiar since the Classical period helps us find our way.

It is worth heeding the pounding accompaniment, which unmistakably conveys our joy: we are listening to dance music.