''Slovakian Dance'' is a piece for solo piano by Hungarian composer

Béla Bartók Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as H ...

. It was presumably composed in 1923, but it was not published until 1999.

Composition

This scherzo-style composition was meant to be placed between the second and the third movement of Bartók's '' Dance Suite'', but he eventually refused because of his

mathematical principles Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

, as placing it in the Suite would ruin the proportion of the whole work. Since ''Dance Suite'' was an

orchestral suite A suite, in Western classical music and jazz, is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral/ concert band pieces. It originated in the late 14th century as a pairing of dance tunes and grew in scope to comprise up to five dances, sometimes with ...

, this ''Slovakian Dance'' remained as a sketch, unpublished and unorchestrated, until his son, Peter Bartók, made slight changes for it to be published in 1999 by

Universal Edition Universal Edition (UE) is a classical music publishing firm. Founded in 1901 in Vienna, they originally intended to provide the core classical works and educational works to the Austrian market (which had until then been dominated by Leipzig-base ...

. As this is one of the sketches that he dismissed, there is no identification number for this composition, and most catalogues do not include it.

Structure

''Slovakian Dance'' is scored for a solo piano and takes around 2 minutes to perform. It has a total of 92 bars and three different sections. The first section is the ''ritornell'' that was used in movements 1, 2, and 4 of Bartok's ''Dance Suite'', marked Tranquillo in the score. It acts as a short introduction, as well as a placing element within its original piece, as the ''Dance'' was meant to be played after a

ritornello A ritornello (Italian; "little return") is a recurring passage in Baroque music for orchestra or chorus. Early history The earliest use of the term "ritornello" in music referred to the final lines of a fourteenth-century madrigal, which were usu ...

. This section has 17 bars and is separated by a

double bar In musical notation, a bar (or measure) is a segment of time corresponding to a specific number of beats in which each beat is represented by a particular note value and the boundaries of the bar are indicated by vertical bar lines. Dividing mu ...

. The second section, the ''Slovakian Dance'' itself, is marked Allegretto in the score and generally gravitates towards

F major F major (or the key of F) is a major scale based on F, with the pitches F, G, A, B, C, D, and E. Its key signature has one flat. Its relative minor is D minor and its parallel minor is F minor F minor is a minor scale based on F, consis ...

, even though the key signature makes no specifications. This lively, dance, ends in bar 81, when the ''ritornell'' is reprised for the last few bars, marked Lento in the score.

Notable recordings

Notable recordings of this work include:

Composition

Structure

Notable recordings

Footnotes

References

See also