Sergei Taneyev, was a Russian composer
and that's not evident in his music. So, he was
one of these composers who went
exactly the opposite way, and
it was in a much more studied Central European style.
That's fascinating. Now, can you think of composers who fall
in this last category, of simply
not wanting to draw upon their national resources,
and merely imitate or at least pursue
the western classical tradition as they were taught to do?
Well, I immediately think Hungary as a country and the three
great musical figures that stand out are Kodaly,
Bartok and Dohnanyi. And Kodaly and
Bartok went into the countryside as young people and
studied the folk music. They were influenced by it
ultimately, but early on they valued it so much that they were worried it
was going to disappear forever, and nobody would know about it. So,
they spent a good deal time recording it and then absorbed it into their own music.
Dohnanyi went the other way. He
was a marvelous composer, he composed three different string quartets,
all wonderful pieces of music. You wouldn't sense I think that they're
Hungarian in any way. They're wonderful
abstract music. So, he's one who went the other way.
I wouldn't say that this was--
I don't know if this is a philosophical choice. I think it's just
question of personality; what draws you
in your life, what draws you in your art?
It's true. Well, I think context is everything and
if you look at the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the fact that
Vienna was the cultural capital of that empire. But yet,
this is an enormous area, right?
That has margins that include other people groups like
the Czechs and the Hungarians. And these folks wanted
their own national identity to emerge alongside
independence. They really want to be independent of the Hapsburg empire.
So, this is a very personal battle,
if you will. Great tensions arose between their own identity and
that which was imposed upon them.
It's a fascinating controversy.
Thank you for engaging it, Arnold. You're welcome.
And now we'll take a look at our first work
for this segment. Bedrich Smetana's
"From My Life" Quartet.