The Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition

Volume 10 of the Complete Edition, containing all folk song arrangements by Bartók for voice and piano, was published in November 2024. By bringing together these works, it provides a unique overview of the genre that played an important role in Bartók’s workshop, and of its stylistic diversity. The very broad timeframe of these works is also telling: the earliest one (Székely Folk Song, 1904) coincides with Bartók’s first decisive folk song experience and the latest can be dated to the last year of Bartók’s life (Three Ukrainian Folk Songs, 1945). The volume includes several works and versions that were not published in Bartók’s lifetime.

→ Volume 10 of the Complete Edition published: Folk Song Arrangements for Voice and Piano

On the initiative of the world-famous viola player Tabea Zimmermann and Norbert Gertsch, new Director of G. Henle Verlag, the Bartók Archives organized a conference dedicated to Bartók’s unfinished swansong, the Viola Concerto. Presentations by staff members of the Bartók Archives and beyond gave fascinating insights into the genesis, the sources, the context, and the afterlife of the Concerto, and also addressed practical issues that today’s performers face when dealing with this work. The conference took place on 22 July 2024 in the Institute for Musicology.

Click here for the conference program and abstracts.

On the occasion of the release of volume 29 Annette Oppermann, copy-editor of the Complete Edition (G. Henle Verlag), conducted a fascinating conversation with volume editors László Somfai and Zsombor Németh. The interview appeared in English and German at the Henle blog.

Containing all of Bartók’s six string quartets, volume 29 of the Complete Edition appeared in May 2022. The edition is preceded by in-depth introductory studies in English, Hungarian, and German that explore not only the genesis and reception of the quartets, but also provide the most detailed guidance to date in questions concerning the notation and performance of the music. The volume also includes the critical edition of Bartók’s analyses of String Quartets Nos. 4 and 5 in English translation. The critical commentary to this edition will appear in volume 30 in early January.

American musicologist and member of the Complete Edition’s Advisory Board Richard Taruskin passed away on 1 July 2022. His fields of research included music in Russia and the Soviet Union in the 19th and 20th centuries, early music, and performance studies. In addition to a number of seminal books, he authored the monumental, six-volume Oxford History of Western Music (2005).

In the framework of the Bartók World Competition organized by the Liszt Academy, a musicological colloquium will be held on Bartók’s string quartets in English on 29 October 2021 at 10 AM. Organized by the Bartók Archives, the colloquium will take place in the Bartók Hall of the Institute for Musicology, Research Centre for the Humanities.

→ International colloquium on Bartók’s string quartets

The Bartók Archives of the Institute for Musicology, Research Center of the Humanities, Budapest, will celebrate its 60th birthday on 29 October 2021 at 4pm at the Institute’s Bartók Hall.

→ 60 years jubilee of the Budapest Bartók Archives

Mikrokosmos, Bartók’s epoch-making series of piano pieces, appeared in volume 40 of the Complete Edition in October 2020. On this occasion the Béla Bartók Memorial House organized a conference on Mikrokosmos on 26 November 2020 at 3pm. You can watch the video recording of the event here.

→ Conference on the occasion of the release of the critical edition of Mikrokosmos

Two new volumes of the Béla Bartók Complete Critical Edition were presented on Tuesday, 26 November 2019 at 4:30PM at the Bartók Hall of the Institute for Musicology.

→ Two new volumes published in the complete edition: Choral Works and Works for Piano 1914–1920

2019’s Bartók World Competition (organized by the Liszt Academy) was accompanied by an international musicological symposium organized by the Institute for Musicology of the Research Centre for the Humanities on 14 September, starting at 9 AM. The focus of both the competition and the symposium was the piano. The symposium’s program also featured a presentation of the newest volume of the Bartók Complete Critical Edition, which is being edited by the Bartók Archives of the Institute for Musicology.

→ Bartók and the Piano – musicological symposium