• Handel, Zadok the Priest
• Barder, Agnus Dei

This article by David Pearce first appeared in The Score in May 2010:

I am sure that most of you will know of the Hungarian composer Bela Bartok. He was born into the pre-First World War era of 1881 and watched, “as his native Hungary shrank like a puddle in the July sun”, as one commentator put it some years ago. (His actual birth-place is now in Romania.) After the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, when the country was partitioned, he even had difficulty visiting his mother, who continued to live in the re-named town of Bratislava (formerly Pozsony). By this time, he could not even visit the remoter parts of pre-war Hungary where he had made his now famous folk song collection. And what the First World War had begun, the Second continued. It was inevitable that like so many others in troubled central Europe, he would make his way to the USA, which he did in October 1940, never to return – or did he?

So, do we see a troubled soul? A private man never quite at home in the USA and whose music took some time to be fully accepted in that country. Unlike Erich Korngold, the Austrian ‘wunderkind’ escaping from the Nazi occupation, who made a fortune from film music in Hollywood, Bartok did not make much money and continuing poor health finally took its toll in New York on 26 September 1945, where he died. His last wish was to be buried in his native Hungarian soil and in 1988 that wish was addressed. The body was exhumed, placed in a coffin and loaded onto the QE2, which then set sail for Southampton. There is then an air of mystery about what happened next, but it does involve the Turner Sims Concert Hall.

Click to read more ...

• Gabrieli, ‘Jubilate Deo’ in European Sacred Music, pp. 118–130