The Miraculous Mandarin Composed by Bla Bartk - Research Paper Example

Expressive cultures: Sounds In this paper it is necessary to analyze one musical work and to make an extended discussion on its position in groups of musical works designated as ‘Exotic’ or ‘Orientalist’. The work of my choice is The Miraculous Mandarin composed by Bela Bartok. Thus, it is necessary not only to observe the above-mentioned musical work using musical, cultural and historical elements, involved in its creation, but also to compare it to three prominent instances of ‘Orientalism,’ such as The Coffee Cantata by Bach, Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) by Mozart and The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan. Beginning the discussion of The Miraculous Mandarin (or as it is sometimes called The Wonderful Mandarin), we should mention that it is a one act pantomime ballet, which is based on the original story by Melchior Lengyel and was composed between 1918 – 1924. The Miraculous Mandarin is one of the most innovative works of Bela Bartok. Observing this pantomime ballet in the frames of ‘Orientalism,’ it is necessary to emphasize that a musical language of ballet is based on an intonation system inherent in musical folklore of Southeast Europe and significantly different from professional European music. The Miraclous Mandarin combines various kinds of music and it looks like a specific synthesis of Greek, Persian, Arab, Byzantine melodies, which, of course, caused a shock among the audience. Thinking about historical context of The Miraculous Mandarin’s appearance we should say that its premiere, held in November 1926 in Germany at the scene of the Cologne Opera, turned in such a big scandal that almost immediately has removed the show from the repertoire as offending public morals (Stevens, 1993). Describing the ballet and Bartok’s attempts to make it not only original, but also meaningful we can understand that Bartok was a fanatical seeker of truth. He acted with the utmost determination against injustice, hypocrisy and inhumanity in all his musical works. Comparing his prominent works, such as The Wooden Prince (Bartok’s first ballet) and The Miraculous Mandarin between each other it becomes obvious that both ballets are similar in their triumph of true human love over an external gloss, over evil, over everything that has a hostile life position. In this part of this paper we are going to talk about the biography of The Miraculous Mandarin’s creator, because it will help us to plunge into more details, examining his musical work, and it will help us to understand inner motives of his creative nature. First of all, it is necessary to mention that the name of Bela Bartok was surrounded by a big variety of legends already in his student days. He was born on March 25, 1881 at Nagyszentmiklos (Hungary) and now he is considered to be one of the greatest composers not only in his country, but he also became famous all over the world. For instance, America and Western Europe respect his creative genius musical works and like his original way to combine traditional techniques with the elements of folk music, making it more and more popular and influential. It is a well-known fact that Bela Bartok had a good musical education and he has been studied in Pressburg and also at the Budapest Academy of Music since 1899. Thus, the public knows the greatest composer as not only a terrific pianist, but also as a purposeful man. He did not recognize the trade-offs and was always a defender of truth in spite of everything. Being a man and a musician of exceptional originality, Bartok only in the years of apprenticeship has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors, while the rest of his life he bravely walked without looking at the traditions, rules and prohibitions, trusting only his artistic convictions. Thus, we can sum up that one of the most significant chapters of European music’s history of the XX century and the era of Hungarian musical culture is connected with Bartok’s name. Continuing our discussion of The Miraculous Mandarin we should remember that this score stands alone towards the previous two stage works by Bela Bartok. It is possible to suppose that it stands alone according to the degree of maturity, the degree of expression that is extremely tense, with the help of which the composer broke with refined elegance of Impressionism and came close to a border, which begins with the sphere of atonal music, nowhere, however, this boundary is not moving. Historical evidence shows us that a pantomime libretto that so deeply seized Bartok was written during the World War I by fashionable ‘commercial’ Hungarian playwright Melchior Lengyel, whose ballet troupe toured in Hungary in 1912, and Lenguel’s work was also published in the journal in 1917. Cultural elements of its creation greatly influenced the great composer, because an original pantomime libretto grabbed Bartok’s attention by its realistic nature. It describes how three tramps forced a girl to lure the passers-by to their big Western den. Not giving a synopsis of the plot we can mention that Lengyel’s libretto presents the world of capitalist city full of cruelty, flavored with a fair amount of eroticism in conjunction with the savage Eastern exoticism. Thus, the girl, who was the most human character in the libretto, is surrounded by two types of barbarism, and her position is so desperate that she wanted to end a nightmare around her at any cost. Combining the cultural background with musical elements we can state that characters in the libretto for the ballet were perfect by their embodiment of an extremely generalized situation, and this gave Bartok the opportunity to write excellent music and performed it by generalizing huge force of musical rhythms. Making a parallel with ‘Exotic’ music it becomes understandable that musical characteristics of vagrants, the sons of the big city, are based on monotone knocking rhythms, opening pantomime, but making it more breathtaking than mere onomatopoeia of street noise. The sounds of trombone, initially reminiscent by car horns, are related to convulsive rhythms against a prince charming with the forces of nature in the previous Bartok’s ballet (The Wooden Prince). In this case, it is a struggle for survival, the struggle that has no mercy for any of the characters (Marco, 2001). This sound formula goes through the whole musical work, and its insistence on repetition makes the viewer and listener to feel a sense of impending doom of ballet’s heroes. Changes for the better are possible only if there is some powerful force that will sweep this eerie world to the ground. Making a detailed musical review of The Miraculous Mandarin, it is possible to mention that the score has the ‘concrete jungle’ orchestral depiction in its beginning. It seems that the violins have not only rapid rising, but also rapid falling, having wave-like scales reflecting an unusual character of an augmented octave’s interval. Antokoletz stated that “One of the central motives of the work is set forward in bar 3—a 6/8 rhythm in minor seconds. This motive will reappear at the violent actions of the tramps. The sound of car horns is imitated by fanfares on the trumpets and trombones” (Antokoletz, 2004). On the base of musical rhythms, the girl’s human image is expressed by versatile music, because the girl deals with all characters in the play. First, she is like a princess from The Wooden Prince, when old Cavalier, caught in a stash, frankly resembles a broken wooden doll. Then she will be careful and tactful in a slow dance with a hesitating young man, calling only a weak attraction in her heart. And then to be hesitant at the first waltz in front of Mandarin, which turns into an ecstatic dance on the brink of insanity. And the last dancing of the girl makes Mandarin start his irresistible dance-barbaric persecution, intonation of which, in some modification with tremendous force, will be repeated in unison behind the scenes while the Mandarin in the last passion would be attracted to the young girl after tramps hang him on the lantern column. Comparing The Miraculous Mandarin to three prominent instances of ‘Orientalism,’ such as The Coffee Cantata composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan, we can mention that all of them have some differences and similarities in their structure. Subjects of their libretto serve, mostly literary works, according to Reinvent Music and stage requirements. In The Mikado we see that the libretto reflects the fashion in the East, lining up the parallels between British and Japanese island cultures. Both The Mikado and The Miraculous Mandarin shows parallels to contemporary reality because The Mikado’s plot evolves around the absurd combinations, amorous intrigue, corruption and bribery in the fictional town, while the venue of The Miraculous Mandarin shows us how the young girl becomes a victim of circumstances and an instrument to make money in traps’ hands (Amberg, 1946). In the fact, their difference is that The Mikado has a propensity to conservatism, ritual, etiquette, while the ballet of our discussion has other nature, but both of them are eccentric, and do not obey the laws of continental life. Bach’s The Coffee Cantata, being popular as a comic cantata, makes fun of Germans’ obsessions on the overseas beverage in its text. In this work, the style of Bach is close to the style of a comic opera of his time, making it somehow different from Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin, where there is no place for laugh, exactly in situation when a person is dying. Looking for some differences and similarities between The Miraculous Mandarin and The Abduction from the Seraglio we see that the latter, in accordance with the traditions of Singspiel’s genre, includes detailed conversational scenes, along with musical acts. Mozart’s work, retaining the intimacy and simplicity of the expression, characteristics of the song forms of the genre, is widely parted its boundaries (Waldoff, 2006). Mozart’s characters recite extensive pathetic monologues that were considered to be appropriate only in heroic operas. In such a way, dialogues grow into large, full of movement and emotional contrasts of the scene that combines by music means. Thus, The Abduction from the Seraglio, along with the melody of Austrian and German folk songs includes patter sounds, its virtuoso roulade are combined with an expressive intonation of true recitative, making it the reflection of folk traditions, like The Miraculous Mandarin was. To sum up, we can mention that many critics consider some musical works presented above one of the first phenomena of multiculturalism, describing them as bright examples of ‘Exotic’ and ‘Orientalist’ musical works. Moreover, observing The Miraculous Mandarin we should remember that it like any other musical work of art has its similarities and differences with other musical works, but exactly its distinctive character made it an inimitable musical masterpiece. Thinking again about the way how The Miraculous Mandarin fits to an oriental tradition we see that there is no any big necessity to talk about its connection with ancient Greek music and poetry, at least in the form in which these connections appeared in Bela Bartok’s masterpiece. Realizing the break with the traditional major-minor system, polytonal effects leading to a screaming dissonance, free combination of archaic modes (the first theme of Mandarin - acute harmonized ‘Chinese’ pentatonic), frequent changes of rhythmic pattern, complex polyrhythmic combination of orchestral voices - all of this gives rise to an impression of rapidly boiling chaotic motion of a mechanized hellish vortex, like a hurricane sweeping everything alive and human on its way. Afterwards, all this looks shocking to the listener. Sometimes music is overwhelmed by the raging currents of nerve and sharp sounds, a motley combination of compressed music elements, which occasionally captured outlines completed melodic phrases. Sometimes a feeling of some kind of nerve hypertrophy is stressed by sharpened images. Exactly in this sense, the score of The Miraculous Mandarin may well be regarded as a model of European Expressionist music generated by the shocks of the World War I. But the ballet’s expressionism with all its super emotional character, sometimes passing into overexcitement, contains also a social origin, because Bartok has shown the violent protests against the terrible world of cruelty and violence against the dehumanization of human, against the moral foundations of contemporary society composing his musical work The Miraculous Mandarin. In conclusion, we have discussed a prominent musical work The Miraculous Mandarin composed by Bela Bartok in the body of this paper. There was presented not only a detailed analysis of the ballet in oriental frames, but also was given its comparison to the most famous musical oriental works. Thus, there is no doubt that Bartok’s The Miraculous Mandarin has found its significant triumphant place on the stages of the best world’s theatres due to its original character and expressive form of realization. Works cited: Amberg, George. Art in Modern Ballet. Pantheon Books, 1946. Antokoletz, Elliot. Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok: Trauma, Gender, and the Unfolding of the Unconscious. Oxford University Press, 2004. Marco, Guy A. Opera: A Research and Information Guide. Garland, 2001. Stevens, H. The Life and Music of Bela Bartok. Clarendon Press, 1993. Waldoff, Jessica. Recognition in Mozart's Operas. Oxford University Press, 2006. Read More