Bartók's religioso
The Bartók biography by Kenneth Chalmers uncovers the composer's thoughts on religion to some degree. An important source is Bartók's letter to the violinist Stefi Geyer, who was some kind of a femme fatale to Bartók. Bartók dedicated his first violin concerto (that remained unperformed during the composer's lifetime) to Geyer, to whom he had a crush on. It is possible that they parted because of their opposite views on religion. In the letter to Stefi Geyer, Bartók describes his atheist stance. It becomes clear that Bartók is not a straightforward rationalist. Rather, he strikes one as a mystic. He declares his faith in "nature and science." He believes that every being, even moths and flies, have a meaning of life. Atheism that Bartók stands for is a further development of Christianity, as he sees that Christianity is a development of nature religions. The holy trinity for Bartók is "Nature, Science, and Art."
The unhappy romance with Stefi Geyer may have, at least partially, caused the conspiciousness of an agonizing relationship between sexes in many of Bartók's works. The Miraculous Mandarin, The Bluebeard's Castle, and The Wooden Prince illustrate the hidden hatred and disgust between a man and a woman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDzbhhFHj2c
The 3rd piano concerto was the last completed work by Bartók, written in 1945. As mentioned before, the devout atheist composer's tempo marking adagio religioso raises questions. Was it a deliberate joke, or was it due to the choral-like melody of the part? According to some commentators, Bartók pays homage to Johann Sebastian Bach in this movement. In addition to that, someone has assumed that religioso is a kind of commercial trick. Bartók knew he was dying and he wanted to ensure that his widow Ditta (the dedicatee of the concerto and a pianist likewise) would fare well after her husband's death. The Bartóks had moved to America, and Béla's reputation of a harsh modernist was not economically promising. Perhaps this beautiful religioso would be a success among more conservative Americans?
We may suppose that Bartók did not think anything but the musical character of this piece when he titled it religioso. Yet these musings afford some insight of theological aesthetics. One of the basic discussions in the philosophy of art is that considering the authorial intention. There are two extremes. In the first one, we have to discover the origin of the work as the author conceived it: what was the occasion for what it was produced, how did the artist want it to be understood? Only then we can approach the work properly. On the other extreme one can state that the meaning of a work of art may have little or nothing to do with its author's intentions. Its meaning is fully dependent on the viewer's (or reader's or listener's) mind. He/she decides what is the point. According to the latter reading, we can apprehend Bartók¨s religiosos as spiritual music and think that we are doing right.
Moreover, in Christian theology of music, one may expect that there is more spirituality in music than is apparent on the surface. Perhaps Bartók the mystic sensed the spiritual character of his music, the character that he was otherwise incapable of assessing. This approach may prove useful also with other composers. Johannes Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem has been unduly estimated according to its author's indifferent attitude towards religion (not to mention that the work has been deemed less religious because it lacks the dies irae: it cannot be Christian, since it does not scare with hell!). The same applies to the Christian texts applied by Gustav Mahler in his symphonies. Music historians mainly remember that the Jewish-born Mahler become baptized in order to be appointed to the music director of the Vienna Opera. As if he had no deeper personal reasons for the choice of texts! Christians may listen to music with an open heart.
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