{"id":85643,"date":"2023-01-25T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-25T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/the-bartok-files\/"},"modified":"2024-03-26T14:24:39","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T18:24:39","slug":"the-bartok-files","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/newcriterion.com\/article\/the-bartok-files\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bart\u00f3k files"},"content":{"rendered":"

In <\/span>the spring of 1941 the Hungarian prime minister P\u00e1l Teleki faced a terrible decision: aid Germany in the invasion of Yugoslavia or refuse and provoke the German invasion of Hungary. Even for the conservative Teleki the choice was impossible. He avoided it by putting a bullet through his head. Six months earlier, B\u00e9la Bart\u00f3k, among the most important musicians in the history of Western music, had left his native Hungary for New York. While Bart\u00f3k was incomparably more liberal than Teleki, and his exit far more peaceful, both men\u2019s actions signaled escape as the only moral response to Hungary\u2019s slide into fascism.<\/p>\n

The decision to leave Hungary cemented Bart\u00f3k\u2019s posthumous reputation as an artist of high moral integrity. It also ushered in the most difficult period of his life. Dogged by poor health, financial uncertainty, and marital troubles, Bart\u00f3k faced innumerable challenges during his self-imposed exile, which ended with his death from leukemia in New York in September 1945. Proudly self-sufficient in Budapest, his circumstances in New York forced him to seek help from a brilliant Hungarian lawyer turned successful American businessman, Victor Bator.<\/p>\n

The result is a fascinating, twisted tale, at times akin to a Cold War thriller.<\/p>\n

Carl Leafstedt\u2019s well-researched study bears the subtitle The American Bart\u00f3k Estate and Archives During the Cold War<\/span>. While the topic may sound dry, it is anything but. Leafstedt digs deep into the backstory of Bator\u2019s role in Bart\u00f3k\u2019s life and in Bart\u00f3k\u2019s affairs following his death. The result is a fascinating, twisted tale, at times akin to a Cold War thriller, that fills in important gaps in Bart\u00f3k\u2019s biography and posthumous legacy.<\/p>\n

Nothing fosters trust more than long acquaintance. Already in 1919, Bart\u00f3k relied on Bator, whom he knew through the Hungarian violinist Imre Waldbauer, to serve as an intermediary when Bart\u00f3k contemplated leaving for Austria during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic under B\u00e9la Kun. As the top lawyer for the largest Hungarian international investment bank in the 1930s, Bator had connections on Wall Street that helped ease him into the upper echelons of American society when he decided to settle in New York at the outbreak of World War II<\/span>. The first major assistance Bator offered Bart\u00f3k was help with the emigration of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s nineteen-year-old son Peter, whom the Bart\u00f3ks had left behind in Hungary. Whenever Bart\u00f3k needed help or advice, Bator was there with the money, connections, and know-how to accomplish whatever was needed. Even unsolicited, Bator worked to smooth things over for the Bart\u00f3ks: finding Peter summer work, employing Bart\u00f3k\u2019s wife Ditta P\u00e1sztory as piano teacher for his sons, and helping with the renewal of the Bart\u00f3ks\u2019 visas. Bator even managed to orchestrate an extension of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s \u201cnon-renewable\u201d contract at Columbia University by secretly establishing a fund for his support\u2014\u2014Bator\u2019s check for $500 (equivalent to about $9,000 today) was the largest contribution to the fund and not the only time he used his money to help Bart\u00f3k\u2019s family.<\/p>\n

It was only natural then that Bart\u00f3k made Bator a trustee of his estate in his will of 1943. In this will he left all of his Hungarian and German property to his elder son, B\u00e9la\u00a0Jr., who stayed in Hungary, and the remainder (by far the larger portion) to Ditta, but with extensive powers given to Bator and a co-trustee to oversee the administration of her inheritance. Peter, a minor in 1943, was to be cared for by Ditta. Peter would come into his inheritance only on her death, which would also end the trusteeship. The broad powers given to Bator (the co-trustee never played an active role) testify both to Bart\u00f3k\u2019s trust in him and to Bart\u00f3k\u2019s recognition that Ditta, long psychologically unstable, was unfit to handle the affairs of his estate. Two years later, Bart\u00f3k\u2019s opinion changed. The will dated the day of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s death increased both sons\u2019 shares, especially Peter\u2019s, and radically reduced Ditta\u2019s. Trustees would still manage Ditta\u2019s portion until her death, but Peter would come into his inheritance outright on his thirtieth birthday. Unambiguously prepared according to Bart\u00f3k\u2019s wishes, the will of 1945 had no legal validity\u2014Bart\u00f3k died just before it arrived at the hospital for his signature. The will of 1943 held sway, but when the later version came to light a decade and a half after Bart\u00f3k\u2019s death, it fanned the flames of discontent.<\/p>\n

Bator used his position as trustee to support Peter, an innovative recording engineer, by giving him exclusive rights and generous financial support for first recordings of his father\u2019s works. Nevertheless, Bator\u2019s management of what Peter considered rightfully his began to chafe. Three thousand miles away, the courts of the Hungarian People\u2019s Republic would not accept the validity of the 1943 will over a Hungarian will of 1940. The situation was all the more complicated for Ditta\u2019s having returned to Hungary in 1946, which made open communication with her or B\u00e9la Jr. impossible after the communist takeover in 1949. While Hungarian lawyers made threats and claims they could not enforce, Peter dedicated much of his life to suing Bator (and in a bizarre legal sense, his own mother) in the New York state courts.<\/p>\n

Bator\u2019s lawyers almost always prevailed, and Bator had important victories as trustee\u2014most impressive, his negotiations surrounding the 1946 premiere of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s Third Piano Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra turned what would have been a $17.50 fee into $2,000 for the otherwise destitute Ditta. Bator also published Bart\u00f3k\u2019s magisterial five-volume study of Romanian folk music\u2014an accomplishment so important to the composer that he had authorized the sale, ultimately unnecessary, of his manuscripts to fund it. Moreover, Bator added Bart\u00f3k\u2019s correspondence and manuscripts from European publishers to the material of the estate to create an archive for the promotion of scholarly work on Bart\u00f3k. The project soon fell victim to legal battles.<\/p>\n

While Leafstedt conveys Bator\u2019s impressive strengths, he also documents examples of Bator\u2019s overreach\u2014among them his fight with the Swiss conductor Paul Sacher over the posthumous premiere of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s Violin Concerto No. 1 in 1958. The work came to light after the death in 1956 of its dedicatee, the violinist Stefi Geyer, Bart\u00f3k\u2019s early love interest, who bequeathed the manuscript score to Sacher. Bator\u2019s claim that he controlled the rights to performance and publication even if Sacher owned the manuscript had some legal standing. But Bator\u2019s desire to control every aspect of the premiere was a heavy-handed move against an important conductor who had long been among the most prominent supporters of Bart\u00f3k and his music. Bator\u2019s behavior not only offended Sacher, who joined in legal proceedings against Bator, but decisively set both of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s sons against him.<\/p>\n

A t<\/span>hrough line in Leafstedt\u2019s study is that seeds of the fights over Bart\u00f3k\u2019s estate can be traced to the tension between Bart\u00f3k\u2019s ideals and the changing political realities of his homeland. A little-known fact Leafstedt includes is that, through Bator, in 1942 Bart\u00f3k became president of a group planning to establish a Hungarian government-in-exile. For Bart\u00f3k, who generally aired his political views only in private, the step was unusual. That he took it shows his trust in Bator and the strength of his conviction, shared by Teleki, that Hungary should maintain independence from both communists and fascists.<\/p>\n

There is some poetic justice, then, that the contested material of Bart\u00f3k\u2019s estate has now (following Peter Bart\u00f3k\u2019s death in 2020) come to rest in historically nonaligned Switzerland, where Bart\u00f3k himself often went to escape the cares of the world. The material is at the Paul Sacher Foundation, a top-notch center for research on twentieth-century music founded by the eponymous conductor. While duplicates of much of Sacher\u2019s Bart\u00f3k collection are housed in the Bart\u00f3k Archives in Budapest, which contains materials originally belonging to B\u00e9la Jr., there is a sense in which Bart\u00f3k\u2019s legacy continues to be divided by the fateful step Bart\u00f3k took when he decided to leave Hungary in 1940.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2473,"featured_media":132774,"template":"","tags":[1279,745,2777],"department_id":[561],"issue":[2878],"section":[],"acf":{"participants":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_65fd9fbaa0408","label":"Authors","name":"participants","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"user","value":null,"menu_order":0,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"role":"","return_format":"array","multiple":1,"allow_null":0,"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"participants","_valid":1}},"page_number":{"simple_value_formatted":72,"value_formatted":72,"value":"72","field":{"ID":0,"key":"field_647e2bc0c860c","label":"Page Number","name":"page_number","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"number","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":"group_647e2b3c6941d","wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","min":"","max":"","placeholder":"","step":"","prepend":"","append":"","_name":"page_number","_valid":1}},"featured_image_credits":{"simple_value_formatted":"Bela Bart\u00f3k, 1922. 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