An die nahe Geliebte: modelul ciclului de lieduri din tinereţe ale lui Béla Bartók
An die nahe Geliebte: the model of the song cycle from the youth of Béla Bartók

Summary/Abstract: Felicie Fábián, three years younger than Bartók, studied piano and composition at the 'Franz Liszt' Academy of Music in Budapest. Her name appears increasingly frequently in Bartók's letters from the beginning of the 1899 academic year, and their intense relationship, which lasted until 1903, is also highlighted by three compositions associated with Felicie. The Liebeslieder cycle is the first of these, composed in 1900, without an opus number and unpublished during Bartók's lifetime. Its lyrics and musical style suggest German romantic models, which indeed played a decisive role in the young composer's orientation. This is confirmed by an important source: until 1903, the composer kept detailed lists of all the works he had studied, heard, or wished to study in the future. The songs appear on the list of pieces he had known since the spring of 1898; before this date, Bartók does not mention the genre, and from the end of 1900, the song almost disappears from the list. Since during that period the young composer had studied several songs or song cycles by Schubert and Schumann, certain songs by Brahms, and even Wagner's Valkyrie, we can agree with researchers who compare Liebeslieder with these works. Although other musicologists consider that the influence of Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss, and Franz Liszt can be discovered in Liebeslieder, their names do not yet appear on Bartók's list, so we can rather talk about coincidental similarities or common stylistic bases. However, analyses often ignore an equally important figure from the list: Beethoven, who was not only considered by Bartók an unavoidable figure in symphonic, chamber, and piano works, but the young composer also studied his song compositions. In this work, I explore the influence of Beethoven's only song cycle on Bartók's Liebeslieder.

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