Bela Bartok Quotes & Sayings

Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-music, in my opinion, is unthinkable.) Since we depend upon a tonal basis of this kind in our creative work, it is quite self-evident that our works are quite pronouncedly tonal in type. I must admit, however, that there was a time when I thought I was approaching a species of twelve-tone music. Yet even in works of that period the absolute tonal foundation is unmistakable. — Bela Bartok

By the time I had complete my 22nd year, I was a new man - an atheist. — Bela Bartok

Competitions are for horses, not artists. — Bela Bartok

Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed with utmost perfection in terms of brevity of form and simplicity of means. — Bela Bartok

It may well be that some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach. — Bela Bartok

In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution. — Bela Bartok

With maturity comes the wish to economize - to be more simple. Maturity is the period when one finds the just measure. — Bela Bartok

It is odd that the Bible says, 'God created man,' whereas it is the other way round: man has created God. It is odd that the Bible says, 'The body is mortal, the soul is immortal,' whereas even here the contrary is true: the body (its matter) is eternal; the soul (the form of the body) is transitory. — Bela Bartok

I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing. — Bela Bartok

His pagan barbarity, his explosive and angrily defiant melancholy, his demoniacal instinct ... these are all echoes ... of the thousand-year-old Hungarian psyche. — Bela Bartok