Vient de paraître: Cantata Profana. Bartók’s Sacred Bridge, par László Vikárius, Oxford University Press, 2026.

« A Béla Bartók called Cantata profana, composed in 1930 and premiered in London in 1934, his credo. The mystical story of the hunter’s nine sons who turn into stags never to return home was close to the composer’s heart, he refers to it when writing an overview of Romanian folklore in 1933, and it even seems toprophecy his own later determination to go into voluntary exile during the Second World War. Eastern European folk music research, including Slovak and Romanian as well as Hungarian, lay in the center of Bartók’s endeavors resulting in complex scholarly publications and original musical compositions. The choice of a Romanian winter solstice ceremonial text as libretto for Cantata profana, which combines Bartók’s folklorism with a markedly “neoclassical” allusion to J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, cannot be interpreted without discussing the importance of folk song collection for Bartók or the severe attacks he repeatedly had to face in connection with his work on Romanian folklore. The study presents all ethnomusicological and compositional sources, investigating the genesis of the work from the earliest thematic sketches to publication and first performance. The two chapters devoted to genesis reveal both hidden motives behind the composition and actual documents. In addition, it also provides a detailed analysis (emphasizing the role of special scales, harmonies, symmetry, and the sonata form). Finally, reception in concert reviews and in later studies and articles is discussed. In summary, the work is considered Bartók’s ars poetica representing his love of nature and freedom ».