Béla Bartók - Mikrokosmos Volume 2 | 153 Progressive Piano Pieces for Students and Beginners | Classical Piano Method and Sight-Reading Exercises | Boosey and Hawkes Edition

by Béla Bartók (Composer)

(BH Piano). The definitive edition (1987) of the piano teaching classic. Includes an introduction by the composer's son Peter Bartok. (English/French/German/Hungarian text). In 1945 Bela Bartok described Mikrokosmos as a cycle of 153 pieces for piano written for "didactic" purposes, seeing them as a series of pieces in many different styles, representing a small world, or as the "world of the little ones, the children". Stylistically Mikrokosmos reflects the influence of folk music on Bartok's life and the rhythms and harmonies employed create music that is as modern today as when the cycle was written. The 153 pieces making up Mikrokosmos are divided into six volumes arranged according to technical and musical difficulty. Major teaching points highlighted in Mikrokosmos 2: Staccato, legato, accompaniment in broken triads, accents Volume 2 contains Nos. 37 - 66

Genres: Music

56 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

Works, including the music for the opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) and Concerto for Orchestra (1943), of Hungarian pianist and composer Béla Bartók combine east European folk with dissonant harmonies.

Since 1920, small childhood hometown of Béla Viktor János Bartók in the kingdom within Austria constituted Sânnicolau Mare or great Saint Nicholas, Romania.

From his mother, he got his first lessons, but from the age of 18 years in 1899, he studied under a protege of the great late Franz Liszt. At the royal academy in Budapest, he met Zoltán Kodály, lifelong friend. Kodály, Claude Debussy of France, Johannes Brahms, and old Magyar melodies influenced Bartók, who met Richard Strauss in 1902. Indeed, Bartók of founded study of ethnomusicology, a passion in which his friend Kodály joined him, studying and incorporating much country into his own.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit more interesting than book 1 if only because the pieces get a bit more complicated. Still doesn’t sound that awesome but half of that is me. I need to practice reading music more quickly for sure.... but at half speed this book was definitely doable all the way through if not especially pleasant to the ear at first play through. There were a couple of cool sounding pieces but overall I am glad this was a library book and I’m pretty sure my family agreed with me....😭😂🤨