Different Images: A Case Study on Bartók Reception in Denmark

This paper addresses the early Bartók reception in Denmark in the 1920's and 1930's. The Danish Bartók reception undergoes significant changes and constitutes at least two distinct Bartók images. First we meet the 'international', 'modernist' Bartók, seen as one of the representatives of the 'Neue Musik', in the German sense of genuinely new, contemporary music. This is due to the fact, that Bartók's music from the first moment on was well represented in the repertoire of the Danish societies for contemporary music. The second image is quite different. It emerges in the late 1920s and is present at the latest in the reception of the three concerts, Bartók gave in Copenhagen in 1929. This is an image referring to Bartók as one of the leaders of what is referred to as the 'real new music', which has overcome the destructive powers of modernist expressionism and has formed a genuinely new music founded on the vital forces of unspoiled, original folk music. This second image includes other works as important and excludes some of the works important to the earlier image as non-important. It sometimes values the same works as valuable and important, using other arguments and focusing on other aspects of the works. This means, that there is evidence of a re-interpretation of the Bartók-oeuvre as part of forming this second Bartók image. These images share some international trends in Bartók reception, but have also their own specifics compared to e.g. German Bartók reception, where the Dance Suite (1923) played a crucial role, which was not the case in Copenhagen