1 Bálint Vázsonyi, ‘Bartók, Béla (1881-1945)‘, Encyclopedia of Eastern Europe, ed. Richard Frucht (New York and London, 2000), 57–8 (p. 57).Google Scholar

2 Jolanta T. Pękacz, ‘Paderewski, Ignacy Jan (1860-1941)‘, ibid., 555.Google Scholar

3 Kenneth Chalmers, Béla Bartók (London, 1995), 128.Google Scholar

4 Carl Leafstedt, ‘The Stage Works: Portraits of Loneliness’, The Cambridge Companion to Bartók, ed. Amanda Bayley (Cambridge, 2001), 62–77 (p. 62).Google Scholar

5 Judit Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1998); Lynn Hooker, ‘The Political and Cultural Climate in Hungary at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, The Cambridge Companion to Bartók, ed. Bayley, 1–23; and Mary Gluck, ‘The Intellectual and Cultural Background of Bartók's Work’, Bartók and Kodály Revisited, ed. György Ránki (Budapest, 1987), 9–23.Google Scholar

6 Leon Botstein, ‘Out of Hungary: Bartók, Modernism, and the Cultural Politics of Twentieth Century Music’, Bartók and his World, ed. Peter Laki (Princeton, 1995), 3–63 (p. 4).Google Scholar

7 Ibid.Google Scholar

8 For the young Bartók's correspondence with members of his family see Bartók brevárium: Levelek, írások, dokumentumok (A Bartók Breviary: Letters, Writings and Documents), ed. József Ujfalussy (Budapest, 1974). His anti-Habsburg attitudes are described in Bertalan Pethő, Bartók rejtekútja (The Secret Path of Bartók) (Budapest, 1984), 102–15 (passim), and in József Ujfalussy, Béla Bartók, trans. Ruth Pataki (Budapest, 1971), 42–50.Google Scholar

9 Endre Ady (1877–1919) was the pre-eminent figure of Hungary's literary modernist movement. His Új versek (New Poems) appeared the same year (1906) that Bartók and Kodály published their Twenty Hungarian Folk Songs for Voice and Piano. The appearance of these works marks the beginning of Hungarian artistic modernism. Gluck, ‘The Intellectual and Cultural Background of Bartók's Work’, 16–17.Google Scholar

10 Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest, 9.Google Scholar

11 Mary Gluck, ‘The Modernist as Primitive: The Cultural Role of Endre Ady in Fin-de-siècle Hungary’, Austrian History Yearbook, 33 (2002), 149–62 (p. 156).Google Scholar

12 On this subject see, for example, Mary Gluck, Georg Lukacs and his Generation, 1900–1918 (Cambridge, MA, 1985).Google Scholar

13 Schneider, David E., ‘Hungarian Nationalism and the Reception of Bartók's Music, 1904–1940‘, The Cambridge Companion to Bartók, ed. Bayley, 177–89.Google Scholar

14 See Bartók's essays, both entitled ‘Magyar népzene’ (‘Hungarian Folkmusic‘), repr. in Bartók Béla öszegyüjtött írásai (The Collected Writings of Béla Bartók), ed. András Szőllősy (Budapest, 1966), chapters 14 and 16.Google Scholar

15 Schneider, ‘Hungarian Nationalism’, 182.Google Scholar

16 László Eősze, Kodály Zoltán életének krónikája (The Chronicle of Zoltán Kodály's Life) (Budapest, 1977), 72–92. See also idem, Zoltán Kodály: His Life and Work (London, 1962), 23–8, and János Breuer, ‘Kodály and the Powers That Be’, Hungarian Quarterly, 34 (1993), 156–61.Google Scholar

17 Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the-Century Budapest, 79. Also Paul Griffiths, Bartók (London and Melbourne, 1984), 96. In Romania nationalists attacked Bartók's work for other reasons. See Béla Bartók, ‘Népdalkutatás és nacionalizmus’ (‘Ethnomusicology and Nationalism‘), Bartók Béla öszegyüjtött írásai, ed. Szőllősy, 597–600 (p. 599).Google Scholar

18 Béla Bartók, writing on 20 March 1920, repr. in English translation under the title ‘Post-War Musical Life in Budapest to February, 1920‘, Béla Bartók Essays, ed. Benjamin Suchoff (London, 1976; repr. 1992), 460–6 (p. 462).Google Scholar

19 See the essay ‘About Béla Bartók's Russian Tour,‘ ibid., 492–6 (p. 492).Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 492–3. For a very different account of Bartók's Soviet tour see Ujfalussy, Béla Bartók, trans. Pataki, 253–8. Evidently, in communist Hungary Bartók's negative impressions of the Soviet Union could not be admitted. For Bartók's personal account of his tour see his letter to his wife, Ditta, 7 January 1929, repr. in English translation in Béla Bartók Letters, ed. János Demény, trans. Péter Balabán and István Farkas (London, 1971), doc. no. 143 (pp. 192–4).Google Scholar

21 György Litván, Jászi Oszkár (Budapest, 2003), 388.Google Scholar

22 János Breuer, ‘Bartok and the Third Reich’, <www.hungarianquarterly.com/no140/p134.html>, containing highlights of the author's article in the Hungarian Quarterly, 36 (1995).,+containing+highlights+of+the+author's+article+in+the+Hungarian+Quarterly,+36+(1995).>Google Scholar

23 Oszkár Róbert, ‘Látogatás Bartók Bélánál’ (‘A Visit to Béla Bartók‘), Amerikai magyar népszava (American Hungarian People's Voice), 5 November 1942, repr. in Tibor Tallián, Bartók fogadtatása amerikában, 1940–1945 (Bartók's Reception in America, 1940–1945) (Budapest, 1988), 189–92.Google Scholar

24 Bartók to Mrs Müller-Widmann, letter of 13 April 1938, quoted in Halsey Stevens, The Life and Music of Béla Bartók, 3rd edn, prepared by Malcolm Gillies (Oxford, 1993), 84–5.Google Scholar

25 Bartók was unsure about his decision to leave Hungary. Soon after arriving in America, he began toying with the idea of returning to his homeland, but postponed such plans with the onset of war between Hungary and the USA late in 1941. Béla Bartók, Jr, Apám életének krónikája (The Chronicle of my Father's Life) (Budapest, 1981), 440–4 (passim). Róbert, ‘Látogatás Bartók Bélánál’, 190–1.Google Scholar

26 Tibor Tallián, ‘Bartók's Reception in America, 1940–1945,‘ Bartók and his World, ed. Laki, 101–18 (pp. 104–5).Google Scholar

27 Ernő Lorsy, ‘Bartók Béla szerb melódiákat hallgat’ ('Béla Bartók Listens to Serb Melodies'), Harc (Struggle), 11 July 1942, repr. in the appendix to Zoltán Fejős, ‘Harc a háború ellen és az új Magyarországért’ (‘Struggle against the War and for the New Hungary‘), Medvetánc (Bear-Dance), January 1988, 296–7; also Stevens, The Life and Music of Béla Bartók, 90–3.Google Scholar

28 For an erudite overview of Bartók's American years see Gillies, Malcolm, ‘Bartók in America’, The Cambridge Companion to Bartók, ed. Bayley, 177–201 (pp. 195–6).Google Scholar

29 The following four paragraphs are based on John Pelényi, ‘The Secret Plan for a Hungarian Government in the West at the Outbreak of World War II’, Journal of Modern History, 34 (1964), 170–7, and, especially, Nandor F. Dreisziger, ‘Bridges to the West: The Horthy Regime's Reinsurance Policies in 1941‘, War and Society, 7 (1989), 1–23 (pp. 1–7).Google Scholar

30 Minutes of the Organizing Meeting of the Executive Committee of the Movement for an Independent Hungary, 2 October 1941, Washington, DC, in the Mayflower Hotel. The Papers of Tibor Eckhardt, box 5, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California.Google Scholar

31 Eckhardt remains a controversial figure to this day. For a recent, sympathetic assessment see Katalin Kádár Lynn, ‘Eckhardt Tibor és a Szabad Magyarországért Mozgalom’ ('Tibor Eckhardt and the Movement for an Independent Hungary'), Tanulmányok a XIX–XX századi történelemből (Studies from the History of the 19th and 20th Centuries) (Budapest, 2001), 195–210. Eckhardt's involvement in right-wing causes is noted in Thomas Sakmyster, Hungary’s Admiral on Horseback: Miklós Horthy, 1918–1944 (Boulder, CO, 1994), 64, 133, 135, 168 and 178.Google Scholar

32 Eckhardt was not related to Horthy. One of the most virulent attacks on Eckhardt appeared in The Nation: America's Leading Liberal Weekly, 27 September 1941. It was entitled ‘Budapest's Fake Mission’ and came from the pen of Ignácz Schultz, a leftist radical and former member of the Czechoslovak parliament. Similar attacks appeared in the leftist ethnic press. See also Kádár Lynn, ‘Eckhardt Tibor’, 201–4, and Steven Béla Várdy, Magyarok az Újvilágban: Az észak-amerikai magyarság rendhagyó története (Hungarians in the New World: The Irregular History of the Hungarians of North America) (Budapest, 2000), 377–80.Google Scholar

33 The most influential were Adolf A. Berle, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and John F. Montgomery, a former American minister to Hungary. See Adolf A. Berle, Navigating the Rapids, 1918–1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle, ed. Beatrice B. Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs (New York, 1973), and John F. Montgomery, Hungary, the Unwilling Satellite (New York, 1947). On Montgomery see Discussing Hitler: Advisers of U.S. Diplomacy in Central Europe, 1934–1941, ed. Tibor Frank (Budapest and New York, 2003).Google Scholar

34 When it started to become evident that MIH might not flourish in the United Sates, Eckhardt and his associates explored the idea of moving their operations to Canada. Unfortunately for them, this plan too got shipwrecked on the rocks of pervasive anti-Eckhardt propaganda. See Nandor F. Dreisziger, ‘Mission Impossible: Secret Plans for a Hungarian Government-in-Exile in Canada during World War II’, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 30 (June 1988), 245–62.Google Scholar

35 Office of Strategic Services memorandum entitled ‘Independent Hungary Movement in the United States’, 17 July 1942, INT 32A-67 (Records of the Foreign Nationalities Branch of the OSS, National Archives of the United States (NAUS), Washington, DC).Google Scholar

36 Transatlantic communications having been what they were in wartime, Péter could not inform his parents when he would arrive in the United States. Miraculously, in the spring of 1942 Péter and his father stumbled upon each other on a street in New York. Chalmers, Béla Bartók, 201.Google Scholar

37 Minutes of the meeting of the MIH's Executive Council, 9 July 1942, New York City; in the Eckhardt Papers (see above, note 30), box 5.Google Scholar

38 The words are Balasy's and are quoted in the OSS memorandum ‘Independent Hungary Movement in the United States’, 17 July 1942 (see above, note 35).Google Scholar

39 Bartók to József Reményi, letter of 27 June 1942, 99 Bartók levél (99 Bartók Letters), ed. Ferenc László (Bucharest, 1974), Letter no. 92 (pp. 180–3). Bartók asked Reményi to treat the invitation as confidential until a list of those who responded positively to his pleas could be established.Google Scholar

40 Róbert, ‘Látogatás Bartók Bélánál’, 189–92.Google Scholar

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42 On Bartók's difficulties in booking concert tours and lectures see Tallián, ‘Bartók's Reception’, 106–11. On his state of health and his worries about finances see Béla Bartók, Jr, Apám, 445–7; Malcolm Gillies, Bartók Remembered (Boston, MA, 1990), 194–6; and Ernő Balogh's recollections (trans. Peter Laki), published in Bartók and his World, ed. Laki, 257–63.Google Scholar

43 See Bartók's letter to Albert Szirmai, 25 June 1945, repr. in Bartók Béla levelei (Béla Bartók's Correspondence), ed. János Demény (Budapest, 1976), no. 1017 (p. 714).Google Scholar

44 Serge Koussevitzky to Béla Bartók, letter of 4 May 1943, facsimile repr. in Bartók Béla köszöntése (Honouring Béla Bartók), ed. Tibor Szántó (Budapest, 1988), doc. no. 3. See also József Ujfalussy, Bartók Béla (3rd, rev. edn, Budapest, 1976), 463.Google Scholar

45 Vilmos Juhász, Bartók's Years in America (Washington, DC, 1981), 28.Google Scholar

46 Tibor Eckhardt ‘to his friends’, letter of 1 July 1943, excerpted in the unpublished memoirs of András Tamás, at the time the Hungarian Minister in Lisbon (pp. 365–80; MIH is discussed on pp. 377–80). A copy of this part of this manuscript has been kindly put at my disposal by Mr Botond (‘Bob‘) Clementis-Záhonyi.Google Scholar

47 Eckhardt's correspondence with former Prime Minister Count István Bethlen, Horthy's foremost confidant, throughout 1941–3, reveals the increasing strain that developed between him and the Hungarian leaders in Budapest. See the file ‘Bethlen’ in box 2 of the Eckhardt Papers (see above, note 30); also Kádár Lynn, ‘Eckhardt Tibor’, 200.Google Scholar

48 Várdy, Magyarok, 382–3.Google Scholar

49 Péter Bartók, My Father (Homosassa, FL, 2002), 239.Google Scholar

50 Nándor F. Dreisziger, ‘The Atlantic Democracies and the Movements for a “Free Hungary” during World War II’, 20th Century Hungary and the Great Powers, ed. Ignác Romsics (Boulder, CO, 1995), 185–205; also Litván, Oszkár Jászi, 389–407 (passim).Google Scholar

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52 Alexandra Piłtsudska, Pilsudski (New York, 1941), 280–1.Google Scholar

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54 For this reason Botstein compares Bartók not to Paderewski but to another Polish composer, Karol Szymanowski. Botstein, ‘Out of Hungary’, 13–14.Google Scholar

55 This was certainly the opinion of Rustem Vámbéry, the only other Hungarian in American exile to have had the same distinction. OSS memorandum, 27 April 1945, HU 945, Records of the Foreign Nationalities Branch of the OSS, NAUS. This is also the view of the historian Mária Palasik of the Technical University of Budapest, the author of several works on post-war Hungary. Private communications from Prof. Palasik to the author, January–February 2005.Google Scholar

56 Schneider, ‘Hungarian Nationalism’, 182–3.Google Scholar

57 Texts of interviews with Béla Bartók, Jr, 1966 and 1976. Reproduced respectively in Bartók Studies, ed. Todd Crow (Detroit, MI, 1976; containing reprints from the Hungarian Quarterly), 150–1; and in Gillies, Bartók Remembered, 31.Google Scholar

58 The 1942–3 and 1943–4 concert seasons in the United States resulted in only six performances each of major works by Bartók. Tallián, ‘Bartók's Reception’, 111.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., 113.Google Scholar

60 Botstein, ‘Out of Hungary’, 4. Botstein adopted the conductor Pierre Boulez's categorization of the ‘great five’ of twentieth-century music. On this subject see also Malcolm Gillies, ‘The Canonization of Béla Bartók’, Bartók Perspectives: Man, Composer, and Ethnomusicologist, ed. Elliott Antokoletz, Victoria Fischer and Benjamin Suchoff (Oxford, 2000), 289–302.Google Scholar

61 Tallián, ‘Bartók's Reception’, 113ff.Google Scholar