• 13-digit ISBN: 978-1-84379-278-9
• Barcode: 9781843792789
• Approximate length: 15,000 words
• Formats: iPad/iPhone (enhanced)

Well over half a century after his death, Béla Bartók is held up as one of the twentieth century’s great musical modernists, routinely coupled with revolutionaries like Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern and Varèse. But Bartók’s was a very different kind of journey. In some ways he was also a great conservationist, collecting and cataloguing his country’s folksongs, and looking for new ideas in the sounds of nature. Bartók was not a creator of systems, never an iconoclast; rather he sought ways forward by turning music back to its primal, natural roots before the forces of urbanisation and mechanisation cut them off completely. His message is therefore as relevant today as it has ever been. Audio samples are contained in the text: just tap to listen while you read.

About the Author

Stephen Johnson has written regularly for The Independent and The Guardian, and was chief music critic of The Scotsman (1998–9). He has also broadcast frequently for BBC Radios 3 and 4 and for the BBC World Service, including a series of fourteen programmes about the music of Bruckner for the centenary of the composer’s death (1996). He is the author of Bruckner Remembered (Faber 1998), a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Conducting (CUP 2004), and a regular presenter for Radio 3’s Discovering Music. In 2003 Stephen was voted Amazon.com Classical Music Writer of the Year.