Hungary at Last to Welcome Home Bartok’s Remains

The great Hungarian composer Bela Bartok was honored in musical tribute Sunday, 43 years after his death in self-exile and three days before his remains are moved to “his beloved country, Hungary.”

Ferenc Esztergalyos, Hungary’s ambassador to the United Nations, joined other Hungarian officials, aficionados of classical music and Bartok’s two sons at a memorial service at the Unitarian Community Church in Manhattan.

The service was the first memorial for Bartok, considered one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. He fled the Nazis in 1940 and died of leukemia in 1945 at the age of 64 while eeking out a living as a musical researcher at Columbia University in New York.

A state funeral is scheduled July 7 in Budapest for the composer.

Esztergalyos wished the composer “a safe journey and rest in peace to his beloved country, Hungary.”

Bartok’s remains will be removed Wednesday from Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, N.Y., to begin the journey to Budapest, where they will be publicly displayed at the Academy of Sciences July 6. The reburial will be in Farkasrep Cemetery there.

In post-war Hungary, Bartok was widely recognized as one of the nation’s outstanding sons after the Communist government dropped its early opposition to his music, which failed to reflect the prescribed tenets of social realism. His portrait is printed on Hungary’s biggest bank note.

His sons will accompany the coffin on the Queen Elizabeth II to Southampton, England, sailing June 25.

“At first the idea of disturbing my father after he had been laid to rest seemed unpalatable, but the idea of his making the trip alone was even more unpalatable,” said Peter Bartok, 64.

During the tribute, six of Bartok’s dark, brooding pieces--including “Out of Doors” and “Dance Suite”--were played by pianist Robert Schwartz. He described the music as steeped in pathos reflecting Hungary’s turbulent history.

The pieces were written in 1918-26, when the composer toured the Hungarian countryside to record the folk music that was the inspiration for his work.

Dr. Donald Szantho Harrington, minister of the Unitarian Community Church, quoted the composer as saying, “In searching for my own path, I only believe that from only the entirely old the entirely new can be born.”

At the service, Peter Bartok, a recording producer living in Homosassa, Fla., and Bela Jr., 77, a retired railroad official living in Budapest--recalled their father at work.

Bartok was a slight, trim man with dark passionate eyes who embraced solitude to compose his masterpieces, Peter Bartok said.

“He usually went to the Alps alone to write, and when we were in our house, the rules were no radio-playing or piano-playing while he was composing,” the son said.

But the composer was “a lot of fun to be around” when he wasn’t writing, said Peter Bartok. His father often worked in the garden with a handkerchief tied around his head.

When the family arrived in New York, he said his father could not compose for two years because he and the family felt they were in a state of exile.

At the height of his illness, Bartok suddenly began working madly, his son said, producing one work after another.

Before his death, his father told him, “The only sadness I have is to leave with a full trunk,” referring to his unfinished works.

One week before the composer died, his doctor ordered Bartok to the hospital. The composer begged for just one more day, but the doctor was adamant.

“I insisted also,” Peter Bartok said. “After he died, I found out that what he needed that one more day for was to finish the last page of a score of piano concertos that he had sketched.”