Like many another composer, Hungary's Bela Bartók lived and died a poor man. His sour and peppery music was bitterly condemned by many critics; audiences seemed to like it even less. Mostly it got played, if at all, before esoteric little groups of modernist composers and musicians, who had built up a tolerance to what the uninitiated regarded as barnyard music.
When he died of leukemia in Manhattan last September at 64, Bela Bartók's final hospital bills and burial expenses were paid by the big-money boys of composing, the American Society of Composers, Authors...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
