welcome to Sonata secrets in this video we look at the six Romanian folk dances by Bella Bartok they are really good intermediate pieces very short and sweet movements and when I was a young student maybe 12 years old or so my teacher made me play them and I still have my old markings from then in this score so they are great examples of music that maybe doesn't behave the way you're used to compared to the normal classical or romantic Styles because there are some unresolved dissonances unusual modes and some rhythms that feel a bit backwards but it's okay and in fact it makes perfect sense within this context and it presents music that's really interesting and you get to play this Banger of a final movement [Music] thank you so let's start with some general remarks so this music is based on or contains Melodies that Bartok encountered when he was on his music excavation trips in Central Europe in the early 20th century but they took those Melodies and put them into a composition in a western art music context and this can be a contentious subject like is it exertification or even racism to do that I don't think so I think all art is basically just blending together and transformation of different ideas from different directions so this is just the way Bartok did it and we are left with really cool pieces and I think is really nothing more to it than that and the second thing is there seems to be mostly one edition of this music and it's the universal Edition and I have one that looks like this and the pedal marking here looks a bit weird so you can see where does the pedal start it looks like it's starting after you play the note but I think that just means that you play the note and you press a pedal for that note so I just think you need to get used to that way of writing but also I think the pedal marking are a bit too much like I'm slightly more careful with the pedal because you lose some of the crispness of the melody especially when the melody is not Legato like staccato sometimes I do less pedal than what's marked here so that's just a word of warning so the first one is dance with a stick or stick dance and it goes like this thank you so it's a little bit backwards feeling rhythmically with the 16th notes on the beat and then syncopation on the eighth notes like it would be more natural if it was like that when you have the quick notes not on the beat but that's the point of it kind of GrooVe you get into harmonically it's kind of a a minor Dorian mode a minor but this F sharp makes it Dorian but then if natural on the way down major in the so the first phrase is eight bars like that we get it one more time repeated some minor variations in the harmony for example we start on this D major like a Dorian chord of a minor like it's kind of hard to say what it is like harmonically what function it is because it's so so much of the modes are Blended so I just stick to the feeling of the music in some way some textural variations as well base entry and here we have this thing with the pedal markings so it says to have a pedal here but I think you lose the crispness of the staccato so I make it I cannot put the pedal on this D because that's it feels like it's motivic it's always a long note on the day and I I want to keep the bass note here and then I let the pedal go so we get this nice staccato okay that's the end of the second phrase the repeated now we get a longer section a new Melody and it's a contrast it's Legato goes like this foreign and it goes on for a while Melody soars up in the high register really nice and it's again a little bit dicey how you should use pedal because if you use pedal you get nice Legato with the harmony but you lose the staccato crispness but if you don't have petal it's tougher to tie it together in the harmony [Music] super nice chord F major seven first and then fills up with the D making it to a kind of a D minor seven nine so maybe here I I like the pedal anyway because otherwise it it gets a bit Square I don't know C Major seven this dissonance or fills up with the a a minor add nine F7 a new exciting Harmony it's spelled as a augmented six course chord because that's what it is it's like it's not stable kind of resolved here on the weak beat and it really leaves us hanging here super dissonant place so it feels like a D7 but the right hand Melody plays play something that's definitely not part of a D7 chord it it feels like C major it's outlining in C major it's almost polytonal here like two keys at the same time but it's just a temporary dissonance I think because then it finds a way back after this also the momentum stops to rest and then we have this like a codetta of the phrase a new motif foreign back to a major jumping fifth okay so this is the whole long Melody that grows into the next part all the time now we get all of this repeated again with again some minor variations in the harmony so starts with the same chord again but the new position F major seven super Lush and again D minor seven [Music] it's like a F minor six F major six to the minor continuing down this chord is the same we recognize and we have the same finding the way back and really Crescendo molto is really a point of making it making like an exaggerated gesture in the end as well so that's the first dance let's move on to the second so browl means sash dance apparently or like a waistband some kind of traditional dance when you had a sash on you it's the shortest one in the Set uh really cute and short and sweet goes like this I I can just play the whole thing because it's so short [Music] foreign and then it's repeated but it's like this shot band also has a Prelude in a set of preludes number seven is like a super short mazurka only like four or eight short phrases half a minute or a minute or something depending on the tempo it's like a joke it's so short but it's like a perfect miniature the phrases makes perfect sense and it's like another alternative to the whole of the Mountain King okay but instead we have and again it's a kind of exotic mode it's not D Minor well it is D minor but we have this B natural it's D Minor Dorian so all natural in D Minor it's not like the normal D Minor would be that's the national minor aeolian Miner but the Dorian jumpy and exciting here we have a quintuplet to make it a little bit spicy like this movement it's really even everything the phrases but there's one quintuplet to to keep it fresh and now we have two phrases now we have the third and four phrases going somewhere in the third go to this B flat sorry my piano is a little bit Out Of Tune now especially on this chord um I have booked the tuner for it next week so we come to a time of rest here and I you can almost do like a small format I think and then the final phrase hang in the tempo but then get going [Music] I like to do it that way so and then there's a repeat like obviously you have you can afford to take the repeat in this piece and I saw on YouTube some video a girl playing this very nicely and she did repeat and she made it an octave higher and I thought that's a great idea to keep it get some more variation in there it doesn't say anything but I like the idea so it would be thank you and a little bit returner the second time Okay the third movement so pear look or something I don't speak Romanian but apparently it means in one spot or the German their stomper means like The Stomping or something it's a little bit contradictory like because this is not about stomping like loudly it's very soft and quiet and an amazing atmosphere kind of uh ethereal sounding almost pianissimo and pedal but maybe it's like we're staying in one place and do a quiet dance or something [Music] and it's one significant feature with this piece and it's this harmonic feeling in the melody harmonic interval in the scale so a harmonic minor scale has this interval it's augmented second but here it's on it's not on that scale it's even more exotic it's like a gypsy scale because it's the same interval but it's on B minor between the third and the raised fourth to to the fifth so this is augmented second or a minor third as the scalar interval that makes a feeling and he really plays with this this melody and even the um the d-sharp is also not the B minor normal B minor a lovely ornament like Arabesque type of Melody [Music] and syncopation so everything [Music] now oh it's a new idea here repeated C sharp same interval yeah it comes two times second time softer [Music] and now it's a crescendo to a loud Dynamic mezzo piano is loud in this context and it's repeat of the melodic material in the beginning but it's a little bit variation not the same ornaments but it's the same material going around this interval all the time and it's a New Harmony as well it's a D major underneath instead of B minor it's kind of the relative major but with this harmonic interval [Music] turns into the major third or the minor third which is makes it very interesting to play around with that and here we get the second idea again the repeated note and it says piano here but I would recommend to keep like a loud dynamic because you're gonna get down gradually so it's better to have some some level to start with and then go down it's a bigger effect if you go down more [Music] and again trying different harmonies so now we have this C sharp seven below this [Music] and trying even more a major sounds very nice in the C sharp C sharp minor kind of g seven super nice but kind of passing harmonies [Music] and then the left hand goes all the way down we haven't been down here at all so it gets grounded for the very last phrase like an echo rolentando smartsando dying away and uh super soft [Music] painting in air smoke dissipating that's the feeling I get and now the fourth moment is bukiomiana it's a dance from buksum apparently it also feels a bit off rhythmically like it's not clear where the beats are also quite slow you know this floating character we have a kind of pattern of two superimposed on the meter of three quarter notes in the left hand [Music] kind of hemiola um nice inner voices and with the pedal here I prefer to make more of finger pedal than the actual pedal to keep the melody clear so when you can hold hold it from here something like that because then the melody will be clearer so it doesn't have to be because that's too much pedal and keep the a in the left hand in the finger because you need to change pedal it's nice and here we have this phrygian feel with the minor second scale degree a major with a B flat phrygian feel but like where is the beat what's the meter it's establishing in the start with this intro one two pretty clear but it's so unclear here but it's Charming now the same Melody but re-harmonized of course super nice F major as the resolving chord instead and now the second part of the movement also very short new idea please the same ending phrase or idea motif but the harmony some kind of lydian feel here B flat B flat with the e that's a sharp fourth of B flat kind of positive [Music] a lot of dissonance suspensions here [Music] and they resolve super nicely here a sus4 to the three and again repeated piano and re-hormonized of course now it's a B flat augmented sixth chord so yeah that feeling where is it going [Music] there so I don't even know what's going on here super dissonant but really cool slugando I haven't seen anywhere else also I think but apparently it means slowing down so like Rita Dondo but it finds the way back to a major in the end as well okay now we have two left and it's two fast ones and actually number five is Romanian polka when I played them when I was young I didn't have to play this for my teacher I think I think we skipped it I played all the rest because maybe it's a it's supposed to be really quick and it requires more movement so it might be harder like the last one is hard as well maybe this is like now I it's not too hard for me so I I'm not sure but um yeah maybe it's hard if you play it really quick like all the hand Crossings and stuff but it doesn't it have to be really super quick anyway uh high energy D major steadfast [Music] so some of these small tips are actually coming back in the last one too but yeah it starts in four but then it's in three so the melody in three this is the lydian Feel Again D major but G sharp is the sharp fourth the D made natural major [Music] that's the difference um here we have a nice interesting uneven hyper meter or it's a mix of different time signatures it's three plus three plus two basically so one two three one two three one two some movement in the inner voices here [Music] now switch to G major let's deal with a sharp four and now some more movement in that voice and I Love This Bar so here the pattern is established as three plus three plus two as the the phrase but here we get three plus three plus three so that's the deviation from the pattern so because we get one extra bit of rest on this bar super nice now we get the off date accompaniment [Music] they're annoying with my microphone and then the final entry is down here again [Music] it's a long ending note and here is a perfect place to go attackya to The Next Movement so attacking me straight on and I think that's like the performance standard practice to do that and the reason is it ends on a half Cadence it's end ends on this a major and we're in D Major so a major is the dominant as a half Cadence so there's some unresolved tension and if you then go on so the next movement is in D Major two then you get the closing of the Cadence for when you start in the next one so that feels super nice [Music] this is the Schnell towns in German false dance yeah it's um maybe slightly faster than now maybe I'm doing a little bit of explanation Tempo but I think that Tempo is totally fine um yeah it survived the music survives like you can play that and feel and still enjoy the feeling of playing it so what's going on here we have rhythms The rhythms of the six inch notes are not on the beat like the first movement like that's a bit of here the fast six inch notes are between the beats and the beats are longer notes like that's the way we're more used to and especially when it's faster that makes it easy to play and all these patterns we have we saw them already in the the law the fifth movement the polka that is going around it's really well placed for the hands for the hand you can just have the right hand in one place and play them it's a joy to play and the left hand accompaniment syncopation is the name of the game like a pop song also you can do different with a pedal here you can either follow the instruction keep them [Music] I changed on the last quarter note anyway but keep them before that or you can lift it up on the first beat on the second bar get more of a jumpiness to it I haven't actually decided which one I prefer more I think I'll have to see when I if I play it more so so this is these are two phrases two parts of the phrase coming down now we get the same thing the melody is exactly the same but it's re-harmonized it's like a common theme in these dances everything comes the second time but it's re-harmonized to keep it interesting so the first time is D major second time is F minor so that's just the relative kind of the relative minor um not the relative but a closely related minor key [Music] some weird harmonic moves in the end here I'm not really sure about G Major seven turning to a G7 but still with this tonality with the C sharp but then just resolving to a major in the end and here we get a completely new material so this movement is actually two folk music Melodies stitched together and here starts the second one this first intro never comes back and instead we get pure Allegro faster you know faster all the time in this space it modulates suddenly to C major and we get this well they are very much related with the kind of the movement with the 16th notes and here we get the nice ornament it's basically a written out ornament on the beat and so again super groovy accompaniment like this is the type of thing you never see in classical music it's a little bit of a shame because it's so nice to play and um yeah it's still very interesting music it happens things not just rhythmically but harmonically as well so C major with F sharp it's the lydian feeling yet again and you see I changed the pedal I lift the pedal more here than it's indicated to get there to get the excitement across especially this it's not the same if you do lift on that second note I think is the key [Music] okay now we get the second answer to this new idea [Music] according to the joke around here but this is the same type of element that we had in the first movement let's just go back really quick um some way into that we get this if you remember so it's much slower but it's the jumping here's the jumping fifth and in the last one it's a jumping fourth but I think it's very much the same type of element just appearing here as well with some extra turns [Music] it's like C major maybe C mixolydian with the B flat in there but we have F in the bass kind of again poly tonality thing [Music] another amazing transition where you just get a break for the 16th notes on the Lost quarter note so it's it creates this rhythmic surge towards the next beat [Music] so again the same Melody repeated exactly but re-harmonized now it's a major but we still have the same Melody which includes a c natural which doesn't really go with a major but Bartok doesn't care he just Rises anyway [Music] now when we get the jumping fourth idea now this is this time it's a pure C major really nice going to F major back to a major so it's kind of a juxtaposition of these two tonal centers a major and C major and is going back and forth between them now back to this jumping again foreign and here we have an option to choose from if you're like starting this you can I think you should start with the easier one which is only easier to grasp in one position but if you're feeling more if you want to add more notes you can do the the bigger chords adds a little bit of Flesh to their complement but it's a slightly quite a lot harder to jump there anyway once more new chord [Music] and here just increase the frequency of the 16th notes really nice to play just a Kodak go in between some kind of final Cadence to a major something I'm not really sure but it's the accent on the second beat of the bar which makes it really rhythmically driving yeah the increased frequency towards the very end as well and this is really the dionysian way of music Let It All loose and go wild and reach ecstasy from dancing basically you have this in this type of Folk Music Melodies sometimes bar talk also see it in list in some of the Russians Shostakovich and there's an opposite that's also in classical music maybe even more more weight often on the apollonian side of music like the balance and the clarity and control like especially the music of Bach Mozart Schubert and Brahms so it's really two very a different mindset the best music has some elements of both but this is very heavy on the dionysian side this moment at least which is why it's such a such a joy to play it so I recommend all of you to try it out and feel the dionysian Ecstasy of bartok's faster dance thanks for watching Sonata Secrets I hope you learned something and I encourage you to have a look at this almost no matter what level you're at because I feel like they still bring a fresh perspective and finally the patreon shout out goes to Jay Perlman and a Nikka thanks for supporting me on patreon it means a lot