Bartok and Klee: An Artistic Kinship as reflected in the Fifth String Quartet and the painting “Ad Parnassum”

©Anthony Tobin, University of Texas at Austin

 

On face value there appears little empirical basis for critical comparison of Béla Bartok and Paul Klee. They never met each other and there is no evidence that they knew specifically of the other’s existence and artistic aims. Klee reportedly disliked the “modern” music of his era, such as the abstract twelve-tone works of Schoenberg, and instead preferred the pure principles of counterpoint and melody as espoused by Bach and Mozart. [1]

But a greater understanding of the forces which acted upon Bartok and Klee and the creative aesthetics which governed their works suggests that their philosophical outlooks and inspirations were similar. Bartok used folk tunes, modes and rhythms to create an abstract system of harmony and melody which transcends traditional tonality. Klee used his perceptions of color gathered in 1914 in Tunisia, and the abstract shapes and forms inspired by Islamic art and calligraphy, to create canvasses which represent pictorial motion, counterpoint, and abstraction which is akin to Bartok’s. Both were drawn to artistic forms inspired by the simplicity and purity of folk art idioms. Visions of the unadulterated lifestyles and perceptions of native peoples were employed by Bartok and Klee to infuse fresh energy and sincerity into art forms which had been jaded by the reliance on old means of realistic representation, and in the case of music, the stagnation and ultrachromaticization of the tonal system. Both extracted the juxtaposition and abstraction of basic constructive elements from their study and observation of folk art, and applied these processes to their own works. Bartok fused diatonic and octatonic scales in the Scherzo of the Fifth String Quartet to provide motion, articulate form, and aid in the derivation of cyclic pitch structures and axes of symmetry. Klee juxtaposed blocks of color and shapes in “Ad Parnassum” to create counterpoint, motion, and abstraction to forge a new symbolic language.

Bartok was not a modernist in the Schoenbergian sense because he did not embrace absolute twelve-tone writing, and instead saw chromaticism and tonal axes as evolving from reinterpreted “tonality” inspired by folk modes in which axes of symmetry and asserted tonal centers replace traditional chord functions.  But his work with folk modes had as much influence on modernism as did twelve tone serial practices:

 

The same can be said about my melodies as I have already said concerning the chromatic folk melodies. That is: the single tones of these melodies are independent tones having no interrelation between each other; there is, however, in each specimen of them a decidedly fixed fundamental tone to which the others resolve in the end. [2]

 

Bartok uses the alternation of texture and the sophisticated manipulation of whole tone, diatonic, chromatic, and the intermediary form of these scales, octatonic, to create a changing kaleidoscope of scale forms and tonal axes which replaces traditional tonal forms of melody and harmony, and consonance and dissonance. Klee subjected his painting to precisely the same manipulation of elements to achieve abstraction in painting.

Bartok and Klee had similar mindsets which inspired the similarities in their works and the synthesis of folk sources. The Zeitgeist of the period before WWI when European Nations were affected by a resurgence of Nationalism and the return to the native customs of people influenced the social and intellectual circles of Bartok and Klee. The celebration of the individual was in the air but so were divisiveness, alienation, and destruction once the war began in 1914. The isolation and despair caused by the war led to limitations on artistic activity and the labeling of “degenerate” art which could be considered a threat to the sovereignty of a nation. This was brought to a height by WWII under Hitler when artists were severely limited and forced to curtail avant-garde experiments.

The angst and alienation caused by these socio-political forces inspired greater abstraction and the reworking of the fundamental elements of art, but artists were often forced to create works which did not seem too abstract or intellectual. This combination of abstraction and folk-culture sources link the work and Bartok and Klee but is only symbolic of the likeness of their psyches. The central connection between the two is that both revered the past but adhered to a hermeneutical view that the contemporary artistic language of the day must integrate past forms and practices into the new, so that an artistic continuum results in which new art is never totally divorced from old art. Bartok reflects this notion in his discussion of J.S. Bach:

 

It is the form into which we mould it (thematic material) that makes the essence of our work. This form reveals the knowledge, the creative power, the individuality of the artist. The work of Bach is a summing up of the music of some hundred-odd years before. His musical material is themes and motives used by his predecessors. We can trace in Bach’s music motives, phrases which were also used by Frescobaldi and many others of Bach’s predecessors. Is this plagiarism? By no means. For an artist it is not only right to have his roots in the art of some former times, it is a necessity. Well, in our case it is peasant music which holds our roots. [3]

 

Interestingly, Bartok and Klee both saw the music of Bach as representing a synthesis of the natural and artistic elements. Bartok and Klee had the legacy of hundreds of years of artistic tradition and form to draw from and feel stifled by. And both had to deal with the loss of individuality for the Hungarian and German people, respectively, which the First World War precipitated. Bartok could no longer collect folk tunes once the war developed, and Klee lost a close personal friend, the artist Franz Marc, in the war and felt alienated by the horror and “unauthenticity” which war created:

 

One deserts the realm of the here and now to transfer one’s activity into a realm of the yonder where total affirmation is possible. Abstraction. The cool Romanticism of this style without pathos is unheard of. The more horrible this world, the more abstract our art, whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now. Today is a transition from yesterday. In the great pit of forms lie broken fragments to some of which we still cling. They provide abstraction with its material. A junkyard of unauthentic elements for the creation of impure crystals…And to work my way out of my ruins, I had to fly. And I flew. I remain in this ruined world only in memory, as one occasionally does in retrospect. Thus I am “abstract with memories.” [4]

 

To be “abstract with memories” implies both that Klee feels detachment and alienation from war and the broken order, but also that his abstraction is connected to the art and aesthetics of the past, that he has experienced an integration of past idioms as did Bartok. Abstraction stems from alienation, angst, and isolation. Bartok was forced to compose when he could no longer collect folk tunes and consequently experimented with more abstract and diverse styles. Bartok synthesized the numerous folk sources he had collected, the work of Cowell, Schoenberg, and the figuration, textures, and color palette of Debussy.

            Another connection between Bartok and Klee is an interest in the art and natural, unspoiled quality of native peoples. Bartok’s interest in folk tunes and cultures is well-documented. Klee was also strongly inspired and changed by exposure to foreign peoples and their native cultures. The subtle images of a warm, North African culture affected Klee so deeply during his 1914 trip to Tunisia that he developed and focused his perceptions of color and form to a fine degree. Klee kept a diary during his travels in Tunisia, and after struggling with color and whether he could paint at all, triumphantly wrote about color on April 4^th, 1914:

 

It penetrates so deeply and so gently into me, I feel it and it gives me confidence in myself without effort. Color possesses me. I don’t have to pursue it. It will always possess me, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: Color and I are one. I am a painter. [5]

 

            This new vision of color transformed Klee’s works but was only the beginning of his new attempt to create pictorial architecture and allusion to music structures of counterpoint and fugue. This draws a comparison between Klee and Bartok; for Bartok transformed the modal scales of folk music into a complicated alternation of homophonic and contrapuntal textures, and diatonic and octatonic, while Klee used the subtle shadings of color and the shapes and lines inspired by architecture in the Arab quarter of Tunisia to create a new pictorial architecture of alternating planes and colors. The following entry from Klee’s diary in Tunisia on April 8^th, 1914, and the painting “Saint Germain, near Tunis,” also from 1914, illustrate this synthesis of Tunisian elements into Klee’s style:

 

My head is full of the impressions of last night’s walk. Art-Nature-Self. Went to work at once and painted in water-color in the Arab quarter. Began synthesis of urban architecture and pictorial architecture. Not yet pure, but quite attractive…Heavy sirocco wind, clouds, the extremely subtle definition of the colors. Nothing painfully bright as at home…Green-yellow-terracotta. The sonority of it strikes deep and will remain within me, even though I don’t paint on the spot. [6]

 

            The distinction “art nature-self” is particularly interesting since it suggests the deep relationship between Klee and how nature affects his artistic output. The use of the word “sonority” is also striking since Klee was an avid musician and likely meant the term to have a dual meaning: both of the depth of the perceptions in his soul and artistic being, and of the possible musical allusions which he felt as a violinist.

            The painting “Saint Germain, near Tunis” (1914) illustrates the subtle use of shadings which Klee discusses in his diary. Gentle pinks, grey-blues, and light yellows are juxtaposed in geometric squares and triangles which are suggestive of buildings and a form of pictorial architecture. The use of alternating blocks of color is striking and not previously found in Klee’s painting. The effect of the work is the abstract representation of Klee’s feelings and perceptions about Tunisia. Klee transformed the artistic language to express his feelings. Absent from this work are realistic depictions of buildings, people, or the natural environment. Instead, the essence of these forms, as Bartok wrote about the essence of thematic material from the past being transformed in the works of Bach, is transformed into a new expressive and abstract style. Colors and shapes are juxtaposed and blended to create new forms and shapes much like Bartok overlaps octatonic and diatonic pitch structures in the Fifth String Quartet to create new structures and a new means of progression. Realistic depiction is no longer the aim of Klee’s art. The dichotomy “Art-self-nature” of Klee has been integrated and hermeneutically reinterpreted in a new medium. Klee has begun his evolution toward paintings which reinterpret musical counterpoint.

Throughout the 1920’s and during his tenure as a teacher of design at the Bauhaus, Klee experimented with the expression of the natural and focused more on the abstract, pure representation of pictorial motion, counterpoint, rhythm, and harmony of color. His travel to Egypt in 1928 inspired further abstraction in his work, as is evident in the 1937 illustration “Freely chosen rhythms in fragmentary arrangement” (Notebooks Vol. 1, p. 290) and the 1932 “Plant Hieroglyphics” (Ibid., p. 288) which suggest the shapes of the Arabic writing and art which he saw in Cairo. Like Bartok, Klee assimilated his perceptions of foreign folk styles and cultures into his artwork on all levels. His interest and assimilation is not superficial. Klee attempts a synthesis of form which is spiritual formal, and natural in addition to any plastic similarities which his efforts conjure.

Evidence of the depth of his understanding and integration in his 1931 discussion of polyphony in the Notebooks Vol. 1. Here Klee proposes that polyphony in music is a reflection of polyphony in nature, and that all higher natural things aspire to the essence of polyphony, not simply to a mechanical reproduction:

 

There is polyphony in music. In itself the attempt to transpose it into art would offer no special interest. But to gather insights into music through the special character of polyphonic works, to penetrate deep into this cosmic sphere, to issue forth a transformed beholder of art and then to lurk in waiting for these things in the picture, that is something more. For the simultaneity of several independent themes is something that is possible not only in music; typically things in general do not belong just in one place but have their roots and organic anchor everywhere and anywhere. [7]

 

The simultaneous aspect of counterpoint, that several actions could occur at once, was the basis for his pictorial experiments. Yet Klee created color and motion canons, fugues, and his crowning contrapuntal achievement, “Ad Parnassum”, from the fusion of two separate forms of counterpoint. One form is physical blocks of color and shapes that are juxtaposed to create layers of color and motion. The other is the temporal progression of color and shape through time in horizontal, circular, and rhythmic repetitions. This is similar to the use of changing pitch cells in Bartok’s Third String Quartet that create juxtaposed homophonic and polyphonic sections, and to the juxtaposition and ultimate fusion of diatonic and octatonic forms in the Scherzo of the Fifth Bartok String Quartet. These juxtaposed sections in turn combine to achieve the larger structure of the quartets and organic integration of elements.

Klee’s “Canon of Totality” illustrates the contrapuntal placements of elements on a canvass. This canon also alludes to the symbolic integration of elements which Klee saw in music:

 

The colors on this circle do not sound in unison as the chain might lead one to suppose, but in a kind of three part counterpoint. This combined diagram permits us to follow the three-part. At each of the three main points one voice reaches its climax, another voice softly begins, and a third dies away. One might call this new figure the canon of totality. [8]

 

The reference to “voices” suggests a striking analogy to music and the entries of instruments in a string quartet. Although Bach and Fuxian counterpoint are cited by Kagan as sources for Klee’s interest in polyphony, [9] Klee’s experience as a violinist in orchestras and string quartets surely accounts for some of his musical perceptions and point to the analogy between his work and Bartok’s quartets.  Klee was well-acquainted with the style of the string quartet, which is a polyphonic form of successive voices which state material and end only to be followed by another entry, which sometimes forms a canon.

Bartok creates a structure similar to the “canon of totality” in the Scherzo of the Fifth Quartet because voices, accompaniments, and pitch cell segments intrude on one another to create a complex of modulations and formations of new scales. The overlapping of octatonic accompaniments and diatonic themes leads ultimately to a combination and transformation of these pitch structures so that subsequent themes are octatonic and suggestive of later Z cells and pure octatonic scales. Pitch structures and themes are closely related to a striking degree. This unity is manifest from the beginning since the opening material on the first page of the Scherzo prepares for the pitch developments of the entire movement.

The cello line in m. 1-2 establishes a conflict between D-Major and d-minor to suggest later motion to the chromatic realm and to form the intermediary between diatonic and chromatic, the octatonic scale. The pitches from the first two measures in the cello line, D#-F#-G-A-A#, are a segment of the scale octatonic 1 (C#-D#-E-F#-G-A-A#-B#). Measure 3 contains the first melodic line in an arch shape to imitate the overall form of the piece and to foreshadow the larger form of the Scherzo. The pitches C#-E-G#-B form an interval-3 cycle of thirds which is suggestive of the octatonic scale, but also firmly assert a C#-Dorian scale. This partitioning into thirds foreshadows the later transformation of material into octatonic scales, a process which also occurs in the larger phrase structure of the first line. The first phrase is in three parts; the m. 1-2 cello introduction, the m. 3 second violin theme, and the m. 4 phrase where the viola echoes the previous material and alters the arch contour of the theme. This  viola part moves to octatonic 0, D-G#-A-B-B# in the accompaniment while retaining C#-Dorian in the melody. This succession of ideas stated in alternated string “voices” in the quartet is a defining feature of quartet writing, one which suggests Klee’s notion of alternating polyphony. However the real “polyphony of overlap” occurs within the pitch structures and points to the multi-faceted notion of overlap and polyphony which Klee considered and practiced in his painting.

The third phrase inverts the arch of the melody and contains an octatonic intrusion in the echo segment in measure 10. The octatonic accompaniment from measure 1 insidiously works its way into the thematic material. This is heightened in measure 13 in the first violin’s pure cycle three, diminished seventh-chord melody D#-B#-A-F#-D#. This interval-three theme statement marks the contraction of the melody and prepares for later derivation of third-cycle and octatonic scale forms.

The next statement of the theme, in violin 1 in m. 15, is proof of the small structure overlap and “counterpoint” of pitch elements. Here Bartok combines and juxtaposes two forms of the octatonic scale in an inversion of the previously diatonic, C#-Dorian theme. The octatonic scale has thus infected what was previously a diatonic domain. As in Klee’s paintings where color dots combine to form new structures on two or more juxtaposed planes, Bartok has fused the diatonic and octatonic “planes with the octatonic theme segments C-Db-Eb (Octatonic 1) and E-F-G-Ab-b (Octatonic 2). This is similar to the style of the 1914 painting “St. Germain, near Tunis,” but is closer to the more abstract “Ad Parnassum” which will be discussed later.  By m. 16 the accompaniment has shifted from the original octatonic 1 to octatonic 2 in a modified, inverted arch shape. Yet the antecedent, the m. 15 theme, abandons the arch shape altogether and instead highlights the B-Bb-Ab-F-G-E-Eb-Db descent which implies a chromatic line and further modulation away from the diatonic realm. Bartok has taken the interval content of the C#-Dorian scale, partitioned into thirds first in m.3, and placed it in altered diminished 7^th form in m. 13 in order to have maximum interval class content commonality with the octatonic scale. The thirds allowed for the modulation to the octatonic scales 0, 1, and 2. The gradual incorporation of octatonic pitches into the diatonic scale have thus affected progression, small scale pitch structures, melodic shape, and accompaniment. In crafting this process, it seems Bartok has created a new idiom as did Klee in his Tunisian paintings.

Bartok later moves to an A-C dyad before the trio and adds a lower F to create the triad F-A-C. This also outlines the range of a fifth F-C, established by the diatonic scale in the beginning, and the cell Z 6/0. The F-C fifth is chromatically filled-in to illustrate the fusion of diatonic and all three octatonic scales. However, the ostinato patterns gradually change to move through Z cells 6/0, 8/2, 9/3, 10/4, 9/3, 8/2, 7/1 (delayed since it is the opening Z cell of the piece in the first theme group) and create an arch shape which mirrors the contour of the opening theme. Thus the building blocks of the quartet, the isolated tones of the diatonic, octatonic, and chromatic scales, have been manipulated to promote unity of form and material on all levels, small and large. Bartok believed diatonic folk tunes, the basis of his compositions including the Scherzo, which is in the New Hungarian Style, contained the potential for such octatonic and chromatic transformations. He discussed the “equalization” of the 12 tones and thus octatonic and chromatic forms inherent in, or possible through, the partitioning of folk modes in this excerpt from the Harvard Lectures:

 

The diatonic element in Eastern European folk music does not in any way conflict with the tendency to equalize the value of semitones. This tendency can be realized in the melody as well as in harmony; whether the foundation of the folk melodies is diatonic or even pentatonic, there is still plenty of room in the harmonization for equalizing the value of the semitones. [10]

 

Klee achieves the equalization of the semitones and the motion from ambiguity to clarity which characterizes Bartok’s pitch progressions in the painting “Ad Parnassum” (1932). This work, in Kagan’s view, is a summation of Klee’s polyphonic experiments and constitutes a “magnum opus” much like Fux’s treatise Gradus ad Parnassum (1725) was a culmination of eighteenth century counterpoint. “Ad Parnassum” was completed after Klee visited Egypt in 1928, just before Bartok attended the “Congress for Arab music in Cairo” in 1932. Bartok was perhaps influenced by the “fascinatingly simple, yet so very expressive melodic form” [11] of the village music performed at the Congress and incorporated it in the melodic lines of the Scherzo of the Fifth Quartet. The clear arch shaped melodic forms and larger structural units in this Scherzo are perhaps a reflection of Bartok’s desire to express the purity and directness of folk melodies, including North African. The expressive use of octatonic intrusions which create Z Cells and chromatic segments could be inspired by these “expressive melodic forms.”

Klee was also influenced by a later, 1928 visit to North Africa.  Partsch contends that Klee “worked his new impressions into extremely abstract pictures divided up by lines…that are geometrically more severe in structure.” [12] The painting “Highroads and Byroads” (1929) illustrates this geometric abstraction and shows how Klee has transformed the juxtaposed shapes of “Saint Germain, near Tunis (1914) into a complex relationship of tension and release, and ambiguity and clarity. The central column of rectangles, which alternate colors, create a sense of repose compared when compared with the smaller structures on either side. Klee creates motion and progression through the alternation of  small color shapes which move toward larger ones much like Bartok juxtaposes and clarifies pitch segments until they finally define octatonic forms. In 1934 Klee wrote about rhythmic and polyphonic motion:

 

Interchange of loose and rigid structure. Polyphonic surface structure, individual; structural rhythms, dividual; movement and tension in different directions (individual structure dynamised by structural rhythms. [13]

 

The painting “Ad Parnassum”, one of Klee’s most important paintings, reflects the spirit and material in Klee’s sketches and observations throughout his notebooks. Loose and rigid structure create a sense of progression and motion through interlocking blocks of color which form a three dimensional perspective of foreground versus background. Underlying blocks of color are clearly seen beneath superimposed squares which subtly alter the shadings horizontally and vertically across the canvass.  This overlap, akin to the diatonic/octatonic overlap in the Fifth Quartet, provides a sense of motion and the creation and release of tension through the pointillistic change of color, chroma, and texture.  The motion progresses vertically up the canvass from the bottom; smaller triangles yield to the large one at the top and to the prominent red circle. Colors which seem mixed and non-distinct at the bottom of the canvass progress to clear blues, yellows, and reds at the top.

            This movement vertically and between the juxtaposed color planes from in “Ad Parnassum” mirrors a similar notion of ambiguity to clarity that is common in Bartok’s works. In many cases, juxtaposed pitch formations such as diatonic and octatonic fuse into clearer octatonic and chromatic segments, then to Z cells, then into distinct axes of symmetry or other symmetrical constructions that define a new tonality, or sometimes reassert an initial key area.  In the Scherzo of the Fifth Quartet, C# is asserted as a final key area as an axis and the C#-G# fifth recalls the partitioning in the trio of the fifth F-A-C from the third dyad A-C. The interval-3 cycles, C# Dorian, and cell Z progress so that the initial cell Z 7/1 that opens the piece closes the movement in chromatic and octatonic colorations with the inversion of the initial arch shape.  This unity reflects one aspect of the hermeneutical aesthetic common to both Bartok and Klee of integrating and developing material through the progression of the work through time.

            In the C#-A#-G-D#-F#-A-C-E violin 2 line in m. 91, two alternate segments of the interval 3 cycle are fused to create a chromatic scale, the final goal of a progression in this Scherzo from diatonic, diatonic mixed with octatonic, pure octatonic and Z cells, and pure chromatic.  Moreover, the final measure ends with a c#-minor triad to realize the diatonic potential of C# Dorian and to complete the large scale arch motion which directs the key areas and progression of pitch structures. The overlap of pitch materials and synthesis occurs on every level, recalling the synthesis of motion, juxtaposition, and integration of color line, shape, rhythm and counterpoint that occurs in “Ad Parnassum.”

            A high degree of unity of materials exists in the works of Klee and Bartok. Both integrated the styles and aesthetics of folk idioms, and the abstraction of the fundamental constructive elements of line, shape, and texture on all structural levels so that small scale units forecast larger scale forms and overall progression. The turmoil of Europe and evocative images of Arabic North Africa shaped their thinking and inspired rather striking abstraction and juxtaposition of elements in their works. Both fused elements and forged new expressive languages that assimilated past conventions of tonality and representational painting, but which integrated the events and aesthetics of their complex, contemporary times.

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