The Memorial House
The renowned house on
Csalán Road, which guards and promulgates the memory of
the greatest genius of Hungarian music, was built in the skirts
of the forests-hills of Buda in 1924. In those years, the neighbourhood,
with exuberantly splendid gardens and only a few houses, was
more a part of what we would call it today - a "landscape
protection district", than the noisy Capital. The composer,
who could not stand the clamour of the metropolis, the din of
machines and engines and the inquisitive and prying nature of
people, found an ideal home in the district rich in fragrant
fresh air and tranquillity only broken by the twittering of birds.
From 1932, the house and garden previously bearing the number
27, and later number 29 as historical fate will it so was Béla
Bartók's last residence in Hungary. Now it is a museum,
more precisely, it is a memorial site that attentively guards
Bartók's personal belongings and regularly evokes his
spirit through his music.
The former house of Bartók was partly reconstructed and
converted into a memorial house by the capital city of Budapest
on the centenary of his birth, in 1981. At that time the renovation
of the three-storey villa house was carried out according to
the plans of the architect György Fazekas. On the ground
floor, an entrance that widens into a hall was made from the
former caretaker's compartment. A new and spacious staircase,
which changes the façade of the house, was erected, and
an intimate chamber hall for concerts was formed by opening the
adjacent rooms on the first floor into one hall room. In the
three rooms on the second floor, where Bartók mostly lived
and worked, is the museum presenting photographs of the composer's
life and his personal belongings, all carefully protected by
his successors. Both the new and earlier goldsmith's work of
the new entrance overlooking the garden is the craftwork of goldsmith
artist József Pölöskei.
A stone-surfaced cascaded
theatron was erected in the garden for outdoor concerts. Right
next to it stands the famed full size sculpture of Bartók
by Imre Varga, the reproductions of which can be found in Paris
and London.
The exhibition calls to mind the creator, the ethnomusicologist
and the performer, but in particular it recaptures the outstanding
personality; the man who wrote his masterpieces, the Sonata For
Two Pianos, the Contrasts, the Divertimento for Paul Sacher and
the Chamber Orchestra of Basel, and the Violin Concerto dedicated
to Zoltán Székely in the middle of the thirties
right here, in this tiny upstairs workroom, originallyrotected
against the noise of the outer-world by cushioned doors.
His brilliant chamber music pieces were also composed here, in
this extraordinary milieu of richly carved furniture by the Transylvanian
craftsman György Gyugyi Péntek, the magnificent folklore-relics
decorating the walls, his esteemed Bösendorfer piano and
the phonograph, an essential instrument for his daily ethnomusicologist
work. These musical pieces include the Twenty-Seven Choruses,
a fundamental composition for our choirs; Microcosmos, a piece
related to the piano teaching of his son, Péter; String
Quartet No. 5; Quartet No. 6 of November, 1939 that mourns over
the loss of his mother, but perhaps also bids a spiritual and
moving farewell to his homeland.
It is incontestable that the objects portrayed in Bartók's
home are embedded in his music: his sincere devotion to folk
culture and to the simple people of the country, the eternal
fondness for the objects of nature, the insistent appetite to
understand the world, his austere orderliness, and the near ascetic
purity of his entire being.
Throughout the past twenty-five years, the Memorial House has
become the worthy home of Bartók's art: his works for
piano, chamber music pieces and classic compositions, that may
once have been played between these walls during his life, are
now regularly interpreted by the most prominent Hungarian artists
in the concert hall. Moreover, his spirit is worthily represented
by the music events presenting the latest contemporary compositions
and the introduction of the most eminent young musical entrants.
The house on Csalán Road is the worldwide-acknowledged
meeting point of Bartók's admirers, the connoisseurs of
music, the young, the musicians and those simply interested in
Bartók and his music. The memorial albums of the past
twenty-five years record a list of distinctive visitors, namely
Paul Sacher, Andor Földes and Yuriy Simonof
Upon the contribution of the composer's Hungarian legal successor,
Gábor Vásárhelyi to commemorate Bartók's
125" birthday, the complete house was renovated. The external
part of the building was restored to its original splendour;
as for the interior, not only was it enlarged and refashioned,
it also presents the near-original state of the composer's living
and working rooms to the visitors of the exhibition.
János Szirányi
Director of the Memorial House
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