© New York Bartók Archives: The Lost Bartók Editions of 1958-59

Type of Abstract (select): Individual Presentation

Abstract (max. 250 words):
In the publication history of Bartók’s music, understandably little attention has been paid to the editions prepared by the New York Bartók Archives in the late 1950s. Recently, a trove of these privately produced editions has come to light in the United States. Remarkably intact and well preserved after almost 70 years, this massive collection belonged to the New York Bartók Archives itself. An estimated 11 shelf feet of material has survived: over 475 individual copies of scores, representing a total of 41 individual works. The scores are preserved in their original Archives binders. Also preserved are those rarest of relics from 20th-century diazotype music publishing: original production materials, including onionskin master sheets. Each copy is marked “Published by / Béla Bartók Archives / New York N.Y.” They all bear one of two publication dates: 1958 or 1959.
My lecture today will provide a visual tour of these scores and their distinctive features. Most are pointedly stamped with a copyright symbol that identifies as their copyright holder “Victor Bator, Executor, Béla Bartók Estate.” As a group they show many signs of their larger purpose as legal chess pieces in the ever widening conflict over who controlled the copyrights for Bartók’s music during the Cold War. Their rediscovery represents a welcome complication to what we thought we knew about the publication history of Bartók’s music in the 1950s.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Carl Leafstedt is a musicologist on the faculty of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. A specialist in the music of Béla Bartók, he recently completed a book on the history of the New York Bartók Archives during the Cold War (Helena History Press, 2021). His first book, on Bartók’s opera Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, was published by Oxford University Press (1999). He has contributed essays and articles on Bartók’s music to a number of publications. At Trinity he teaches courses on 19th- and 20th-century music, and Co-Chairs the University's innovative Arts, Letters, and Enterprise program. He is currently working on a book about music in 19th-century San Antonio.