MS Mus. 1810/7

Sketch for the first 17 bars of the String Quartet no 1, dated 16 January 1908 and extracted from the ‘Black Pocket-Book’, between the present ff. 8 and 9. (for the facsimile edition of 1987, see British Library, a.264.).

On 7, 9 and 14 January Bartók had described his feelings at his rejection by Stefi Geyer in a diary that he later gave her. The present sketch, and a slightly later draft of the first 30 bars in open score, were also among her papers, so he presumably added the words ‘A naplóföljegyzések után ez következett’ (‘This followed the diary notes’) on the verso of the former to make clear to her the origin of the music (indeed, the first four notes are a transformation of the Geyer motif that opens both movements of the Violin Concerto written for her and completed three weeks later on 5 February).The diary was published by Paul Sacher Stiftung in 1979 as Béla Bartók: Briefe an Stefi Geyer, 1907–1908.

See O. Neighbour, ‘A Stray Leaf from Bartók’s Black Pocket Book’, in L. Vikárius and V. Lampert eds. Essays in Honor of László Somfai on his 70th Birthday (2005), pp. 401–4, with facsimiles of the recto and verso on p. 403.

Béla Bartók Black pocket-book: Sketches 1907-1922. Facsimile edition of the manuscript with a commentary by László Somfai (Edition Musica Budapest, 1987).