The Miraculous Mandarin* was the third and last of Bartók’s major compositions for the theater; although he was still in his thirties when he completed the draft score and had almost half his life yet to live, he never again attempted to write for the stage. Evidently the difficulties he suffered in bringing The Miraculous Mandarin to a full theatrical per¬formance soured Bartók forever on the theater, whether opera or ballet, and turned him decisively in the direction of abstract instrumental composition. Though we should not like to lose any of the major concert scores that were made possible by this decision, it is a pity that Bartók did not stay with the theater a little longer, because The Miraculous Mandarin reveals a composer of remarkable dramatic temperament, one who can establish setting and character in his music with ease. His two earlier works for the stage—Bluebeard’s Castle, a one-act opera for two characters, and The Wooden Prince, a ballet—both showed signs of genius, though not always uniformly throughout. With The Miraculous Mandarin, we find Bartók fully matured in his musical style. He had absorbed the folk elements of his native country as well as the latest trends in avant-garde music from elsewhere in Europe; his powerful musical intellect fused these elements into a personal and tremendously expressive style.

The Miraculous Mandarin was written at a time of economic crisis and political instability in Hungary. The end of World War I in November 1918 brought the defeat of the Central Powers and the dissolution of the centuries old Habsburg Empire, of which Hungary was a part. An ineffectual ruler was ousted in March 1919 by a communist dictator, Béla Kun, who ruled a little over three months by sheer terrorism until the Rumanian army drove him out. The republic was revoked, and Hungary was declared a monarchy, though the throne was empty. Spiraling inflation made paper money worthless, and Bartók’s wife Marta recalled how she traded a shirt for eggs and a pair of stockings for milk. During this time of austerity, Bartók was composing his vital and compelling score to a ballet that would not be performed in Budapest until after his death.

The scenario of The Miraculous Mandarin, derived by Bartók from a play by Menhört Lengyel, could hardly have been less acceptable to the authorities responsible for licensing theatrical works. Budapest forbade proposed performances in 1931 and again in 1941, finally allowing a production only in 1946. A production in Cologne in the 1920s so aroused public indignation that the city council banned it after the first performance. Even today, the ballet is almost never seen on the stage, and most people who know the score at all know it only from records or the concert hall.

The tale is lurid and violent, set in a brothel bedroom. At the rise of the curtain, three ruffians enter with a girl. The men search for money, but when they find none, they order the girl to go to the window and attract a customer. Three times she lures men into the room. The first two have no money, and the ruffians unceremoniously throw them out. But finally a mysterious and exotic “mandarin” enters, a man whose face reveals no sign of emotion except for his burning eyes which stare ceaselessly at the girl. She overcomes her aversion to him and begins dancing. When he seems not to respond at all (though his eyes continue to follow her), she dances more and more sensuously. She falls into his lap, and he embraces her, trembling with passion. Now frightened, she tries to elude him, and he pursues her. Just as the mandarin reaches the girl, the ruffians attack him and take his jewels and money. Then they decide to kill him. They smother him, but he will not die and continues staring at the girl. They stab him, but he does not fall or bleed. They hang him from the chandelier, and it comes crashing down, and he begins to glow with a greenish light. Finally, the girl feels some pity for this strange man. She embraces him. Her act of compassion releases him from the longing that has driven him. His wounds begin to bleed, and he finally dies.

A far cry from Giselle, yet for all the eerie and horrifying details, for all the dramatic excess, The Miraculous Mandarin treats a theme that had appealed to Bartók for his opera Bluebeard’s Castle, though here it is inverted: Bluebeard was unable to live with love; the Mandarin is unable to die without it.

When it became clear that a stage performance was unlikely, Bartók decided to make some of the score available as a suite for concert performance. It consists of the entire score (except for a very few small cuts) up to the moment when the ruffians leap out and seize the Mandarin— about two thirds of the ballet. The last few measures of the Suite are a concert ending that Bartók provided for the purpose.

Even in a concert per formance, without the assistance of the staging to clarify the score, Bartók’s music so clearly reflects the scenario that it is not difficult to follow the intended course of events, while at the same time admiring the gorgeous richness of the scoring. The prologue to the ballet is intended to suggest the noisy bustle of a street in a busy city, heard through the window of the dingy room. The opening upward scale in the strings consists of a perfect fourth followed by an augmented fourth; these intervals are assembled vertically in the woodwind chords that follow at once, in a bustling 6/8 rhythm. The bustle dies down, and the three ruffians are introduced by a jerky chromatic figure in the violas. The music associated with the girl’s standing at the window and luring the passing men to enter is, each time, presented by the solo clarinet; each time the solo is presented a third higher than before and is more elaborate and richly ornamented. The first man to be enticed is an elderly rake, and his “comic gestures of love” are reflected in trombone glissandi—a trope one may certainly remember from the Concerto for Orchestra. As he lurches toward the girl, the English horn suggests his passion in a whining theme. The entry of the ruffians to throw him out has something of the character of a ritornello.

For the second victim, the solo clarinet again represent s the girl, but woodwind trills and a brittle glitter of piano glissandos make her actions more intense. Finally, she catches the attention of a shy, handsome youth (oboe) to whom she finds herself attracted. They begin a dance that starts with sinuous lines in the bassoon. The dance turns passionate briefly before the thugs enter again and drive the hapless fellow into the street.

The girl dances a third time in the window. The clarinet theme is further decorated by harmonics in the strings and wide-ranging arpeggios in the piano. The characters become aware of a weird figure in the street, and we hear in the orchestra a pentatonic tune harshly harmonized in the trombones. As the Mandarin enters, the brass instruments snarl out thirds and the woodwinds and strings utter wild trills. After the briefest pause, the girl begins a hesitant dance before this strangely unresponsive newcomer. From this point to the end of the suite, the music builds in tension to almost unbearable levels. The girl is dancing a halting waltz (her shudders can be heard in the orchestra). The orchestral color becomes brilliant and icy with celesta, harp, triangle, and piano figures. The girl’s waltz becomes more and more abandoned, and when she throws herself into the Mandarin’s lap, he moves for the first time since his entrance. Bartók introduces an exotic theme on the trombone to suggest the Mandarin’s reaction. A pounding ostinato turns into a tense fugue on a subject of oriental tinge, building to a grand climax when the opening woodwind chords return to bring the suite to its shattering conclusion.

*The title is most familiar in this form, though “miraculous” hardly catches the correct tone. One sometimes finds the title translated The Wonderful Mandarin, though we no longer tend to use the word in the sense intended: giving rise to a sense of awe or wonder.

—© Steven Ledbetter