The Miraculous Mandarin
Most Hungarian and lots of other European creative artists have been
inspired by this piece of Bartók ever since its premiere:
choreographers and directors seem to be so driven to make their own
versions of the Mandarin – a challenging task indeed - as if it were
„obligatory reading”. I kept toying with the idea as well, pondering
what the story really meant for me. I realised that it is not the
relationships between the strange eastern master, the prostitute and
the tramps I find interesting in the piece. I study the inner events of
a stormy love, I study the genesis of an elemental desire that
generates enormous powers in a man. Powers so strong they can break
through the walls of the surrounding world and reach beyond reality.
Being Mandarin is a state of mind. It can happen to anyone who reaches
a degree of desire and love so strong, that rules of the outer world no
longer apply. The life of such a person is completely controlled by his
overpowering sexual obsession. Therefore the Girl is an object of
desire, the Tramps symbolize the outer world and the Mandarin himself
impersonates DESIRE.
Tamás Juronics
The tragic dance play called Miraculous Mandarin is perhaps the most
outstanding piece among Béla Bartók’s immensely powerful works.
Bartók’s anger toward and desperation over the society that mills away
the vital force of a man, and the world that makes a mockery of all
noble human emotions, desire and initiative started to develop during
the world war years. He melted his outburst hatred into this scary,
strange dance-pantomime drama played on the borderline of life and
death. “…I am already working on the mandarin, too; it will be the
music from hell when I’m done” he wrote to his wife in the end of
August 1917.
„…This piece is a battle of love and death, of lethal love and lethal death.”
Genesis of the dance play:
The Miraculous Mandarin – according to press releases of the time – was
completed by the summer of 1919 or at least the piano excerpts were
ready by that time. But it was a long way to go for both the pantomime
and the composer until the work was finally put on stage. It took him
years to arrange the music, even after its premiere in Cologne in 1926
Bartók kept modifying it over and over again. In Hungary, the
Miraculous Mandarin was first allowed on stage on 9 December 1945.
Bartók was dead by then.
Music of the dance play:
The way Bartók arranged the music of the mandarin, he went beyond all
known boundaries of instrumental expression. He freed the demonic
whirling spirit and dark shades of the orchestra, in order to reveal
the depths of distorted human emotions, rage and grotesque situations
in their own horridness. The terrifying power that flares from the
staccato, disjointed, desperately suffering, yet victorious music of
the mandarin is one of its kind, it is a unique example of the most
modern European stage music. A music that lets the audience in on
deeply moving secrets of the soul.
