
Malcolm Gillies, in the Cambridge Companion, compares three late chamber works - Divertimento, Contrasts and the Sonata for Solo Violin - and writes an interesting summary that resonates beyond these compositions. It's worth quoting: "Once we look within these large-scale structures, we find a composer obsessed with exploiting all the potential of variation techniques. In Bartok's hands, the music is forever in a state of transformation. (...) But he manages to maintain a superb sense of unity to the music through limiting the number of his themes or motifs and ensuring that, whatever processes of transformation they are subjected to, they retain their essential identity. Underlying scalar structures are liable to be expanded or contracted in whimsical ways. The various phrases of his themes rarely involve exact repetition, either rhytmically or in pitches, but take on a life of their own as soon as they have started. Bartok spins the musical texture within the divisions of his musical forms largely through relentless employment of imitative strategies, with a brief motif frequently generating five or ten bars of music through its varied reiteration in close proximity in any number of parts."
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