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Nevertheless, in the way as Gillies or Wightman describe this phenomenon – they are talking, in reality, about borrowings (appropriations, takeovers) –, one cannot speak about Szymanowski’s influence, not even in the case of the 1st Violin Sonata, while in the case of the 2nd, it is almost impossible, because, as Gillies noted, when writing this work Bartók had already “assimilated” these “recently-learned techniques” into his own compositional style much more successfully. It is not surprising then that most of Wightman’s and Gillies’ examples come from the 1st Sonata, and almost exclusively from its first movement, while the 2nd Sonata is not even mentioned in this respect. Whereas, among the Szymanowski works that Bartók came to know through Jelly, there is one that resembles the 2nd Sonata in many respects. Notturno e tarantella belongs to the lighter current of Szymanowski’s compositions, it has a specific exotic shade (with a pronounced/remarkedly exotic – oriental – tone) and, if we are to believe to the anecdotal story of its genesis, that it was composed during a merry gathering of friends, and after a certain amount of cognac had been consumed, may indeed have been intended by its author as a parody of the then very popular, 19th-century virtuoso violin music, as Anna Iwanicka-Nijakowska’s popular scholarly article suggests. The most conspicuous similarity between them can be seen already at first glance. Both works consist of two movements: a slow, improvisatory first, and a fast, dance-like second. Of course, Bartók had no need to have Szymanowski’s example to compose a two-movement, Rhapsody-like composition, but there are far more similarities between them to regard this correspondence a mere coincidence. Regarding the 2nd sonata Gillies mentioned only two technical elements, which he attributed to Szymanowski’s influence, the use of tunes entirely in harmonics – Gillies thought of the ritornell-theme recalled towards the middle of the second movement –, and those double-stops of seconds and sevenths which appear in the second half of the development section of the slow movement, that is, in a passage, that Somfai describes as the second “lament episode”.. He regarded the panpipe imitation in the Dryades et Pan (from the Myths) as the model of the tune in harmonics, and the double-stop chain preceding the panpipe imitation as that of the second and seventh parallel double-stops. There is no doubt that in these two sections Bartók and Szymanowski used the same technical solution. However, the “lament episode” of the 2nd Violin sonata also recalls the introductory measures of Notturno. Although, in this case the two composers did not use entirely the same solution, Bartók, as we’ve seen, used second and seventh double-stops while Szymanowski fifth double stops, the intonation and even the melodic structure of these two passages are similar. It is not the only part of the 2nd Violin Sonata that reminds us of the Notturno. Besides the “lament episode”-like first theme of the work, the second theme resembles the sonata’s ritornell-theme. They have a similar tone and texture, and both themes are in the same high register. Beyond these similarities, we find a good deal more correspondences between these two first movements. Some of them refer only to a specific moment or gesture, such as the quasi-trillo tremolos in the piano accompaniment, or the spectacular contrasts resulting from the juxtaposition of very high and very low registers. Such correspondences are not limited to the first movements, we can find such details in the fast, second movements, as well. One of the Tarantella's themes, consisting of ascending and descending scales, resembles the first theme of the Violin sonata’s fast movement, even in their ostinato-like accompaniment can be perceived some similarities. Yet, in the case of the 2nd Violin Sonata Szymanowski’s influence (if it can be regarded an influence, at all) appears in a different way. While in the 1st Violin Sonata Szymanowski’s music brought out from Bartók such features of his own style that were related to Szymanowski’s, in Violin sonata no. 2 these characteristic features of Szymanowski’s music were only a starting point for him to “rethink” and reformulate them in his own style. Take, for example, the ostinato accompaniment of the scale theme mentioned above. In the Violin sonata, it is only the continuous movement that recalls the accompaniment of the corresponding part of Tarantella. Instead of the steady pulsation, seen in the Szymanowski work, this passage of the Sonata contains Bartók's characteristic asymmetrical rhythms, and a few other, typical Bartókian solutions – for instance (an early form of) those percussion-like textures, which would appear a few years later in Bartók's piano music. Such correspondences can be found between almost every important part of the two compositions. As a result, it is as if the outlines of the Notturno e tarantella became visible in the background of the 2nd Sonata albeit vaguely, as if through a veil. Bartók’s approach therefore appears to be a conscious response, which instead of similarities, emphases the differences between the corresponding details. As an illustration, we could not find better example than showing the differences between the ritornell-theme of the 2nd sonata, and its “counterpart”, that is the second theme of Notturno. Based on its structure – alternation of long, sustained notes and small ornamental ones – the ritornell-theme can be related to different musical genres, among others, to the slow verbunkos (Hallgatók), as well. László Somfai, on the other hand, was reminded by this melodic structure of the Romanian hora lungă, a folk music genre Bartók discovered during his Romanian folksong collecting trips. In Somfai’s view, every part of the ritornell-theme – the sustained note at the beginning of the phrases, the middle part, rich in fiorituras, and the recitative-like closing section – corresponds to the descriptions Bartók provided of the structure of the hora lungă. As is well known among Bartók scholars, this genre was extremely important to him for several reasons. He considered these melodies (which have no fix form and are not bound to any specific occasion) a kind of “primeval” music, one of the oldest folk music genres known by him, and the wide geographical distribution of this kind of melodies – in addition to the Romanian hora lungă, he knew Arabic, Ukrainian, and Turkish examples, as well – confirmed this hypothesis. Actually, almost everything regarding the hora lungă was interesting for him. In addition to the ever-changing, “archaic” structure, he was particularly fascinated by features that were “exotic” even for him: the primitive melodies characterised by very narrow ambitus of six, five or even four notes, the chromaticism, and, above all, the performance requiring unusual vocal technique: “sobbing elongations”, and “hiccup-like vorschlags”. The hora lungă-like features of the ritornell-theme are usually explained by the fact that Bartók was arranging his Romanian folk song collection and preparing for publication the Máramaros volume, especially important for hora lungă. Yet, seeing the highly ornamented, improvisatory second theme of Szymanowski’s Notturno (the alternation of the sustained notes and the ornamentation-like short values), it does not seem entirely inconceivable, that these (hora lungă-like) features of the Notturno also had some part in the formation of the ritornell theme. In fact, in this light, it seems as if Bartók had deliberately placed an authentic folk music theme (hora lungă) against the exotic themes of Notturno. It could be regarded even as a (Bartókian) parable of what “real folk music” is, and how folk melodies should be “treated”. In any case, Szymanowski’s violin piece was a very good “target” in this respect. It was in fact an exotic Salonstück containing every feature Bartók had criticised regarding the “folk, nationalistic or exotic” works of 19th century composers. Even the “exoticism” of the piece is a kind of “saloon” exoticism of Spanish, Italian and perhaps, to some extent, Arabic clichés mixed according to Parisian taste. This gesture, that is the way Bartók juxtaposed Szymanowski’s exotic themes with an exotic, but at the same time authentic, Eastern European folk melodies of similar character, can even be interpreted as Bartók contrasting Szymanowsk’s Western European exoticism with his own Eastern European one. The argument seems convincing, yet one question remains. As we mentioned above, Notturno e tarantella belongs to the lighter stream of Szymanowski’s works, why would then Bartók have chosen a work, obviously intended to entertain, to contrasts with his own work of different weight and written (in all probability) for different, perhaps very personal, purpose? At that time he could not have been familiar with Szymanowski's later, ”Polish” compositions, but he had already known some of his other, more representative works. Regarding the 1st Violin Sonata several scholars had already called attention to musical allusions with deep personal relevance. The most conspicuous of them is the similarity, in tone and texture, between the “A” part of the second, slow movement of the 1st Sonata and the 1st movement (the later Ideal portrait) of the early violin concerto; even the theme of the Sonata is a variant of the Stefi Geyer Leitmotiv, although it is already not the original ascending form, but the mourning, descending one. This descending, mourning version of the Leitmotiv was detected by David Cooper also in the first movement of the 1st Sonata. It appears in the development section with a characteristic Italian inscription, risvegliandosi (reawakening), amid other descending seventh chords.