With or without the B-A-C-H Motive? Bartók’s Hesitation in Writing his First String Quartet

Considering the appearance of the musical cryptogram “B-A-C-H” (B-flat– A–C–B -natural) in well-known works up to the time of his First String Quartet (1908/1909), Béla Bartók knew Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on the Theme B-A-C-H, presumably also Schumann’s Sechs Fugen über den Namen Bach, and Reger’s Fantasia and Fugue on B-A-C-H for organ. Such compositions quoted the celebrated motive, typically as a starting point, with the relevant (aforementioned) pitches because the musical cryptogram in this way allowed immediate recognition of the reference to the name of the Leipzig composer. However, Bartók’s planned “B-A-C-H” quotation in the development section of the sonata-form second movement of his First Quartet was not a typical homage to Johann Sebastian Bach but rather a vision: a distorted reference to the symbolic “B-A-C-H” motive. Undoubtedly Bartók liked this episode. There is reason to believe that his friend Zoltán Kodály advised him to leave out the inorganic and distorted “B-A-C-H” allusion.