Bartók, Biography, and the Violin

Abstract Biography takes the scant facts of a life that are available to scrutiny, like waypoints on journey be mapped, and attempts form coherent narrative from them. That coherence is, at least some degree, contingent upon ideological position author as Michael Benton has noted, “the biographical subject is textual creation much historical recreation.” While fully acknowledging one cannot “read back” works an their life, described substance literary outputs “quasi-facts” set beside “historical facts” argued these “can seen reflecting contemporary events or sublimating experiences in writer’s past mirroring authorial state mind.” This article draws First Violin Sonata such quasi-fact Bartók’s question whether information can should impact ways we understand perform his music. The additionally considers content individual mental products may have something tangible impart about composer’s personality. Given broad consensus around so-called “Five-Factor Model” personality measurement within field psychology, it speculates this might offer tool refine our portrait Bartók through analysis