materials and the organisation of musical composition, achieving in the
end his own solution based on a strict discipline, Bartók progressed
from one work to another with no visible signs of a similar struggle.
The evolution of his style, never so, radical as Schönberg's, was accom-
plished without apparent effort and with no revolutionary 'breaks' such
as we find in the works of Stravinsky and Schönberg.

This is not to say that Bartók did not work consciously towards the
solution of this or that problem nor that be was less concerned with per-
fecting the material and language of his works. But his attention would
appear to have been concentrated at any given moment on the specific
work in hand rather than on evolving an æsthetic, a concept or a system
of music. Thus his stylistic evolution was not 'consistent' -- that is to
say, it did not proceed in a straight stylistic line. A 'radical' work was
often followed by a less radical one, and even within a given work there
are so-called stylistic 'inconsistencies' in which traditional and ad-
vanced idioms rub elbows -- inconsistencies that would seem to be the
result of Bartók's conception of music as primarily a form of expres-
sion, for the achievement of which all means are justified so long as they
are genuinely felt. Barték himself stated: 'I do not wish to subscribe to
any of the accepted musical tendencies. My ideal is a measured balance
of these elements.'

In achieving this measured balance Bartök stressed now one, now
another tendency of contemporary music, with the result that his work
displays constant variety of style and idiom. Consequently the division
of his work into periods is a ticklish business at best, and the tracing of
a straight line of development is as good as ephemeral. Halsey Stevens,
in his excellent book The Life and Music of Béla Bartók, states: 'Now
that Bartók's work may be perceived in its entirety, its evolutionary line
becomes its most striking aspect. In no other recent composer is there
to be observed such an undeviating adherence to the same basic prin-
ciples throughout an entire career.' Unfortunately Stevens does not
specify what these basic principles were. On the contrary, only a few
lines farther on he writes: 'With Bartók there are frequent additions
to his creative equipment, but seldom subtractions, "influences" were
quickly assimilated, and no matter from what source, they became so
personally a part of his style or his technique that their gravitation lost
its pull and he continued undeviatingly in his own orbit.' Perhaps
Stevens means by 'evolutionary line' that kind of stylistic consistency
that is the personal signature of a great musician and that imparts a kind
of unity to the most diverse works. In this sense, indeed, Bartók's work

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