Abstract
Béla Bartók’s Cantata Profana (1930) retains ambiguities inherent in the Romanian myth on which it is based – a
story of nine hunting-lads magically transformed into stags. This article explores the mysterious elements through
psychoanalysis, positing links between darkness, Bartókian ‘night music’, and the Unconscious. Other aspects of the
musical language suggest representations of Lacanian processes, specifically a regressive fantasy to the mental
order of the ‘Real’. This is linked to Bartók’s experience of childhood illness, a time of perfect maternal love but
profound bodily betrayal, suggesting that the stag-body represents a strong, proud transformation, ‘replacing’ the
debilitated body of childhood memory. Musically, the ‘mirror-image’ scales of the opening and ending of the work
are re-examined. It is proposed that they represent Bartók acknowledging loss, most importantly the loss of the myth
of ‘pure sources’, which had sustained him, both musically and psychologically, up until then. This loss inevitably
sought expression after a disastrous polemical debate forced him to abandon the idea of musical purity in folksong.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 221-254 |
| Number of pages | 33 |
| Journal | twentieth-century music |
| Volume | 3 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Sept 2006 |