In 1945 the great Hungarian composer Bela Bartok spent the last summer of his life in Saranac Lake, writing two pieces, his Third Piano Concerto and Viola Concerto. Fifty years later, Bartok's reputation has soared, but the cabin at 89 Riverside Drive where he stayed is near collapse.
Bartok, 59, arrived in the United States with his wife Ditta late in 1940; their teen-aged son Peter followed later. They had voluntarily exiled themselves from their home in Hungary, the roots of Bartok's music, rather than live under the rule of the approaching Nazis, whom he despised. Though not yet well-known in the United States, in Hungary Bartok was famous as a pianist, a composer and a collector of the ancient native folk songs of Eastern Europe. In New York he had a position at Columbia University studying and transcribing Harvard's Milman Parry Collection of Serbo-Croatian folk songs in a sound-proof room. It was work that Bartok loved, and he was the best possible person to do it, but the money supporting his research was uncertain and renewed only six months at a time. Because of the war, his funds in Hungary were not available to him.
At the same time that he had difficulties with money, his health was also declining. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) stepped in to provide the best doctors and hospitals. Bartok's illness was at first thought to be a recurrence of the tuberculosis he had had as a young man; one of his doctors in New York was Edgar Mayer, well known here as the director of Will Rogers Hospital. Later on a diagnosis of leukemia was made, but as there was no effective treatment at that time, the gravity of his condition seems to have been downplayed to him.
Twenty-five years later, Dr. Mayer wrote a remembrance of Bart¢k as: very soft spoken and talking very little. He never complained!! with high fever up to 102 -103 he sat up writing music from his head, composing from memory. He hated to be disturbed even by his doctor, he did not believe we knew what was wrong with him anyhow. ... To compose he needed great silence. He stuffed his ears with ebony earstoppers. One day, one of his ebony ear pieces got lost and he was in great distress. I had the fortunate idea of trying an earpiece from my stethoscope. This he could not forget, it was the greatest good deed I did for him. I helped him more than any medical service I gave him. Mayer and his colleague Dr. Israel Rappaport sent Bart¢k to Saranac Lake for the summer of 1943. That summer and the next, on the recommendation of Dr. Henry Leetch, the Bartoks stayed with Mrs. Margaret Sageman, who owned a large cure cottage at 32 Park Avenue, and lived in a smaller bungalow behind it, at 30 Park Avenue. Bartok nicknamed Dr. Leetch "Mr. ASCAP." In less than two months, Bartok composed the Concerto for Orchestra; Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra who had commissioned the work, called it the best of the last fifty years.
When the Bartoks returned to Saranac Lake in 1945 for their third summer here, they moved into a four-room cabin at 89 Riverside Drive. Mrs. M. A. Levy, with whom the Bart¢ks had become friends in previous summers, had helped them find it, next door to her house at 93 Riverside Drive. The cabin stood in the back yard of a house rented by Maks Haar, who worked for Lederle, the drug company, and his wife, the former Ida Weinstock, who was raised in Saranac Lake. For $15 a month, the Haars sublet the cabin to the Bartoks, who inscribed the Haars' guest book: "We are happy indeed to stay in this wonderful quiet place."
It is not known when the rustic cabin was built, though it seems likely to have been a summer curing facility for tuberculosis patients when the house was a cure cottage called Balsam Manor. Because the steep site limits the best angles for photography, no historic photos of the house show the cabin, though it may have been present when they were taken. Maryland Avenue behind the cabin was probably still undeveloped in 1945, and Ida Haar remembers going for walks with Bart¢k in the woods.
The entrance to the four-room cabin was through a small porch. Straight ahead, one door opened into the living room, and another to the right led directly to the simple kitchen. There was a brick fireplace in the living room; Bartok loved open fires along with all real, natural things. French doors left of the fireplace opened into the dining area of the kitchen. Beyond were two small bedrooms separated only by a thin wooden wall. Peter Bart¢k remembered that his mother slept in the room to the left. Ceilings throughout were very low, about 6'6". Described as "a small makeshift place" and "a hovel or hut," it was very simply furnished "with two cots, a small table, chairs that are gone long ago," and no piano, according to Peter. The composer brought with him "a minimum of necessities, two kinds of manuscript paper (one for pencil, one for India ink) and writing instruments."
Bartok wrote about the cabin in a letter to Peter on July 7, calling it "very quiet, but very simple. ... the bath water must be heated in a stove. ... The ice-box must be fed real, natural ice." These comments were high praise from Bart¢k, who greatly valued quiet, simplicity and closeness to nature. Peter observed that "my father was obviously contented; his surroundings were as spartan as the interior of a Hungarian peasant cottage -- a reminder of a world with such fond associations for him." Here, wrote Peter, "he found the peace and tranquillity suitable for composing." In these plain rooms, Bartok wrote his last two works, the Viola Concerto and the Third Piano Concerto. Peter Bart¢k published his father's letter in 1995 in Bela Bartok, Viola Concerto, containing a full-size facsimile of the hand- written composition. Ditta wrote to their friend Agatha Fassett that Bartok was feeling so well it was almost beyond belief. ... He wandered long hours in the woods and never showed any weariness when he returned home. All the rest of the time was devoted to his work, to those two compositions he was so anxious to finish before the summer came to an end. The Viola Concerto for [William] Primrose was already sketched out in its final form, and as for the orchestration, "all that was missing were the notes." For Bartok, that meant no more than finding time to put them down on paper. And the Piano Concerto ... was practically finished, except for a few of the concluding measures.
Peter remembered taking "many walks together... Once we even climbed quite far up on a nearby hill, taking lunch with us."
Ida Haar remembers that "Ditta came into our house where we had a piano, and she practiced there because they didn't have a piano in the cottage." At Ida's request, Ditta gave a free concert that summer in the Jewish Community Center on Church Street (where the Paul Smith's College dormitory now stands.) Mrs. Levy, also involved in the concert, was disappointed that this exposure did not lead to paying professional engagements for Ditta. Local lore has it that Ditta went next door to the Levys' house to play the compositions that Bartok was writing on the piano there, where her husband could hear it from the cabin. Elise Chapin, who lived at 103 Riverside Drive at the time, remembers Ditta walking into town every day to practice on the piano at the Harrietstown Town Hall.
Unlike the arrangements at the Sageman Cottage in previous summers, on Riverside Drive Ditta was responsible for all the housekeeping duties, and "she ran into trouble with war-time living arrangements," Margaret Sageman recalled in 1970. "'She didn't have [rationing] stamps and couldn't get food. Ditta was the kind of person who would buy a steak and give them the whole book,' and unscrupulous people took advantage of her. Mrs. Sageman 'got them food and food stamps and got them started.'" Ida Haar, too, remembers that her husband worried that the Bart¢ks were not getting enough to eat. His father wrote Peter, "There is no delivery of goods to the house ... but the owners of the house drive into town almost daily and we may avail ourselves of this."
Perhaps because Ditta most fully understood, and deeply dreaded, the inevitable result of her husband's illness, she became very depressed and refused to see anyone. Wrote Mrs. Levy, "Bela asked me to try to see her so I just walked into the house and tried to visit with her. I don't think she even knew me. She just stared into space." Mrs. Levy recalled Peter's explanation: that "his Mother was a musician and could not cope with keeping house."
Though Bartok likely understood how seriously ill he was, he made the best use of his energies in the time that he had. He told his son Peter, "I'm working on a birthday present for your mother. A piano concerto for her own use. It's a surprise and you mustn't say anything to her about it." At his desk to the right of the fireplace in the cabin, Bartok was also composing the Viola Concerto, with which he covered the other work whenever he might be observed. This was apparently the only time in his career that he composed two pieces concurrently.
Elise Chapin also was present on a wonderful occasion. At that time Deerwood, a highly regarded music camp on Upper Saranac Lake, put on a series of concerts in the Town Hall on Friday nights. When Bartok's music was on the program, the composer attended, and Elise remembers "the rousing response that came to him!" Fifty years later, the memory of that Friday evening still thrills her.
During that summer the war in Europe finally ended and friends in Budapest cabled Bartok, asking him "to return and take his place in the reorganized parliament." He was pleased to be remembered, but seemed to realize he would never make the trip. Around Labor Day, the Bartoks, accompanied by Peter, left Saranac Lake by train for New York.
In September, Bartok's health suddenly failed and he was ordered into the hospital. Bartok said to Peter, "Can I go tomorrow? There is something I want to do here." Not knowing the seriousness of his father's illness, and thinking that the hospital stay would restore him to a measure of health, Peter convinced him to go that day. But before they left, on his father's instructions, Peter added seventeen measures to the manuscript of the Piano Concerto. In Hungarian, Bartok wrote "vege" ("the end"), to indicate the length he intended for the completed piece. Perhaps he was also acknowledging to himself that he would compose no more. On September 26, 1945, less than a month after leaving Saranac Lake, Bela Bartok died in West Side Hospital, New York.
The Concerto for Orchestra, written during Bartok's first summer in Saranac Lake, was the first piece he had written in the three years since leaving his homeland. Three of the four compositions he created in the United States were written in Saranac Lake. This quiet, natural environment truly nurtured Bela Bartok's creative genius, making it possible for him to compose important works of modern, classical music.