Editing Béla Bartók (section)

===World War II and final years (1940–1945)===
[[File:Bartok Pásztory.jpg|thumb|Bartok and Pásztory]]
In 1940, as the European political situation worsened after the outbreak of [[World War&nbsp;II]], Bartók was increasingly tempted to flee Hungary. He strongly opposed the [[Nazis]] and Hungary's alliance with Germany and the [[Axis powers]] under the [[Tripartite Pact]]. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Bartók refused to give concerts in Germany and broke away from his publisher there. His anti-fascist political views caused him a great deal of trouble with the establishment in Hungary. In his will recorded on 4&nbsp;October 1940, he requested that no square or street be named after him until the Budapest squares [[Oktogon (intersection)|Oktogon]] and [[Kodály körönd]], or in fact any square or street in Hungary, no longer bore the names of [[Benito Mussolini|Mussolini]] or [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]], as they did at the time he wrote his will.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Szabó | first1 = Ferenc | date = September 1950 | title = Bartók nem alkuszik | url = http://db.zti.hu/mza_folyoirat/pdf/UZSz_1950_I_04.pdf | journal = Új Zenei Szemle | volume = 1 | issue = 4 | pages = 3–12 | access-date = 24 January 2023 | archive-date = 24 January 2023 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230124161955/http://db.zti.hu/mza_folyoirat/pdf/UZSz_1950_I_04.pdf | url-status = live }}</ref> Having first sent his manuscripts out of the country, Bartók reluctantly emigrated to the US with his wife, [[Ditta Pásztory-Bartók|Ditta Pásztory]], in October 1940. They settled in New York City after arriving on the night of 29–30&nbsp;October by a steamer from Lisbon. After joining them in 1942, their younger son Péter Bartók enlisted in the [[United States Navy]], where he served in the Pacific during the remainder of the war and later settled in Florida, where he became a recording and sound engineer. His elder son by his first marriage, Béla Bartók III, remained in Hungary and later worked as a railroad official until his retirement in the early 1980s.

Although he became an American citizen in 1945 shortly before his death,{{sfn|Gagné|2012|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=ppHoEX_6v10C&pg=PA28 p. 28]: "He became a U.S. citizen in 1945, but by then had developed leukemia, and he soon died..."}} Bartók never felt fully at home in the United States. He initially found it difficult to compose in his new surroundings. Although he was well known in America as a pianist, ethnomusicologist and teacher, he was not well known as a composer. There was little American interest in his music during his final years. He and his wife Ditta gave some concerts, but demand for them was low.<ref>{{Cite web |last=yalepress |date=30 June 2015 |title=Béla Bartók in America |url=https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2015/06/30/bela-bartok-in-america/ |access-date=16 August 2022 |website=Yale University Press |language=en-US |archive-date=16 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220816023256/https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2015/06/30/bela-bartok-in-america/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Bartók, who had made some recordings in Hungary, also recorded for [[Columbia Records]] after he came to the US; many of these recordings (some with Bartók's own spoken introductions) were later issued on LP and CD.{{sfn|Bartók|1994}}{{sfn|Bartók|1995a}}{{sfn|Bartók|1995b}}{{sfn|Bartók|2003}}{{sfn|Bartók|2007}}{{sfn|Bartók|2008}}{{sfn|Bartók|2016}}

Bartók was supported by a $3000-yearly research fellowship from [[Columbia University]] for several years (more than $50,000 in 2024 dollars).<ref>Jablonski, Edward. "Bartok's Full Trunk". HiFi/Stereo Review 11:4 (October 1963), 36.</ref> He and Ditta worked on a large collection of [[Serbian language|Serbian]] and [[Croatian language|Croatian]] folk songs in Columbia's libraries. Bartók's economic difficulties during his first years in America were mitigated by publication royalties, teaching and performance tours. While his finances were always precarious, he did not live and die in poverty as was the common myth. He had enough friends and supporters to ensure that there was sufficient money and work available for him to live on. Bartók was a proud man and did not easily accept charity. Despite being short on cash at times, he often refused money that his friends offered him out of their own pockets. Although he was not a member of the [[ASCAP]], the society paid for any medical care he needed during his last two years, to which Bartók reluctantly agreed. According to [[Edward Jablonski]]'s 1963 article, "At no time during Bartók's American years did his income amount to less than $4,000 a year" (about $70,000 in 2024 dollars).<ref>Jablonski, Edward. "Bartok's Full Trunk". HiFi/Stereo Review 11:4 (October 1963), 36.</ref>  The first symptoms of his health problems began late in 1940, when his right shoulder began to show signs of stiffening. In 1942, symptoms increased and he started having bouts of fever. Bartók's illness was at first thought to be a recurrence of the tuberculosis he had experienced as a young man, and one of his doctors in New York was Edgar Mayer, director of [[Will Rogers Memorial Hospital]] in [[Saranac Lake, New York|Saranac Lake]], but medical examinations found no underlying disease. Finally, in April 1944, [[leukemia]] was diagnosed, but by this time, little could be done.{{sfn|Chalmers|1995|pp=196–207}}

As his body slowly failed, Bartók found more creative energy and produced a final set of masterpieces, partly thanks to the violinist [[Joseph Szigeti]] and the conductor [[Fritz Reiner]] (Reiner had been Bartók's friend and champion since his days as Bartók's student at the Royal Academy). Bartók's last work might well have been the String Quartet No.&nbsp;6 but for [[Serge Koussevitzky]]'s [[commission (art)|commission]] for the [[Concerto for Orchestra (Bartók)|Concerto for Orchestra]]. Koussevitsky's [[Boston Symphony Orchestra]] premiered the work in December 1944 to highly positive reviews. The Concerto for Orchestra quickly became Bartók's most popular work, although he did not live to see its full impact.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra: a journey from darkness to light|url=https://bachtrack.com/feature-bartok-concerto-for-orchestra-concerto-budapest-keller-october-2019|access-date=18 February 2022|website=bachtrack.com|language=en|archive-date=18 February 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220218004119/https://bachtrack.com/feature-bartok-concerto-for-orchestra-concerto-budapest-keller-october-2019|url-status=live}}</ref>

In 1944, he was also commissioned by [[Yehudi Menuhin]] to write a [[Sonata for Solo Violin (Bartók)|Sonata for Solo Violin]]. In 1945, Bartók composed his [[Piano Concerto No. 3 (Bartók)|Piano Concerto No.&nbsp;3]], a graceful and almost neo-classical work, as a surprise 42nd birthday present for Ditta, but he died just over a month before her birthday, with the scoring not quite finished. He had also sketched his [[Viola Concerto (Bartók)|Viola Concerto]], but had barely started the scoring at his death, leaving completed only the viola part and sketches of the orchestral part.
[[File:HUF 1000 1983 obverse.jpg|thumb|Béla Bartók's portrait on 1000 [[Hungarian forint]] banknote (printed between 1983 and 1992; no longer in circulation)]]
Béla Bartók died at age 64 in a hospital in New York City from complications of [[leukemia]] (specifically, of secondary [[polycythemia]]) on 26&nbsp;September 1945. His funeral was attended by only ten people. Aside from his widow and their son, other attendees included [[György Sándor]].<ref>{{wikicite|reference=2006. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20100906021534/http://www.juilliard.edu/update/journal/j_articles785.html Gyorgy Sandor, Pianist and Bartók Authority, Dies at 93]". ''The Juilliard Journal Online'' 21, no.&nbsp;5 (February) (archive from 6 September 2010; accessed 10 June 2020).}}</ref>

Bartók's body was initially interred in [[Ferncliff Cemetery]] in [[Hartsdale, New York]]. During the final year of communist Hungary in the late 1980s, the Hungarian government, along with his two sons, Béla III and Péter, requested that his remains be exhumed and transferred back to [[Budapest]] for burial, where Hungary arranged a [[state funeral]] for him on 7&nbsp;July 1988. He was re-interred at Budapest's [[Farkasréti Cemetery]], next to the remains of Ditta, who died in 1982, one year after what would have been Béla Bartók's 100th birthday.{{sfn|Chalmers|1995|p=214}}

The two unfinished works were later completed by his pupil [[Tibor Serly]]. György Sándor was the soloist in the first performance of the Third Piano Concerto on 8&nbsp;February 1946. Ditta Pásztory-Bartók later played and recorded it. The Viola Concerto was revised and published in the 1990s by Bartók's son; this version may be closer to what Bartók intended.{{sfn|Chalmers|1995|p=210}} Concurrently, Peter Bartók, in association with Argentine musician Nelson Dellamaggiore, worked to reprint and revise past editions of the Third Piano Concerto.{{sfn|Somfai|1996}}