ABSTRACT
A Duke Bluebeard's Castle is perhaps the most enigmatic of all of Bela Bartok's works. The meaning of the plot, its symbolism, and its system of associations are still a matter of debate. But Bluebeard is also an enigma for its musical style. The supposition that Bartok might have developed significant techniques of his new style on the basis of the Hungarian instrumental tradition may seem to be in contrast to what Bartok himself claimed and what had been the consensus about his development so far. In trying to interpret the apparent contradiction between Bartok's writings and compositions, one has to keep in mind the complex nature of Bartok's musical environment. The custom of hiring musicians to play "Hungarian music" for entertainment goes back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, although it is likely that the peasant community could afford such luxury only in the modern era, in most places only in the nineteenth century.
