In his correspondence we find clear examples of the state of expectation in which he lived those years, always waiting for the end of war, for the return home. Thus, in a letter of December 1943, he writes,

"There is no end in sight - and the destroying of Europe (people and works of art) continues without respite and mercy. Personally, I do not know how long I can endure the insecurity of this gypsy life. (But for 1944, at least my living expenses are secured, no worry about that.) And the destiny of poor Hungary, with the Russian danger in the background - the prospects of the future are rather dark."

Later, in January of '44, he writes to his compatriot, the violinist Joseph Szigeti, about how he is using his time arranging and doing fair copies of a collection of 2000 folksongs from the Rumanian principality of Walachia, and ends his letter saying, "and so these are the things that occupy me now - and I await the end of my exile." Health problems, aggravated by financial instability, incomprehension on the part of the American musical establishment, particularly the critics, who did not appreciate the strange novelty of his works, and the prolonged absence from his country of birth, all contributed to his death in 1945, just after finishing his Third Piano Concerto.

In a final epilogue to his biography of the composer, Stevens provides a highly perceptive assessment of Bartok's trajectory as a composer. "In no other recent composer is there to be observed such an undeviating adherence to the same basic principles throughout an entire career. Schoenberg perhaps comes closer than many others, but his sharp break with tonality negates the tendencies of his early work. Stravinsky changed many times after The Firebird - from Russian pictorial nationalism through the neo-classical and the neo-baroque to.....dodecaphony... With Bartok there were 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."

At the end, the unabashed nationalist, the folklorist, finds balance and creative continuity in conditions that brought about doubt and, yes, even equivocation in other great figures of the century. Like the others, Bartok also experienced the anguish of the loss of place. Unlike them, however, he never lost his center.

3. Heroes and Cowards

We have been discussing prominent examples of that characteristic phenomenon of the XX century, the artist in exile, through our closer look at some of this century's great composers. We could continue indefinitely adding names to this list: Rachmaninoff, Hindemith, Korngold, Kurt Weill, Miklos Rosza, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ernest Bloch, Ernst Krenek, Ernst Toch, just to mention some that chose America as their refuge.

In our view, these great artists are no different, psychologically, from other immigrants that, under duress, have taken the courageous step of abandoning

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