The annals of history may be centered on evidence and testimonials, but the arts play a role as well. As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II this year, a composer might be as effective as a historian in capturing this harrowing period and the events leading to it -- especially if he experienced it.

		BARTOK CYCLE With: Takacs Quartet. Where: Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland. When: 3 p.m. today (Quartets 1, 3 and 5) and 8 p.m. tomorrow (2, 4 and 6). Tickets: $15 ($5 students); 412-624-4129. Also: Musicologist Robert Winter will give a free lecture on Bartok at noon tomorrow in the William Pitt Union, Oakland. Related coverage Synopses of six Bartok string quartets

Bela Bartok (1881-1945) lived through the worst of the 20th century in a country caught in the middle of its power struggles, Hungary. The composer famous for such works as "Concerto for Orchestra," "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" and the opera "Bluebeard's Castle" also was a pioneer in the field of ethnomusicology, extensively cataloging the folk music traditions of his country.

It is, however, in the unlikely genre of the string quartet, a niche of the musical world usually reserved for the sublime, apolitical and purely musical, that Bartok left a set of quasi-historical documents tracing the disasters of the time. Composed from 1908 to 1939, his six string quartets not only directly answer the challenge of meeting the high standards of Ludwig van Beethoven's 16 masterful quartets a century earlier but also lay bare the calamitous results of the assault on humanity of those bleak times.

"These are the most profound explorations of what it means to be human in the 20th century," says Robert Winter, professor of music at UCLA and an expert on Bartok's quartets. "They are the first body of quartets after Beethoven that make a complete statement."

Each is an essay of the struggle of the human spirit, and the set as a whole advanced quartet technique for the rest of the century. "You don't have Elliott Carter and George Crumb without Bartok," says Winter.

In back-to-back concerts today and tomorrow, the Takacs Quartet will perform the complete cycle of Bartok's quartets. The event is presented by the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society, which sponsored a cycle of Beethoven quartets in 2002.

	Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society 2005-06 schedule    The lineup for the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society 2005-06 season at Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland, is highlighted by Trio Johannes performing the complete Brahms Piano Trios in two concerts (one with the Pittsburgh Symphony's William Caballero, the other with clarinetist Fabrizio Meloni); the Moscow Chamber Orchestra performing Rossini, Shostakovich and Mussorgsky with contralto Ewa Podles; and the Pittsburgh debut of the Wihan Quartet.    Call 412-624-4129 for tickets and subscription information. The schedule: Talich Quartet (Oct. 17). Wihan Quartet (Nov. 2). Mendelssohn Quartet with guest artist Jonathan Biss, piano (Dec. 12). Trio Johannes with Fabrizio Meloni, clarinet, and William Caballero, horn (Jan. 29-30, 2006). Moscow Chamber Orchestra with Ewa Podles, contralto (Feb. 22, 2006). Takacs Quartet with Garrick Ohlssohn, piano (March 27, 2006). -- Andrew Druckenbrod

Unlike Beethoven, who began his quartet career by essentially mimicking the style of the time and then progressing to a "late period" of individualistic masterpieces, Bartok jumped right into the deep water. "Beethoven has this sense of going through styles; Bartok wrote six late quartets," Winter says.

Bartok did develop stylistically as a composer over the time these quartets were written, but each amazingly plumbs the same depth. The first quartet of 1908 wasn't a bellwether of a future ber-style, but a work of equal profundity as the sixth, composed more than 30 years later. The differences are mainly in formal design. Throughout the set, Bartok employs his pervasive variation technique and uses folk-like material. The former are not theme-and-variations; they are an avoidance of repetition. The latter are not quotations; they are themes that deliberately approximate folk music.

To understand these concepts, visualize a given quartet as a glass of water imbued with a drop of ink representing folk music. Folk traditions permeate Bartok's quartets, but their tunes are never fully incorporated into the works.

"I compare this with what Beethoven did with the Ninth Symphony," Winter says. Beethoven wrote the famous "Ode to Joy" to sound like a folk tune. It's an apt comparison, for Bartok was heavily influenced by Beethoven, certainly by his development of motifs, his introspection and his use of extra-musical elements. That Bartok was fond particularly of Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 131, is apparent throughout the six quartets, says Winter.

One area in which the two composers differ is that Bartok never played a string instrument. However, instead of hampering him, it freed Bartok to experiment, in anything from savage pizzicato to shrieks created by bowing on nontraditional parts of a string.

"Here was a guy who was inventing sounds out of his head, and he didn't know if they would work," says Winter. The results were "pivotal" not just to quartet composers ever since, but to all composers.

"All the scary parts from movies are ripped from Bartok. Nothing is in this music you haven't heard before in film. Come and hear the guy who invented this music."

The Takacs Quartet, which formed in 1975, received a Gramophone Award and a Grammy nomination for its recording of the complete Bartok set on Decca in the 1990s. This concert is part of its last season under present membership, because violist Geraldine Walther, assistant principal at the Pittsburgh Symphony in the 1975-76 season, is replacing Roger Tapping.