Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) was one of his country’s most important musical figures. A formidable triple threat—composer, performer, ethnomusicologist—Bartók catalogued, studied, performed and popularized his country’s native folk music and created his own compositional style that drew on both his early experiences with Hungarian, Romanian and Slovak music and his familiarity with the contemporary and historic classical music he performed as a pianist. Though today thought of principally as a composer, Bartók made his living primarily through concert performances and his work as a teacher.

A precocious young musician, Bartók had developed a repertoire of 40 piano pieces by age four, began formal piano lessons at age five, and tested as having perfect pitch at age seven. His parents were both amateur musicians. (Indeed, his mother was his first piano teacher.) In his early professional career, Bartók traveled throughout the region with Kodály, gathering and transcribing folk songs and dances, and becoming one of the earliest pioneers in the field of ethnomusicology. He had an active performing and teaching career, and filled his remaining time with composing. In 1940, he moved to America, where he spent his final years. In his later works, Bartók’s interests shifted away from the literal gathering and transcribing of folks songs, but his native music’s influence remains in the harmonies and vigorous, dance-like rhythms that pervade his music and have made it both enduringly popular and one-of-a-kind.