Béla Bartók: pioneering Hungarian composer who fused folk melodies with classical music

Considered one of the great composers of the 20th century, the deeply expressive Béla Bartók synthesised elements of folk music of Hungarian and related cultures into classical forms, producing a style that was both individual and influential.

Through Bartók’s music, powerful elements of local folk melodies are performed and heard in concert halls worldwide. For the 80th anniversary of the composer’s death coming up in 2025, the University of Plymouth’s Musica Viva – of which I am founder and director – is planning a series of concerts celebrating the notion of the “music of home” as brought to life by Bartók, by including one of his pivotal works in every concert. His Piano Sonata, String Quartet No. 3, String Quartet No. 5 and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta will all be performed by leading artists.

From the start, the young Bartók, born in 1881, displayed a fascination with music, and his widowed mother encouraged his musical gifts. When the family moved to Pozsony, a former region of Hungary that now lies mostly within Slovakia, he began a formal musical education and attended concerts for the first time.

As an 18-year-old student of piano and composition at the Budapest Conservatory, Bartók immersed himself in the musical dramas of Wagner and the orchestral works of Liszt. But his primary focus was the piano, and he became known as a pianist of extraordinary abilities, playing the music of Chopin, Liszt and Robert Schumann.

During his last years as a student, nationalist currents in Hungary – which had been suppressed since the uprising in 1848-1849 – became resurgent. Caught up in this movement, Bartók devoted considerable thought to issues of a national music.

It is not surprising that under this influence and that of the music of Richard Strauss, his first major composition in 1903 was a vast symphonic poem called Kossuth, a Hungarian “Hero’s Life” – whose ten tableaux depict events of the 1948-49 war of independence. This work was followed by the Liszt-inspired Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra in 1904.

Bartók’s interest in folk music grew to the point at which he and his friend and fellow composer Zoltán Kodály travelled throughout central Europe, Turkey, and north Africa to collect folk melodies. Bartók wrote five books and many articles on folk music.

He considered his most interesting finds to be from isolated Hungarian communities living among the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, where he encountered and recorded authentic, untainted Magyar folk music. His fascination with the unbridled spirit of this music helped him gradually develop a compositional style in which he fused folk elements with highly developed techniques of classical music more intimately than had ever been done before.

Between the two world wars Bartók performed as a concert pianist, touring Britain, the US and the former USSR, and was prolific as a composer. Elements of his style include melodic lines derived from eastern European folk music; powerful forward-leaning rhythms in irregular meters with off-beat accents; strong control of form; and harmonies which, although primarily focused on one key, often include elements of multiple keys thereby creating a sense of musical tension.

Paramount among his piano works is his only Piano Sonata, written in 1926, which is also his largest composition for solo piano. It was composed during a particularly prolific year during which he also composed his First Piano Concerto, Out of Doors Suite and Nine Little Piano Pieces – all works which he included in his own public performances.

The Sonata is in three movements and follows a classic sonata form – a lively first movement, a slower second movement and an energetic finale in which the lively main theme recurs in different guises. The full resources of the piano are used in creating a wide spectrum of expression, from incisive detached clusters of notes to smoothly flowing lyrical melodic lines.

Throughout, the music is inspired by Bartók’s ethnomusicological (social and cultural) research. Although the themes are not folk melodies per se, they imitate their style in terms of melodic shaping, searing dynamics, driving rhythmic features and harmonic content. The piano is used in new percussive ways that often seem a vivid portrayal of folk passions. At the time this was groundbreaking.

Bartók’s contribution to the musical repertoire is immense. He composed six String Quartets, Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, a large canon of solo piano music as well as chamber music, and an opera, Bluebeard’s Castle. The Concerto for Orchestra, three Piano Concerti, and the Violin Concerto are all masterpieces in large-scale musical forms.

Bartók emigrated to the US in 1940 and found temporary employment at Columbia University. His health deteriorated along with his financial situation, although his friends Joseph Szigeti and Fritz Reiner arranged for the Koussevitzky Foundation to commission him to write the Concerto for Orchestra in 1943 and the Sonata for Solo Violin in 1944, which provided temporary relief from a dismal situation.

Bartok died on September 26, 1945, with the score of his Viola Concerto unfinished, but he left behind an unparalleled canon of music that is deeply expressive and vital to our musical understanding today.

Robert Taub does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.