Rumanian Folk Dances For String Orchestra

Béla Bartók (1881 – 1945)

Béla Bartók’s interest in and preoccupation with Hungarian folk music considerably influenced his own style as a composer. The real Hungarian music, which he discovered, is quite other than the meretricious gypsy music exploited by Brahms and Liszt: its melodies, built on modes, are harsher and severer in line; its spirit is more virile; it’s feeling more barbaric. And Bartók’s model for his own works, up to the time he settled in the United States, was this Hungarian folk music. At first hearing this music is usually not pleasant to listen to, for it is disjointed, discordant, and seemingly amorphous. Bartók was intensely modern in his use (or lack of use) of tonality and in his harmonic vocabulary. His music was the product of a complex intelligence, demanding familiarity before it could be understood and appreciated. However, in his last works written, humanity and emotion are added elements-qualities which explain why these compositions are heard more frequently and appreciated more widely than the earlier works of his early manhood and maturity.