Béla Bartòk

Béla Bàrtok was a composer as well as an ethnomusicologist. He studied Hungarian folk songs with Zoltan Kodaly, which they began recording on a gramophone in 1905. He also worked in the surrounding countries, recording songs from Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey. Based on his studies, he felt the Hungarian Dances were not actually from Hungary.

Bàrtok collected as many as 2700 magyar scores, 3500 magyar-Rumanian scores and hundreds of Turkish and north African magyar scores. While studying these, he found an older form of Hungarian music than was previously known to scholars. He incorporated the folk music into his compositions, creating a new form of Hungarian nationalist music.

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