Bela Bart¢k Studies in Ethnomusicology

Book excerpt: Composer, folklorist, and performer Béla Bartók (1881–1945) is internationally renowned as one of the most important and influential musicians of the twentieth century. Throughout his life he wrote lectures and essays that dealt with virtually every aspect of East European folk music. Many of those essays, previously scattered in specialist journals in four different languages, are collected here for the first time. All are concerned with that branch of musicology within which Bartók was most influential, and for which he is best known: research into folk music, or ethnomusicology. The volume includes a preface by editor Benjamin Suchoff, a leading expert on Bartók’s music and writings. Suchoff examines Bartók’s developing views on the folk-music traditions of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and the Arab world.