Allegro Barbaro and Other Short Works for Solo Piano

by Béla Bartók

An outstanding authority on the folk music of Central and Eastern Europe, Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881–1945) explored the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic vocabulary of these regions, evolving a terse, vibrant, and unique musical language in his own works.
This important compilation of Bartók's short works for piano contains the Allegro Barbaro, a sonorous, boisterous piece of power and bravura; 6 Romanian Folk Dances; 20 Romanian Christmas Carols; 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs, a connected cycle of short folk-tune settings; the 4-part Suite, Op. 14; the Three Etudes, Op. 18; and 8 Improvisations on Hungarian Peasant Songs, Op. 20. Highly dissonant, individual, and marked in character, the tunes in the connected cycle of the Improvisations represent a high point in Bartók's treatment of folk materials.
These short pieces are an ideal and fully representative introduction to the music of one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century — an attractive repertoire for intermediate and advanced pianists.

112 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 1998

About the author

Works, including the music for the opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) and Concerto for Orchestra (1943), of Hungarian pianist and composer Béla Bartók combine east European folk with dissonant harmonies.

Since 1920, small childhood hometown of Béla Viktor János Bartók in the kingdom within Austria constituted Sânnicolau Mare or great Saint Nicholas, Romania.

From his mother, he got his first lessons, but from the age of 18 years in 1899, he studied under a protege of the great late Franz Liszt. At the royal academy in Budapest, he met Zoltán Kodály, lifelong friend. Kodály, Claude Debussy of France, Johannes Brahms, and old Magyar melodies influenced Bartók, who met Richard Strauss in 1902. Indeed, Bartók of founded study of ethnomusicology, a passion in which his friend Kodály joined him, studying and incorporating much country into his own.