Born on March 25th, 1881 in the small town of Nagyszentmiklos in what was, at the time, Austria-Hungary, Bela Bartok was a composer, teacher, and musician noted by many as both one of the most influential composers of the early 20th century and as Hungary’s finest composer. Considered a musical prodigy in his youth, Bartok learned to play the piano early in his life, having learned some forty pieces within only a few years of his birth. At the age of seven, following the death of his father, he and his family moved to modern-day Bratislava, Slovakia where he began to hone his musical ability, studying under the tutelage of pianist and conductor Laszlo Erkel. Here in Slovakia, Bartok began to better his raw musical talent, later joining piano …show more content…
In 1908, provoked by its personal allure, Bartok accompanied his good friend and coworker, Zoltan Kodaly, to begin research on folk music, which led to a greater analysis of Gypsy music and in turn its origins within the rural music of the Magyar, a term referring, in specific, to the early Hungarian settlers who had originated from the Ural Mountains in the 9th Century. Bartok and Kodaly’s research in villages within the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania discovered that the Magyar peasant music was inspired or at the least, influenced by eastern culture, very much based in pentatonic scales akin to those common in music of the period originating in northwest Asia. Furthermore, Bartok was fascinated with the uniqueness of folk music, very different from the limits of the standard tonality found in compositions at the time, and often incorporated bits and pieces of folk style into his original compositions, using repeating passages, melodies, and notes along with switching between intervals of seconds, fourths, and sevenths, helping Bartok become regarded not only as a scholar for his research and vast collection of folk music, but as a composer like no