ModernismBéla Bartók
Béla Bartók was born in Hungary.
Béla Bartók’s life
The big moments of this life, and what was happening in the world at the same time.
A life at a glance
- 1881👶 Birth
Born on 25 March in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now Romania)
- 1888❤️ Private lifeage 7
Death of his father; his mother, a piano teacher, raises him
- 1895🌍 Meanwhile
The Lumière brothers’ first cinema show
- 1899📚 Trainingage 18
Budapest Academy of Music
- 1906🎼 Workage 25
With Kodály, sets out to record peasant songs on phonograph
- 1907🎩 Careerage 26
Piano professor at the Budapest Academy
- 1911🎼 Workage 30
Bluebeard’s Castle
- 1912🌍 Meanwhile
The Titanic sinks
- 1913🧳 Journeyage 32
Collects songs in Algeria
- 1915🎼 Workage 34
Romanian Folk Dances
- 1922🌍 Meanwhile
Public radio broadcasting begins (BBC, Radio Tour Eiffel)
- 1939🌍 Meanwhile
The Second World War begins
- 1945🕯️ Deathage 64
Dies in New York on 26 September
Listen to the music
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Excerpts of up to 90 seconds, freely licensed recordings from Wikimedia Commons.
Once upon a time…
Béla Bartók was born in Hungary. At four he could already play about forty songs on the piano! His mum, a schoolteacher, brought him up alone after his dad died.
One day he heard a young girl sing songs from her village. He was amazed! With his friend Kodály he went into the countryside with a phonograph to record peasants’ songs on wax cylinders. He collected thousands.
His music uses these folk rhythms, sometimes wild and irregular. He also wrote Mikrokosmos, 153 little pieces for learning the piano, from the easiest to the hardest.
During the war he rejected Nazism and went to live in America.
Béla Bartók’s instruments
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