Widely considered the most accomplished composer to emerge from Hungary, Bla Bartok is remembered not only for

his groundbreaking compositions but also his exhaustive research into the music of his native country, laying the foundation for the now popular field of ethnomusicology. Bartok displayed a promising aptitude for music at an early age. At the age four, his mother began instructing him on the piano after witnessing the young composer play multiple short pieces that he had taught himself by listening to her younger pupils. At the age of eleven, Bartok gave his first public recital, a concert which included one of his own compositions, The Course of the Danube. The audience was stunned, and Bartok was shortly thereafter accepted into the piano studio of Laszlo Erkel, a noted Hungarian pianist and pedagogue. Between the years of 1899 and 1903, Bartok studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. During his final year of studies at the Academy, Bartok composed and premiered his first significant work for orchestra, Kossuth. This symphonic poem was dedicated to Lajos Kossuth, a cultural icon and hero of Hungary who had distinguished himself as a national leader in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. It was during these years of academic growth that Bartok was first introduced to Zoltan Kodaly, a fellow Hungarian composer who became a close friend and colleague, often accompanying Bartok on his journeys in search of native music and indigenous performance practices. Kodaly, in similiar fashion to Bartok, composed many symphonic compositions whose thematic material and rhythmic schemes were derived from rural Hungarian culture, such as theDances from Galanta and the Duo for Violin and Cello.In 1911, Bartok composed his only opera, "Bluebeard's Castle," and dedicated the work to his wife of two years, Marta Ziegler. Originally adapted from the famous legend by Kodaly's roomate, librettist Bela Balazs, the dramatic tale unfolds in the castle of King Bluebeard, whose newly wedded wife Judith demands that the locked doors of Bluebeard's castle be opened and their contents disclosed. Behind each door, Judith discovers increasingly disturbing scenes, including torture chambers, large caches of weapons and jewels, and finally, Bluebeard's previous three wives, help captive in the castle. Although Bluebeard had continually begged Judith to cease her investigation into the contents of his chambers, her inquisitive nature leads her into the dark secrets of Bluebeard's fortress, discoveries which ultimately lead to her confinement with Bluebeard's former spouses. Although the libretto was initially dedicated to both Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly, only Bartok attempted to realize the libretto in operatic form. After entering the opera in a competition sponsored by the Hungarian Fine Arts Commission, Bartok's efforts at gaining a recognition and acclaim were frustrated when the commission deemed his work inappropriate and unworthy of performance. An extensive period of revision followed, and Bartok was able to secure an official premier in 1918. Following the Revolution of 1919, in which Romanian forces dissolved the unstable Communist regime that ruled Hungary for a period of four months,

newly appointed governmental officials asserted their "right" to censorship, and Bartok was forced to remove any acknowledgments given to the now blacklisted librettist, Balazs, from Bluebeard's score. This event affected Bartok deeply, and, after his eventual emigration from Hungary in 1940, Bartok would often state that his love of Hungary excluded love for the government which led the nation.The majority of Bartok's works that have entered the standardized canon were composed in the second half of the composer's life, following his introduction to the music of Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg. Works such as the Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Strings, as well asMusic for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta are two such examples. His score to the ballet "The Miraculous Mandarin", now considered one of the more significant artistic achievements of the 1900's, was initially spurned and rejected due to the highly explicit nature of the storyline and on-stage theatrics. Based on a published story by Melchior Lengyel, a Hungarian journalist who later emigrated to Hollywood and became a noted screenwriter, the ballet involves a pair of young men who, finding themselves penniless, force a young call girl to lure unsuspecting clients to her chambers. Upon arrival, the young girl's customers are mercilessly beaten and robbed. The plan functions properly until the arrival of the "Mandarin" (a slang term used to define a person of Chinese descent.) The Mandarin becomes infatuated with the young girl and a violent struggle commences in which the pair of thugs brutally beat the enraptured man to death. The young girl embraces the Mandarin as he succumbs to his wounds, and the music, mimicking the cessation of the human heart, staggers to a close.As the Second World War began to consume Europe, Bartok emigrated to America and established residence in New York with Ditta Pasztory, a former piano student that Bartok had divorced his wife for in 1923. Bartok was unable to adapt well to life in the United States. Although he was well respected in academic circles for his contributions to Western Art Music as well as his exhaustive ethnomusicological research, very few of his larger works received recognition and performance by American orchestras. Bartok continued to concertize, however, with his wife Ditta, and recorded several of his piano works for Columbia Records. In 1944, Serge Koussevitsky, internationally acclaimed bassist and conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, commissioned a work from Bartok, who promptly composed the "Concerto for Orchestra." The premier met with favorable reviews, and the works soon came to be considered Bartok's most significant offering. Little time was left for Bartok to compose however, as he had been diagnosed with leukemia in 1940. His final compositions included the Sonata for Solo Violin, commissioned by respected concert violinist Yehudi Menuhin, and the Piano Concerto No. 3. Bela Bartok died on September 26, 1945 from complications with leukemia. His final composition, the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, was left unfinished.