Béla BARTÓK

• 1881: Born 25 March in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now known as Sinnnicolau Mare, Romania)
• 1886: Begins piano lessons with his mother
• 1888: Death of his father
• 1889: Moves to Nagyszollow (now known as Vinogradov, Ukraine), where his mother takes a job as a schoolteacher
• 1890: Writes his earliest compositions
• 1894: Moves to Pozsony (now known as Bratislava, Slovakia)
• 1903: Writes his first major work, the Kossuth Symphony; and graduates from the Academy of Music
• 1905: Starts folk music collaboration with Zoltán Koldáy
• 1906: Starts annual expeditions collecting folk music using an Edison phonograph
• 1907: Was appointed as a piano teacher at the Academy of Music
• 1907-09: Writes String Quartet No.1
• 1908: Fourteen Bagatelles
  
• 1909: Marries Márta Ziegler
• 1910: Birth of first son
• 19 March 1910: Bártok's first composer's evening in the Royal Concert Hall featuring the premiere of the
  String Quartet No.1 by the Waldbauer-Kerpely String Quartet. With a similar debut concert by Kodály two days earlier a manifesto for the new Hungarian music had now been presented.
• 1911:Writes Bluebeard's Castle
• 1912: Writes Four Pieces for Orchestra
• 1913: Travels to Biskra, Algeria to collect folk music
• 1914-16: Writes The Wooden Prince
• 1915: Living in Rákoskeresztúr
• 1915-17: Writes String Quartet No.2
• 3 March 1918: Premiere of the String Quartet No.2 by the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet
• 1918-19: Writes The Miraculous Mandarin
• 1919: Member of the Music Directorate of the short-lived Communist Republic of Councils (The other members are
  Koldáy and Dohnányi)
• 1921: Completes the bokk titled, The Hungarian Folksong
• 1921-22: Writes the two sonatas for violin and piano
• 1923: Divorced from Márta Ziegler and marries Ditta Pásztory
• 1924: Birth of second son, Peter Bartok
• 1926: Writes Piano Concerto No.1 and a number of solo piano works including the Sonata and Out of Doors
• 1927: Writes String Quartet No.3
• 1927-28: First American Tour
• 1928: Writes String Quartet No.4 and the two violin rhapsodies
• 1930: Writes Cantata Profana
• 1931: Writes Piano Concerto No.2
• 1934: Writes String Quartet No.5 and leaves his professorship at the Academy of Music and is appointed by the Academy of Sciences to work on the edition of Hungarian folk songs
• 1936: Writes Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Conducts ethnomusicological research in Turkey
• 1937: Writes Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion
• 1938: Writes Contrasts and the Violin Concerto
• 1939: Death of his mother. Writes Divertimento and String Quartet No.6
• 1940: Second American tour in Spring. In Fall, Bartok emigrates to the United States
• 1941: Takes post as a research fellow at Columbia University wirking in Serbo-Croatian folk music
• 1942: Writes Concerto for Orchestra
• 1944: Writes Sonata for Solo Violin
• 1945: Writes Piano Concerto No.3 and begins the Viola Concerto.
• 26 September 1945: Dies of leukemia in New York

All You Want To Know About Bartok - A Biography

Musical Period: 20th Century
Birth Place: Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now known as Sinnnicolau Mare, Romania)
Works:

Béla Bartók was born in Nagyszentmiklós, Hungary (now known as Sinnnicolau Mare, Romania) on 25 March, 1881. His father died in 1888 and it was his mother who brought up the family. He also began music lessons with his mother. He attended the Gymnasium and studied the piano with Laszlo Erkel and Anton Hyrtl whenhis famuly settled in Bratislava in 1894. It was at the Gymnasium that he composed sonatas and quartets. He was accepted by the Vienna Conservatory in 1898, but followed Dohnányi (an elder schoolfellow at the Gymnasium) to the Budapest Academy (1899-1903), where he studied the piano with Liszt's pupil
Istvan Thoman and composition with Janos Koessler. It was there that he deepened his acquaintance with Wagner. In 1903, wrote a symphonic poem, Kossuth, using Strauss's methods with Hungarian elements in Liszt's manner.

Kossuth was performed in Budapest and Manchester in 1904 and at the same time, Bartók began to make a career as a pianist, wrote a Piano Quintet and two Lisztian virtuoso showpieces (Rhapsody Op.1, Scherzo Op.2). He also made his first Hungarian folksong transcription in 1904. In 1905, he collected more songs and began his collaboration with Zoltán Kodály. Their first arrangements were published in 1906. He was appointed as Thoman's successor the next year at the Budapest Academy, which enabled him to settle in Hungary. He continued with his folksong collecting, notably in Transylvania.

Meanwhile, his music was beginning to be influenced by this activity of folksong colecting and by the music of Debussy that Kodály had brought back from Paris. Both kinds of music opened the way to new, modal kinds of harmony and irregular metre.

Musical Pieces
Following his String Quartet no.1 in 1908, was orchestral pieces and a one-act opera, Bluebeards's Castle, which was dedicated to his young wife. He was influenced by Mussorgsky and Debussy, butmost directly by Hungarian peasant music, the work, a grim fable of human isolation, failed to win the competition in which it was entered. Bartók practically gave up composition for two years, from 1912-14, and devoted himself to the collection, arrangement and study of folk music, unitlWorld War I put and end to his expeditions.Thereafter, he returned with the String Quartet No.2 in 1917 and the fairytale ballet, The Wooden Prince, whose production in Budapest in 1917, restored him to public favour. His one-act opera, Bluebeard's Castle was staged the following year and he began a second ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin, which was only performed in 1926, as there were problems over the subject, the thwarting and consummation of sexual passion).

Bartók came under the influence of Stravinsky and Schönberg while composing The Mandarin. In 1921-1922, he produced some of his most complex music in the twoviolin sonatas. At the same time, he was also gaining international esteem as his works were published by Universal Edition and he was invited to play them all over Europe.In 1923, he composed the Dance Suite for a concert marking the 50th anniversary of Budapest. There was a sudden rush of works in 1926 designed for himself to play, including the Piano Concerto No.1, the Piano Sonata and the suite Out of Doors.

In 1940, Bartók and his second wife (he divorced and remarried in 1923) left war-torn Europe to live in New York, which he found alien.They gave concerts and for a while, he had a research grant to work on a collection of Yugoslav folksong. however, their finances as well as his health were precarious. He wrote the Piano Concerto No.3 to provide his widow with an income, and it was almost finished when he died in 1945, a Viola Concerto left in sketch.

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