Bartók: “Fast Dance” from Romanian Folk Dances

Folk music exerts a powerful influence on many composers. You can hear that influence in some of the music of Mozart and Schubert for instance. Composers have turned to folk styles at times either to invoke the indigenous sounds of their regions or to suggest the exoticism of some other land.

How do we define folk music? It’s any music that has entered oral tradition and been changed in some way by that tradition. The changes that take place over time might be the result of inaccurate memory or spontaneous creativity or the product of gradual refinements. The best folk music tends to survive down the generations and become rooted in the culture.

In the 19th century, composers in many part of Europe were no longer content to mimic the prevalent Italian or Viennese styles. East Europeans, Scandinavians, Russians, Spaniards, and the English sought out their own nationalist sound, and folk music offered a rich store of materials attuned to the local culture.

Some composers went so far as to trek into the mountains and hinterlands to discover the folk tunes that had remained pure and distinct. The new invention of the gramophone made it possible for composers to record actual performances in the countryside and to use the tunes in their compositions. Perhaps no composers did this more diligently than two Hungarians who were good friends: Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók. Even today musicologists use techniques similar to the ones they practiced, collecting detailed data to study the tunes and comparing the versions of the same song as it was sung in different villages.

World War I prevented Bartók and Kodály from continuing this part of their active field research, but by then folk music had become an intrinsic part of both men’s compositional vocabulary. They kept their passion for folk music throughout their lives.

These Romanian Folk Dances by Bartók were composed in 1915.