Bela Bartok

Béla Bartók was a Hungarian composer in the twentieth century. He was famous for his music. He was born March 25, 1881 and died September 26, 1945. He grew up in the greater Hungary of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War I this was no longer an empire. His birthplace, Nagyszentmiklós (Great St. Nicholas), became Sînnicolau Mare, Romania. Bartok had smallpox as an infant until he was five years old. Because of this, he was isolated from other children and spent a lot of his childhood listening to his mother play piano. His mother noticed Bartok's interest in music and moved around the country just so that he could pursue his musical ability. When he was nine years old he was already composing dances. At only twenty years old, Bartók produced his first major work, the symphonic poem, Kossuth, honoring Lajos Kossuth, hero of the Hungarian revolution of 1848. During his adult life Bartók performed in 630 concerts in 22 countries. Bartók became interested in other folk traditions, studying the folk music of Romanians, Slovakians, Serbs, Croatians, Bulgarians, Turks, and North Africans as well as Hungarians. Bartók did not like the fascist régime that governed Hungary during the inter-war period in 1919. In the 1930s he refused to perform or to have his works broadcast in Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. Bartok began to hate the European politics. In 1940 Bartók sailed for America with his wife and two kids. One attraction of the U.S. for him was the opportunity to study a collection of Serbo-Croatian folk music at Columbia University in New York City. Although it came down to the point where he left his own nation, Bartok still felt a passion for his nation and continued on with his music. http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/belabartok.html