He was born Sînnicolau Mare, 25 March 1881.

He began lessons with his mother, who brought up the family after his father's
death in 1888. In 1894 they settled in Bratislava, where he attended the
Gymnasium (Dohnányi was an elder schoolfellow), studied the piano with
Laszlo Erkel and Anton Hyrtl, and composed sonatas and quartets. In 1898
he was accepted by the Vienna Conservatory, but following Dohnányi he went
to the Budapest Academy (1899-1903), where he studied the piano with
Liszt's pupil Istvan Thoman and composition with Janos Koessler. There he
deepened his acquaintance with Wagner, though it was the music of Strauss,
which he met at the Budapest premiere of Also sprach Zarathustra in 1902,
that had most influence. He wrote a symphonic poem, Kossuth (1903), using
Strauss's methods with Hungarian elements in Liszt's manner.
In 1904 Kossuth was performed in Budapest and Manchester; at the same
time Bartók began to make a career as a pianist, writing a Piano Quintet and
two Lisztian virtuoso showpieces (Rhapsody op.1, Scherzo op.2). Also in
1904 he made his first Hungarian folksong transcription. In 1905 he collected
more songs and began his collaboration with Kodály: their first arrangements
were published in 1906.
The next year he was appointed Thoman's successor at the Budapest
Academy, which enabled him to settle in Hungary and continue his
folksong collecting, notably in Transylvania.
Meanwhile his music was
beginning to be influenced by this
activity and by the music of
Debussy that Kodály had brought
back from Paris: both opened the
way to new, modal kinds of
harmony and irregular metre. The
1908 Violin Concerto is still within
the symphonic tradition, but the
many small piano pieces of this
period show a new, authentically
Hungarian Bartók emerging, with
the 4ths of Magyar folksong, the
rhythms of peasant dance and the
scales he had discovered among
Hungarian, Romanian and Slovak
peoples. The arrival of this new
voice is documented in his String
Quartet no.1 (1908), introduced at
a Budapest concert of his music in
1910.
There followed orchestral pieces and a one-act opera, Bluebeard's Castle,
dedicated to his young wife. Influenced by Mussorgsky and Debussy but most
directly by Hungarian peasant music (and Strauss, still, in its orchestral
pictures), the work, a grim fable of human isolation, failed to win the
competition in which it was entered. For two years (1912-14) Bartok practically
gave up composition and devoted himself to the collection, arrangement and
study of folk music, until World War I put an end to his expeditions. He
returned to creative activity with the String Quartet no.2 (1917) and the
fairytale ballet The Wooden Prince, whose production in Budapest in 1917
restored him to public favour. The next year Bluebeard's Castle was staged
and he began a second ballet, The Miraculous Mandarin, which was not
performed until 1926 (there were problems over the subject, the thwarting and
consummation of sexual passion). Rich and graphic in invention, the score is
practically an opera without words.
In 1940 Bartók and his second wife Ditta Pásztory (he had divorced and
remarried in 1923) sadly 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, but their finances were precarious, as
increasingly was his health. It seemed that his last European work the String
Quartet no.6 (1939), might be his pessimistic swansong, but then came the
exuberant Concerto for Orchestra (1943) and the involuted Sonata for solo
violin (1944). Piano Concerto no.3, written to provide his widow with an income,
was almost finished when he died, a Viola Concerto left in sketch.
Masterpieces
Rhapsody, ?1904Piano, Orch.,Op.2Scherzo (Burlesque), 1904, Piano, Orch.
Suite No. 1, 1905 (revised c1920), Orch.
Suite No. 2, 1905-7 (revised 1920, 1943), small Orch.
Two Portraits (Két portré), 1907-11, Orch.
One ideal (Egy ideális)
One grotesque (Egy torz)
Op.7String Quartet No.1, 1908
Two Pictures (Két kép), 1910, Orch.
In full flower (Virágzás)
Village dance (A falu tánca)
Duke Bluebeard's Castle (A Kékszakállú herceg vára), 1911 (rev.1912,1918), Opera
Four Pieces, 1912, Orchestrated 1921, Orch.
Preludio
Scherzo
Intermezzo
Marcia funebre
The Wooden Prince (A fából faragott királyfi), 1914-6, Orchestrated 1916-7, Ballet
String Quartet No.2, 1915-7
The Miraculous Mandarin (A csodálatos mandarin), 1918-9, Orchestrated 1923, Rev.1924,1926-31
Pantomime
A Suite derived from this work also exists.
Béla Bartók lived for a while in Budapest in the second district in the
green belt. (1932-1940)
His house he used to live in is a museum and a concert hall now…
We have visited this museum.
Here are the pictures:
His piano
The concert hall
His personal objects
Statues of Béla Bartók in his garden
Bartók concert at our school
Singing competition for the anniversary of Béla Bartók