Béla Bartók(1881-1945)
- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Born in Hungary in 1881, Bartok began his musical studies on the piano
at age five. His mother was his first teacher; after his father died in
1888, the Bartok family moved to Nagyszolos, where Bela continued his
piano studies and took up composition. At age eleven, he made his first
public appearance, playing his own piano music. Bartok enrolled in the
Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. he made several tours of Europe
after his graduation in 1902. In 1940 Bartok moved to the United States
to get away from the Nazi expansion, and was given a teaching position
at Columbia University in New York City. With the exception of some
noted musicians - conductor Serge Koussevitzky and violinist Yehudi
Menuhin in particular - he was generally misunderstood and ignored by
the musical establishment. He contracted leukemia in the early 1940s,
and died in the fall of 1945, unaware of the monumental status he would
achieve after death.
