Bela Bartok was born in Romania-near Budapest

Bartok studied piano at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. There he met Zoltan Kodaly and together they collected folk music from the region. This had a great influence on his style. Previously, the idea that Bartok had was that the Hungarian folk music was derived from the gypsy melodies which could be heard in the works of Franz Liszt , and in 1903 Bartok wrote a great orchestral work, "Kossuth" , honoring Lajos Kossuth , hero of the Hungarian revolution of 1848. From this symphonic poem he worked to extract a funeral march. Bartok, who became famous as a pianist-composer-performer for the "national-Hungarian style", takes as its model the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt.

The "Miraculous Mandarin" was started in 1918 , but was not performed until 1926 because of the topic: a story about prostitution, theft and murder with a very abusive relationship between the sexes. The introduction of fairy-tale characters in musical theater was rather a point that he found a supporter in Ferruccio Busoni.

His last work was the Sixth String Quartet, an interesting work for its polymodal harmonies and the richness of the solo viola and violins muted in slow movements; were it not for Serge Koussevitsky commissioning him to write the Concerto for orchestra , which became the most popular work of Bartók and raised its finances ; although written with less inner feeling you can see how the composer has exacerbated the very tonal and coloristic elements also found in the Concerto for Piano and Orchestra no. 3 (1945), an airy and almost neo-classical work, and in his unfinished Concerto for viola and orchestra, later completed by his pupil, Tibor Serly. Bartok was never comfortable while in the United States. Unlike Igor travinsky, who had numerous important musicians who would champion his cause, he had no 'Hollywood' connections among the expatriate European composers who lived in Southern CAlifornia. However, Bartok had the oversight of Serge Koussevitsky who was crucial in bringing his works to the public. Bela Bartok died in New York of leukemia in 1945.