Composer, folklorist, and performer Bela Bartok (1881-1945) is internationally renowned as one of the most important and influential musicians of the twentieth century. Throughout his life he wrote lectures and essays that dealt with virtually every aspect of East European folk music. Many of those essays, previously scattered in specialty journals in four different languages, are collected here for the first time.

All are concerned with that branch of musicology within which Bartok was most influential, and for which he is best known: research into folk music, or ethnomusicology. The volume includes a preface by editor Benjamin Suchoff, a leading expert on Bartok's music and writings. Suchoff examines Bartok's developing views on the folk-music traditions of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and the Arab world.