Ethnomusicology > Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Rumanian Folk Music, Autograph manuscript, ca. 1942
Béla Bartók Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Central to Béla Bartók's work as a composer was his work as an ethnomusicologist. With fellow Hungarian composer, Zoltán Kodály, he travelled throughout Eastern Europe and Turkey collecting folk music prior to the devastations of World Wars I and II. Alarmed by the spread of fascism, Bartók emigrated to the United States in 1940. On his arrival, he was commissioned by Columbia to transcribe a large collection of Yugoslav folk music, supported by the Alice M. Ditson Fund, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University that year.
He prepared the manuscripts of his work on Rumanian and Turkish folk music for publication, but was unable to find a publisher. He then donated the material to Columbia along with his tabulation of Serbo-Croatian folk music, held in the Parry Collection at Harvard, that had been published. By 1943 his health was failing and he died from leukemia in New York in 1945. His Rumanian and Turkish manuscripts were later published by his estate.
Béla Bartók
Rumanian Folk Music, publication flyer, ca. 1967
Columbia University Archives, Rare Book and Manuscript Library