Bela Bartok - Romanian Folk Dances

Bartok was a 20th century composer who collected Folk music from around Hungary, his home country. He used this folk music as influence to much of his work, and we can hear this in this piece. One way in which we can hear this influence is in the lively, charismatic mood of the movements. Even in the third movement, which is much slower and quieter, we still hear a strong accompaniment that is comprised of intervals of a 5th and the occasional augmented fourth (D and G#, for example). The interval of a fifth is considered the strongest interval in music, and dates back to medieval organum (for the Western Classical tradition). We get a very similar thing in the next movement, whereby it is another slow, quiet movement, but the accompaniment is comprised of strong intervals (major 6ths, minor 6ths, and many perfect 4ths). The fifth movement is lively again, with more chordal perfect 4ths and major and minor 6ths in the accompanying part. The final movement also has a chordal accompaniment, with yet more perfect fourths and some perfect fifths. The piece ends with a chord of a perfect fifth in the melody and octave C#s in the accompaniment- the tonic note. We can see therefore that Bartok uses chordal accompaniment for all the movements of this piece, which gives a bold character to them, a feature that is very much in line with the tradition of Hungarian folk music.

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