Bartok’s Roumanian Folk Dances for Violin – Sheet Music

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About the Roumanian Folk Dances

Bartók’s Roumanian Folk Dances (Romanian: Dansuri populare românești) is a suite of six short piano pieces based on Romanian folk themes composed by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók in 1915.

In 1913, Bartók transcribed a number of Romanian folk tunes which he had collected during his ethnomusicological fieldwork in Hungary’s Transylvania region. Three years later, he orchestrated the piano pieces for orchestra, and the suite achieved lasting popularity after being performed in 1918 by the orchestra of the Austrian composer Ottokar Nováček.

The original piano version was published in Romania in 1922 as volume seven of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos, his teaching repertoire for beginners, while the orchestral transcription appeared in 1929 as volume four of his Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs. In both versions, Bartók retained the structure and character of the original folk tunes which inspired him, but also added his own Harmonic and melodic embellishments.

Bartók recorded the suite twice: once in 1943 with Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra for RCA Victor, and again in 1949 with William Strickland and the Philadelphia Orchestra for Columbia Records.

About the Composer, Bartok

Béla Bartók was a Hungarian composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Liszt are regarded as Hungary’s greatest composers (Bartók was also an important collector and performer of folk music). Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of comparative musicology, which later became ethnomusicology.

Bartók was born in the small town of Nagyszentmiklós in the Kingdom of Hungary (now Sânnicolau Mare, Romania), to a Hungarian mother and a Slovak father. A gifted child prodigy pianist, he rose to prominence in the concert halls of Budapest by age 17. He studied composition with Hans Koessler at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest from 1899 to 1903. In 1904 he made a concert tour across much of Europe, including Vienna; he also visited Norwaysummering dairy farms near Bergen to collect folk melodies which he subsequently incorporated into his sixth Hungarian Folk Song settings for piano (1914).

The Roumanian Folk Dances for Violin

Bartók’s Roumanian Folk Dances (Romanian: Jocuri populare românești) is a six-movement work for violin and piano, composed by Béla Bartók in 1915. It is based on seven Romanian tunes from Transylvania, originally collected by Béla Vála. The work was inspired by Brahms’ Hungarian Dances and Bartók’s own Romanian Folk Dances for orchestra.

The gathered tunes were fitted into Bartók’s modernist compositional style, which featured Hungarian major-minor tonality, bitonality, pentatonicism, and ostinato. The work is one of Bartók’s most successful works. It is frequently performed as a concert piece and has been transcribed for other instruments by a number of notable musicians, including Joseph Joachim, Zoltán Székely, Leopold Auer, and Jascha Heifetz.

The Sheet Music

Bartok’s Roumanian Folk Dances for Violin – Sheet Music is a compilation of six traditional Romanian folk dances arranged for violin by Hungarian composer Béla Bartók. The music is written in standard notation with Bartók’s own fingerings and bowing markings included.

The Roumanian Folk Dances are some of Bartók’s best-known works and have become a staple of the violin repertoire. They are frequently performed and recorded, and have been transcribed for a variety of other instruments.

The folk dances included in the collection are:

-“Bătuta”
-“Brâul”
-“Pe Loc”
-“Buciumeana”
-“Învârtita”
-“Poarga Românească”

Tips for Playing the Roumanian Folk Dances for Violin

Here are some tips to help you play Bartok’s Roumanian Folk Dances for Violin:

-Practice slow and fast versions of each dance. This will help you get a feel for the rhythm and tempo of the piece.
-Listen to recordings of the piece to get an idea of how it should sound.
-Pay attention to the dynamics (loudness and softness) of the music. The folk dances should have a lot of energy and should be played fairly loudly.
-Be sure to use a variety of bow strokes (e.g., staccato, legato, etc.) to create interesting textures.