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Béla Bartók in Transylvania, 1907. |
In our case it was not simply a question of recovering an individual melody, treating it in the traditional manner and building it into our composition. [ ] This would have resulted in mere copy work and would never have led to a new unified solution. Our task was to understand the inner spirit of this hitherto unknown music and create a new musical style based on the essentially inexpressible spirit. (Béla Bartók. Hungarian Folk Music and Modern Hungarian Music, 1928) |
© Rory Braddell
September 2001