Aimee Vilcins

1
Hungarian Dances Bear Dance

• Bartok

2
About the Music

• Bartok collected folk music with his friend
  Kodaly, and he used one of those folk melodies in
  Bear Dance.
• Bartok said that he heard a peasant violinist
  play the melody on the lower violin strings to
  sound more like a bears voice.
• Bear Dance was originally written for piano in
  a collection of teaching pieces called Ten Easy
  Pieces.
• If youve taken piano lessons, you might have
  played this piece!
• Bartok later orchestrated Bear Dance, and it is
  this colorful version you hear in this lesson.
• The piece has only one theme, which appears seven
  times with changes in instruments and range.

3

• About the Composer
• Bela Bartok was born in a section of Hungary that
  is now part of Romania.
• His music reflects his deep ties to the Hungarian
  people and traditions.
• Many of his works feature Hungarian folk themes
  and styles.
• He often traveled from village to village with a
  primitive recording device, collecting sound
  recordings and making hand-written notes of the
  folk material he later used in his music.

4

• Bartok learned to play piano very quickly as a
  small child, and at 10 he was already composing.
  
• As a young man, he became a close friend of
  Zoltan Kodaly, another Hungarian composer.
• The two friends encouraged and influenced each
  others music.
• They often traveled together looking for folk
  music, and both used traditional folk elements in
  their music.

5

• Bartoks fame grew and his music began to be
  played by important performers and orchestras
  throughout Europe and beyond.
• Just before World War II, Bartok moved to
  America.
• He was homesick and disturbed by the move and
  found it hard to compose.
• But it was in the U. S. that he wrote many of his
  most famous works.
• Though he was ill with leukemia, he continued to
  compose until his death in 1945.