Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. Bartók was born on 25 March 1881 in Nagyszentmiklós in the Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Sânnicolau Mare, Romania) and died on 26 September 1945 in New York. His father, also named Béla Bartók, directed an agricultural school, and his mother, Paula Voit, was a teacher. He was introduced to music by his mother, who gave piano lessons. After his father died in 1888, the family moved from place to place until they finally settled in Pozsony (now Bratislava) in 1894. Béla gave his first public performance at Nagyszentmiklós in 1892. He studied piano with Isvánt Thomán and composition with Hans von Koessler at the Magyar Királyi Zeneakadémia (Royal Hungarian Academy of Music) in Budapest from 1899 to 1903. Between 1903 and 1906 he gave concerts in Vienna, Berlin, Pozsony, Budapest, Paris and other cities. He taught piano at the Budapest academy from 1909 to 1934, setting performance aside.

After writing his first compositions, Bartók discovered that folk music could be an invaluable source of inspiration and took numerous research trips into different regions of Hungary, Romania, Transylvania, Slovenia and Algeria in 1913, studying the music of ethnic minority groups. He compiled and later published the results of this investigative fieldwork. He was musically influenced by the violinist Stefi Geyer due to their relationship. Bartók met Zoltán Kodály in 1905 and worked on several projects with him. In 1909 he married Márta Ziegler, and their son Béla was born in 1910. The outbreak of World War I interrupted his fieldwork. "Bluebeard's Castle" (1911) and "The Wooden Prince" (1917) cemented the Hungarian composer's international reputation. His works were published by Universal Edition from 1918 to 1940, when he began working with Boosey and Hawkes in London. In 1923 he divorced his first wife and married Ditta Pásztory, with whom he had a son named Péter. The 1910s, 20s and 30s were marked by great achievements: he published his first monograph on Hungarian folk music, "A Magyar Népdal" in 1924, and he composed the "Allegro Barbaro" (1911) for piano, the "44 Duos for Violin" (1931) and his famous string quartets (1910-1929).

Bartók's various international tours included a visit to Spain in 1931, where he did not see Manuel de Falla, even though he had previously expressed a desire to meet the composer. From 1934 to 1940, he was busy preparing a major collection of Hungarian songs. In 1935, he was admitted to the Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) in recognition of his ethnomusicological efforts. Béla's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" (1936), perhaps more than any other work, placed him on the same innovative level as Arnold Schoenberg and other avant-garde composers of his day. In 1940 he went into exile in the United States, where he performed and taught at different universities.