Sonatina [1915]

Bartók’s favourite source of folk song was Romania: “I look upon it as the main purpose of my life to continue and complete my study of Romanian, or at least Transylvanian, folk music,” he wrote in 1914. A year later, prevented by the war from extending his researches among the Romanian peasants, he turned to items he had already collected and wrote a series of works based on some of the more interesting examples - the Sonatina, the Romanian Folk Dances, the two sets of Colinde and a number of songs and choruses.

The composer’s delight in Romanian material is nowhere more evident than in the Sonatina which, by virtue of its unaffected Transylvanian tunefulness and its structural modesty, has become one of the most popular of all his works. The first movement is a simple ternary construction with a wittily coloured bagpipe tune and its drone accompaniment in the outer sections and a lively dance from Bihar in the middle. The grumbling Bear Dance is limited to just one tune passing from the right paw to the left. The comparatively extended Finale is based on two more bagpipe tunes, the second of them briefly developed in the middle of the movement , the two of them combined in the coda.

Bartók’s orchestral arrangement of the Sonatina, published as Transylvanian Dances in 1931, has proved to be no less popular than the original version.