The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók (1881-1945) studied the piano with a pupil of Franz Liszt and was himself an outstanding pianist. He composed over 300 pieces for the piano, many of which belong in the standard repertory of most students and professional pianists. Yet this book is the first attempt to come to grips with his entire piano output from the perspective of the performer as distinct from that of the music historian, biographer, or analyst. Pianist Barbara Nissman has made a close study of the works in the course of preparing a complete recording of them, and here offers her insights and suggestions for interpretation and performance. Paying particular attention to the Piano Sonata of 1926, the suite Out of Doors, and the three piano concertos, she looks at Bartók's other works in chapters on folk music, the composer as teacher, and juvenilia. She includes a discography of Bartók's own recordings, an annotated bibliography, and a CD containing her own recordings of selected works, including the little-known early sonata of 1898.

" . . . detailed and thorough . . . a wealth of information . . . David Yeomans deserves our thanks for a job exceedingly well done." —American Music Teacher " . . . a must for pianists . . . " —American Reference Book Annual "David Yeomans's study is certainly to be recommended for all good music libraries, pianists and students of Bartók." —The Music Review "Although there are currently more than 15 books in print about composer Béla Bartók, this short volume is unique in its focus on his complete oeuvre for solo piano. . . . Recommended for pianists, piano teachers, and students from lower-division undergraduate level and above." —Choice " . . . the entire book is indispensable for any of us before we play another Bartók piece." —Clavier "This work collects in one place an enormous number of 'facts' about the piano music of Bartók . . . for planning concerts and student repertoire, and as a survey of an important body of 20th-century music, this listing is valuable." —Library Journal This chronological listing of more than 400 pieces and movements presents in convenient form essential information about each of Bartók's solo piano works, including its various editions, timing, level of difficulty, pertinent remarks by the composer, and bibliographical references to it.

Classical/Opera Piano Solos

This exciting edition contains 100 early intermediate selections in their original form, spanning the Baroque period to present day. The repertoire, which includes several minuets, folk dances, character pieces and much more, has been carefully graded and selected for student appeal by editor Lynn Freeman Olson.

International folkloristics is a worldwide discipline in which scholars study various forms of folklore ranging from myth, folktale, and legend to custom and belief. Twenty classic essays, beginning with a piece by Jacob Grimm, reveal the evolving theoretical underpinnings of folkloristics from its nineteenth century origins to its academic coming-of-age in the twentieth century. Each piece is prefaced by extensive editorial introductions placing them in a historical and intellectual context. The twenty essays presented here, including several never published previously in English, will be required reading for any serious student of folklore.

Sought to discover an unvarying precompositional system that accounted for individual musical events. Wilson's approach is different in that he develops a way to explore each work within the musical contexts that the work itself creates and sustains. Wilson begins by discussing a number of fundamental musical materials that Bartok employed throughout his oeuvre. Using these materials as foundations, he then describes a series of flexible, behaviorally defined harmonic.