BÉLA BARTÓK (1881 - 1945): One of Hungary’s most important composers, Bartók was a child prodigy, playing over 40 different piano pieces at age 5 and giving a public recital of his own compositions at 11. His lifelong passion was the recording and analysis of folk music which he collected wherever he travelled, pioneering the field of ethnomusicology – the study of cultural, social, cognitive, and other dimensions of musical behavior.