Eighty years ago today, on September 26, 1945, Béla Bartók passed away

Eighty years ago today, on September 26, 1945, one of the greatest composers, ethnomusicologists, pianists, and music educators of the 20th century passed away in New York: Béla Bartók.

In the collection of the Museum of Ethnography, we preserve the phonograph cylinders on which Béla Vikár was the first in Europe to record folk music in 1896. In the current phonograph cylinder collection, the field recordings of Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, and László Lajtha also occupy a significant place. The preservation and digitization of the melodies recorded on more than 4,700 cylinders is the result of decades of work, and today a large part of the collection is already accessible in digital form.

Béla Bartók collected more than 4,500 melodies on nearly 1,800 phonograph cylinders—Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Turkish, and the music of other peoples as well. The first catalogue of Bartók’s phonograph recordings can now be browsed in the continuously expanding online database, allowing anyone to research, compare transcriptions, or even explore the locations of the collections on a map.

In the Museum of Ethnography’s permanent exhibition, visitors can encounter Bartók at many points, while the museum’s online collection database also offers the opportunity to delve into his folk music legacy.

Béla Bartók’s heritage is of inestimable value not only for music history but also for the preservation of folk music and cultural memory.