Béla Viktor János Bartók (pronounced /ˈbɑrtɒk/ (Wells 1990), Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈbeːlɒ ˈbɒrtoːk]) (March 25, 1881–September 26, 1945) was a Hungarian composer and pianist, considered to be one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, and regarded, along with Liszt, to be his country’s greatest composer (Gillies 2001). Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology. Béla Bartók was born in the small Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in Austria-Hungary (now Sânnicolau Mare, Romania) on March 25, 1881.

He displayed notable musical talent very early in life: according to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano even before he learned to speak in complete sentences (Gillies 1990, 6). By the age of four, he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano, and his mother began formally teaching him the next year. Béla was a small and sickly child.

He suffered from a painful chronic rash until the age of five (Gillies 1990, 5). In 1888, when he was seven, his father (the director of an agricultural school) died suddenly. Béla's mother then took him and his sister, Erzsebet, to live in Nagyszőlős (today Vinogradiv, Ukraine), and then to Pozsony (German: Pressburg, today Bratislava, Slovakia).

In Pozsony, Béla gave his first public recital at age eleven to a warm critical reception. Among the pieces he played was his own first composition, written two years previously: a short piece called "The Course of the Danube" (de Toth 1999). Shortly thereafter László Erkel accepted him as a pupil.

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