Despite Bartók's fruitful obsession with his native Hungarian folk music, the sources of inspiration for this suite of five dances plus finale are much more widely scattered: only the second is truly Hungarian, the third sharing its local characteristics with those of Romania and North Africa (the result of expeditions to those regions in 1909 and 1913) while the first and fourth derive partially or wholly from Arabic folk models, the fifth is a rather general primitive peasant dance, and the finale combines all the different elements together. The piece was composed in 1923 for a festival concert to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the merging of the two cities Buda and Pest into the one capital city Budapest, and was promptly published the following year.

sources

A  Autograph score, in the Budapest History Museum; a facsimile was published by Balassi Kiadó, Budapest in 1998. A is not quite the final text, for example 13–44 Clars tacent in A; these revisions were sent to the publisher on a sheet which is helpfully included in with the facsimile

E  First edition full score, published by Universal Edition, Vienna in 1924 (now rare)

F  Revision of E (1925) as a miniature score with either Universal or Philharmonia covers (each page has both U.E. and W.Ph.V. plate numbers). The revisions are not far-reaching, mostly concerning metronome marks, but there are a few changes to the music

The revised metronome marks are correct in all Universal and Philharmonia scores. When Boosey & Hawkes briefly took over the copyright in 1951 it published instead the metronome marks from Bartók's piano arrangement, for which he had decreased several tempi to accommodate pianists. This Boosey score is rarely found in Europe.

G  Re-issue of F (1960), simply blown up to full score size, but not quite identical to the 1925 miniature; the few small emendations are listed in section 1

H  Current miniature score, with Philharmonia covers; nearly identical to G, but two of the four mistakes have been corrected