Bartók himself collected the material for Rumanian Dances in Transylvania at the beginning of the century; Transylvania is the place in which this folk-dance music is part of everyday life. Bartók considered this music so very valuable that it became his new source of renewal of the musical mother tongue. This music was of a new nature; it sounded strange to ears that were used to the classical tradition and consequently necessitated a possibly exact specification of the musical articulation in ...