Béla Bartók

Duets for descant recorders

The Children s and Female Choruses were composed in a single burst of creative activity at the zenith of Bartók s career, in the summer of 1935, between such masterpieces as the String Quartet No. 5 and the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. These short choral pieces are based on folk texts that Bartók further polished and stylized. The music, however, is wholly the composer s own, although it frequently includes motifs, rhythmic formulas and line structures reminiscent of Hungarian folk songs. Both editions contain nine of the two-part pieces of the set, transcribed idiomatically but faithfully for descant and treble recorders, respectively.