In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution.

- Bela Bartok

It may well be that some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach.

- Bela Bartok

Competitions are for horses, not artists.

- Bela Bartok

Our peasant music, naturally, is invariably tonal, if not always in the sense that the inflexible major and minor system is tonal. (An "atonal" folk-…

- Bela Bartok

With maturity comes the wish to economize - to be more simple. Maturity is the period when one finds the just measure.

- Bela Bartok

His pagan barbarity, his explosive and angrily defiant melancholy, his demoniacal instinct . . . these are all echoes . . . of the thousand-year-old …

- Bela Bartok

I cannot conceive of music that expresses absolutely nothing.

- Bela Bartok

Folk melodies are the embodiment of an artistic perfection of the highest order; in fact, they are models of the way in which a musical idea can be e…

- Bela Bartok