I see Bartók [Béla Bartók] in his villa in the hills of Buda – his tables, couch, and piano littered with those hard-earned discs of folk-fiddlers, mostly unaccompanied, which he had recorded during many epic years of folk-lore exploration. He plays them to me while I follow the intricate, almost hieroglyphic signs on the literal transcriptions he has made of these, as he has of thousands of others. Putting me to the test: whether I would recognize the sometimes infinitesimally small rhythmic or melodic shreds that went into the Rhapsody No. 1, which he dedicated to me in 1928; making the distinction, while discussing these themes, between the unimaginative, premeditated incorporation of folk lore material into a composition, and that degree of saturation with the folk lore of one’s country which unconsciously and decisively affects the composer’s melodic invention, his palette, his rhythmic imaginings. << less