ned by an unnamed stranger that it was his own requiem, and he was right. He raced to finish it but in the end only completed a few movements and a sketchy outline of the rest of the piece. He died probably from poor health when he was just thirty five years old. The Requiem was completed by one of Mozarts pupils, Sussmayr. Bartok (b.1881 d.1945) Bla Bartk was born in Nagyszentmikls, Hungary (now Snnicolau, Romania), on the 25th of March, 1881. When he was 18 he was accepted into the Budapest Royal Academy of Music and he began his career as a concert pianist. This was also around the time when he began composing. Bartok was very influenced by Strauss music. In 1905 He met Zoltan Kodaly and began collecting and recording Hungarian folk music. Two years later he became a professor of the piano at the Budapest Royal Academy. A few years later he was married, but it was not until 1917 that The Wooden Prince became the first of his compositions to be accepted. He continued to compose and tour as a pianist for the next twenty-seven years and was divorced and remarried. In 1940 Bartok emigrated to the USA where his health quickly began to deteriorate. In 1943 Bartok wrote his famous and intentionally popular Concerto for Orchestra. Then in 1945 he died in New York on the 26th September. Bartoks compositions were not fully appreciated during his own lifetime but he is now considered one of the most prolific composers in 20th Century classical music. His music is important in part because of its distinct Hungarian feel which he drew from his extensive knowledge of Hungarian folk music, having travelled around Hungary recording it. His music represents the emergence of Hungary as one of Europes great musical nations. Bartk acknowledged his musical debt to the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt and the French composer Claude Debussy, and his tone poem Kossuth (1904) shows the influence of the German composer Richard Strauss. About 1905 Bartk realised...
