Bartok and Stravinsky

Bela Bartok (1881-1945) was an astoundingly gifted composer, pianist, and ethnomusicologist. His primary goal was to marry the native Hungarian folk tunes with the more western and classical traditions. Like Dohnanyi, Bartok also studied composition under Hans Koessler. During the course of his life, Bartok published almost 2,000 folk songs. in 1907 he became professor at the Budapest Academy where he collected a lot of his material. He had three major compositional periods: his early period (1907-1917), middle (1918-1935), and late (1936-1945). His music is extremely motivic, based on melodies that are expanding, based on many tritones continuous meter in a classical sense, a dryness of sound, a folk-like quality and character, a melodic contour of line, and a great sense of pathos throughout. There are two main styles of Bartok. The first is the more declarative, slower, and chant-like style known as Parlando-Rubato, and the second which is faster and more dance-like known as Tempo-Giusto. Bartok's Out of Doors Suite often plays the melody twice in a row. The second time is usually more elaborate...much like Mozart's style. Bartok is mimicking the classical style in this piece. He does use a different key signature at times, and uses many folk-like melodies based on simple ideas with ornamental influences.
Stravinsky (1882-1971) is perhaps most famous for the composition of the Rite of Spring (1913) which caused the infamous riot upon its debut performance. His Piano Sonata (1924) also represents a very similar style to the Rite of Spring in Stravinsky's compositional methods.