Béla Bartók.

Béla Bartók began studying piano at age five under his mother Paula Voit. After his father died in 1888, the family moved to Nagyszolos, where he continued piano and took up composition. At age eleven, he made his first public appearance playing his own piano music. He enrolled at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest and graduated in 1902.

Bartók made several tours of Europe following his graduation in 1902. The musical establishment largely ignored his compositions, though conductor Serge Koussevitzky and violinist Yehudi Menuhin were notable exceptions. In 1940, he moved to the United States to avoid Nazi expansion and taught at Columbia University in New York City. His only film appearance is in the 1963 documentary Cantata, where he appears as himself via archive footage.

Bartók was married twice. He first married Márta Ziegler in 1909, and they divorced in February 1923. In May 1923, he married Ditta Pásztory, who remained his wife until his death in 1945. He had one child, Péter Bartók.

After his death in 1945, Bartók was interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Following the fall of Hungarian communism in 1988, his remains were transferred to Budapest for a state funeral on July 7, 1988, and reinterred in Farkasreti Cemetery. He received posthumous awards including the Kossuth Prize and Grammy Trustees Award. His legacy is that of a major Hungarian composer, though he died unaware of his posthumous fame.