It is known that Bartók had a high opinion of the aesthetic value of folk songs. We find the following passage in his work (Bartók, 1931): “In their small way, they are as perfect as the grandest masterpieces of musical art. They are, indeed, classical models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed in all its freshness and shapeliness … with the simplest of means.” This was written by an artist whose compositions very rarely included melodies as rounded off as those of folk songs. Surfeited with the over-ripe melodic style and the exaggerated cult of harmonies of the romantic school, Bartók—like his contemporaries—made rhythm and tone-colour effects predominant in his works.