I. Dudások – Bagpipers
II. Medvetánc – Bear Dance
III. Finale

The original form of this composition was a sonatina for piano, composed in 1915. It was written at the time of The Wooden Prince, the Second String Quartet and a number of folksong settings (the Romanian Kolinda Melodies for Piano, the Romanian Folk Dances, the 15 Hungarian Peasant Songs as well as choruses and other songs). Bartók, in his dual capacity as both composer and folk music researcher, was intensively preoccupied during this period with the music he collected in Transylvania, and it is clear just how important the Romanian material was for him by the number of compositions it spawned. Bartók prepared the orchestral version of the sonatina in 1931 and it was premiered in 1932, conducted by Massimo Freccia.

For the sonatina (later renamed Transylvanian Dances), Bartók employs five original melodies. In the first movement, he links two of them. He collected and notated the first in 1913, from a piper he encountered in Hunyad county. This fast circle dance melody is followed by another bagpipe melody collected in 1910 (in Bihar county). The melody of the second movement was played to Bartók in the village of Váncsafalva in Máramoros county by a gypsy violinist with an immense repertoire. Bartók was able to collect no less than 21 new melodies from this violinist, but the area itself was extremely rich: in 13 days Bartók notated 209 tunes.

The Finale again introduces two themes. Both are Romanian “Dance Melodies”. Bartók described the melodies of the Sonatina in 1944 thus: “Originally I planned a brace of Romanian folk dances for piano. I chose to cast it in three sections and christened it “Sonatina”. The first movement, Bagpipers, comprises two dances, played by two pipers. A peasant violinist played me the bear dance melody of the second movement on the G and D strings, the bottom two strings, which better resembles the sound of a bear. Generally violinists use the E string. The final movement also contains two folk melodies which I heard played by peasant violinists.”