For Children

For Children is a set of short piano pieces composed by Béla Bartók in 1908 and 1909; 85 pieces were originally issued in four volumes. Each piece is based on a folk tune: Hungarian in the first two volumes, Slovak in the last two. In 1945, Bartók revised the set, removing six pieces that were inaccurately transcribed or had been found not to be original folk tunes, and substantially changing the harmonization of a number of others; the collection, now of 79 pieces, was reissued in two volumes.