Although Bartók's works for choir are not among his best-known compositions, they form an important part of his oeuvre. Between 1903 and 1935 Bartók wrote eight works for unaccompanied choir and one with piano accompaniment, totaling 56 (mostly short) movements. They are partly arrangements of Hungarian, Slovak, and Romanian folk songs, and partly settings of poetic and folklore texts.

This volume features the first printed editions of Two Romanian Folk Songs (1909?) that Bartók left behind as unedited drafts and the early version of Four Hungarian Folk Songs (1910, revised 1926). In addition to the original words, this edition includes all translations approved by the composer as underlay. The original words and their literal English translations are presented side by side in the appendix.

The introductory essays in English, Hungarian, and German not only explore the genesis and reception of the works more thoroughly than ever before, but also orient the reader in issues of notation and performance. The critical commentary presents all manuscript and print sources of the works in detail (including folk music sources), it documents the compositional processes, and it surveys the range of textual variants and problems.