Béla Bartók’s Third String Quartet was written in 1926, when the composer was in his mid-forties. At this point in his life, he was internationally recognized, not just as an important composer but also as one of the earliest serious ethnomusicologists: he collected and catalogued folk music from several Eastern European countries, and even ranged as far as North Africa in his research. To Bartók’s thinking, folk music was of more than scientific interest; it was the life-giving seed without which there was no way forward in musical creation.