The String Quartet No. 3 by Béla Bartók was written in September 1927 in Budapest. Béla Viktor János Bartók (March 25, 1881 – September 26, 1945) was a composer, pianist and collector of East European folk music. ... Budapest (pronounced BOO-dah-pesht, IPA ), the capital city of Hungary and the countrys principal political, industrial, commercial and transportation centre, has more than 1. ...

The work is in one continuous stretch with no breaks, but is divided in the score into four parts:

1. Prima parte: Moderato
2. Seconda parte: Allegro
3. Recapitulazione della prima parte: Moderato
4. Coda: Allegro molto

Despite Bartók calling the third section a "recapitulation" it is not a straight repetition of the music from the prima parte, being somewhat varied and simplified. Although not marked as such, the coda is in fact a telescoped recapitualtion of the seconda parte.

The mood of the first part is quite bleak, contrasting with the second part which is livlier and provides evidence of the inspiration Bartók's drew from Hungarian folk music, with dance-like melodies to the fore. Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the people. ...

The work is even more harmonically adventurous and contrapuntally complex than Bartók's previous two string quartets and explores a number of extended instrumental techniques, including sul ponticello (playing with the bow over the fingerboard), col legno (playing with the wood rather than the hair of the bow), glissandi (sliding from one note to another) and the so-called Bartók pizzicato (plucking the string so that it rebounds against the instrument's fingerboard). This article is about musical harmony. ... Counterpoint is a very general feature of music (especially prominent in much Western music) whereby two or more melodic strands occur simultaneously - in separate voices, either literally or metaphorically (if the music is instrumental). ... In music, a bow is a device pulled across the strings of a string instrument in order to make them vibrate and emit sound. ... Col legno (Italian for with the wood) is a method of playing bowed string instruments (particularly the violin, viola, cello, and double bass) whereby the strings are struck with the wood of the bow rather having the hair pulled across them. ... Glissando (plural: glissandi) is a musical term that refers to either a continuous sliding from one pitch to another (a true glissando), or an incidental scale played while moving from one melodic note to another (an effective glissando). ... Pizzicato is a method of playing an orchestral string instrument. ...

It has often been suggested that Bartók was inspired to write the piece after hearing a performance of Alban Berg's Lyric Suite (1926) in 1927. The piece is widely considered to be the most tightly constructed of Bartók's six string quartets, the whole deriving from a relatively small amount of thematic material integrated into a single continuous structure. It is also Bartók's shortest quartet, with a typical performance lasting around fifteen minutes. Alban Maria Johannes Berg (February 9, 1885 – December 24, 1935) was an Austrian composer. ... Lyric Suite is a string quartet written by Alban Berg from 1925 to 1926 and (publically) dedicated to Alexander von Zemlinsky . ... The resident string quartet of the Library of Congress in 1963 A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string instruments—usually two violins, a viola and cello—or a piece written to be performed by such a group. ...

The work is dedicated to the Musical Society Fund of Philadelphia and was entered into an international competition for chamber music run by the organisation. It won the $6,000 first prize jointly with a work by Alfredo Casella. The piece was premiered on February 19, 1929 by the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet. Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. ... Alfredo Casella, (born in Torino July 25, 1883, died Rome March 5, 1947), was an Italian composer. ...

The piece was first published in 1929 by Universal Edition. Universal Edition (UE) are a classical music publishing firm. ...