Bartók’s "Romanian Christmas Songs" are based on folk melodies that originated in a pagan celebration of the winter solstice, and which he felt gave “the impression of a fiery, war-like type of song, rather than a pious and religious one”. Nevertheless, he chose 20 melodies from this collection of “colinde” and published them under the title of “Christmas Songs”.

In the first edition of 1918 they were conceived for children’s hands and so were published “without octaves”; but in his revised ...