Bulgarian folk dances are intimately related to the music of Bulgaria. This distinctive feature of Balkan folk music is the asymmetrical meter, built up around various combinations of 'quick' and 'slow' beats. The music, in Western musical notation, is often described using compound meter notation, where the notational meter accents, i.e., the heard beats, can be of different lengths, usually 1, 2, 3, or 4.

The proportions of the beats do not follow any exact rational proportions. For example, the well known tune Eleno Mome (Елено Моме) exists written in 7=2+2+1+2, 13=4+4+2+3, and 12=3+4+2+3 times. Here, the forms 4+4+2+3 and 3+4+2+3 exist both as a musicologist's way to attempt to indicate the tendency of speeding up the last and first beats, as well in formal version, where the musician plays 3 or 4 about equal length notes on the beat. In music band playing, the meter 7=2+2+1+2 seems favored, thus skipping some of the time-bending subtleties. Given this fact, though, some meters are more common or popular; but there is a wide variation of less frequent combinations, as well. There is also disagreement about whether one should use 1/8 or 1/16 as meter denominator, but this is just a notational convenience. In the list below, the denominator follows in part notational practice of the region, and in part the speed of the type of tune, giving the 1/4 note a reasonable number of beats per minute (as on a metronome).

Béla Viktor János Bartók ( /ˈbɑrtɒk/; Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈbeːlɒ ˈbɒrtoːk]; March 25, 1881 – September 26, 1945) was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer (Gillies 2001). Through his collection and analytical study of folk music, he was one of the founders of ethnomusicology.

Béla Bartók was born in the small Banatian town of Nagyszentmiklós in the Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (since 1920 Sânnicolau Mare, Romania) on March 25, 1881. Bartók's family reflected some of the ethno-cultural diversities of the country. His father, Béla Sr., considered himself thoroughly Hungarian, because on his father's side the Bartók family was a Hungarian lower noble family, originating from Borsod county (Móser 2006a, 44; Bartók 1981, 13), though his mother was from a Roman Catholic Serbian family (Bayley 2001, 16). His mother, Paula (born Paula Voit), had German as a mother tongue, but was ethnically of "mixed Hungarian" origin: Her maiden name Voit is German, probably of Saxon origin from Upper Hungary (Since 1920 in Czechoslovakia, since 1993 in Slovakia), though she spoke Hungarian fluently.^{[citation needed]} Among her closest forefathers there were family names like Polereczky (Magyarized Polish or Slovak) and Fegyveres (Magyar). Béla displayed notable musical talent very early in life: according to his mother, he could distinguish between different dance rhythms that she played on the piano before he learned to speak in complete sentences (Gillies 1990, 6). By the age of four, he was able to play 40 pieces on the piano; his mother began formally teaching him the next year.

Balázs Szokolay (Hungarian pronunciation: [ˈbɒlaːʒ ˈsokolɒj]) (born in Budapest, 1961) is a Hungarian pianist.

His international concert career started in 1983, replacing Nikita Magaloff at a concert in Belgrade. Four years later he was appointed a professorship at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music. Throughout his career he has been awarded 14 competition prizes (Zwickau's Robert Schumann, Leeds', Brussels' Queen Elisabeth, Munich's ARD, Terni's Alessandro Casagrande, Monza's Rina Sala Gallo, etc.).

In 2001 the Hungarian Government awarded him the Liszt Prize.

Jean Absil (October 23, 1893 – February 2, 1974) was a Belgian modernist music composer, organist, and professor at the Brussels Conservatory.

Absil was born in Bonsecours, Hainaut, Belgium. He was a pupil of Alphonse Oeyen, organist at the basilica of Bonsecours. From 1913 he studied organ and harmony at the Brussels Conservatory, but upon graduating, decided to concentrate on composition instead. In 1922 Absil won the Belgian Prix de Rome and in 1934 the Prix Rubens, which allowed him to travel to Paris, France. Here, he met fellow contemporary composers Ibert, Milhaud, and Honegger. Absil gained international prominence with the premiere of his first piano concerto (op. 30). In 1930, Absil began teaching harmony at the Brussels Conservatory, becoming a professor of Fugue 6 years later. Amongst his pupils there was Paul Danblon. He also taught at Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth and the Etterbeek Music School. In 1955, he was elected to the Belgium Royal Academy. In 1974, at the age of 80, Absil died in Uccle, Brussels.