Bela Bartok's art is a perfect microcosm of the art of the twentieth century. It is interwoven with the musical conceptions and techniques of the great Western European masters, without in any way obscuring the individuality, the national consciousness, and the personal style and originality of the composer's own musical language -- a language rooted in the glorious tradition of his people. In the six volumes of the Mikrokosmos, or "little world," Bartok has presented a series of progressively difficult pieces designed -- if not intentionally, at least effectively -- to introduce to the piano student a technical approach to piano playing in the modern idiom. Admittedly, the etude does not cover every pianistic technical problem. It clearly shows that Bartok fully appreciates the worth of the great wealth of piano literature, and does not prescribe his method as a "cure-all" for the technical problems of piano playing.