Béla Bartók composed the series of forty-four violin duos in 1931, prompted by the German violin teacher Erich Doflein. With the exception of numbers 35 and 36, all the pieces are based on original folk melodies, and the majority were collected by the composer himself during his numerous field trips in the Carpathian Basin. The melody for no. 42 was collected by Bartók in Algeria. Universal Edition (Vienna) published the violin duos in 1933 in four volumes, arranged in order of difficulty.

The present transcription faithfully follows the original; fingerings are by the editor.