Completed in 1920 and published in 1922 by Universal Edition, this is a set of eight pieces for solo piano (although the seventh piece, titled 'In Memory of Debussy,' was published in the journal La Revue Musicale in 1920). Immediately after the creation of this work, in 1921, Bartók published Hungarian Folk Music, a treatise compiling his previous research on folk songs. This suggests that the Improvisations also represent a culmination of Bartók's earlier compositions involving folk music.

It is a well-known fact that Bartók's collection and research of folk music (including folk songs) are deeply intertwined with his compositions. Works based on such folk music can be further subdivided according to their compositional purpose and the treatment of the material. Regarding compositional purpose, if we set two poles—

• whether folk music melodies are directly used or not, and
• whether there is an educational purpose or not

—this set of Improvisations can be classified as 'works directly using folk music without an educational purpose.' Next, turning to the treatment of the material, it becomes clear that these 'non-educational' Improvisations spurred Bartók towards freer arrangements of folk songs. Bartók himself commented that he demonstrated 'a rather bold style' in this work. The abandonment of key signatures compared to the earlier Fifteen Hungarian Peasant Songs (Sz. 71) and, especially from the sixth piece onwards, the digestion of the original folk songs more as fragments of musical material, suggest an attitude of creating original music starting from folk songs.

The eight pieces included in these Improvisations can be divided into four 'movements,' similar to a suite: Pieces 1 and 2 (in C) / Pieces 3-5 (in G) / Piece 6 (in E-flat) / Pieces 7 and 8 (in C). This reveals a meticulous structure that belies the title 'Improvisations.' According to Bartók's own classification in Hungarian Folk Music, only the seventh piece uses a 'non-uniform folk song' (an A-B-C-D form folk song in the Aeolian mode with an anacrusis), while the other pieces use 'old folk songs' (A-B-C-D form folk songs based on the pentatonic scale). This indicates that Bartók particularly felt the creative potential in the primitive sound of the pentatonic scale.