Bartók’s status as a moral hero in post-war Italian culture was associated with a noticeable influence of his music and poetics on the works of many composers active in the country. As Mila wrote in 1952, ‘it was said of him […] that he was isolated, that he could not gain a following; and now, seven years since he died, even the caretakers of the Conservatoires are able to come up with a lopsided melody in 5/8 like Bartók as if it was nothing! The time has come to establish a hunting ban in Hungarian game reserves.’ It was fashionable not only to compose like Bartók, but also to detect his impact on new pieces by Italian composers. Despite the alleged internationalism promoted within leftist culture, intellectuals and musicians of the post-war period shared an ambition to inaugurate an Italian way of composing in the field of contemporary music. Within the framework of the opposition between the well-established neoclassicism and the emerging serialism, the third way of Bartók – the ‘way of freedom’ as Mila and Petrassi called it – was perceived by many as a process of liberation capable of reconciling the myth of the nation’s cultural renaissance with a progressive artistic research that was not separated from the trends of the international avant-garde. Such a comprehensive interpretation is not true for all cases, however. On the one hand, it is impossible to analyse the impact of Bartók’s style in post-war Italian composition without considering his posthumous heroic image. On the other hand, it would be misleading to subsume under a single explanation the diverse paths of reception of the composers influenced by Bartók. These composers belong to different generations: some of them were born in the late nineteenth century (Casella, Malipiero, Ghedini), others in the first years of the new century (Petrassi, Veretti, Scelsi), still others in the 1920s (Maderna, Clementi, Donatoni) or even the 1930s (Oppo). Depending on the case, Bartók was either a late discovery, a form of affirmation or renewal, a passing interest or just a way to follow the trend. It was a trend that reached its peak roughly between 1947 and 1955, as shown in a number of compositions