Liszt and Hungary

Whenever he visited his homeland, Liszt brought the spirit of the European musical avant-garde. He left Hungary with something no less significant: a sense of identity, which he confessed in the verbunkos-based Hungarian-Gypsy stylistic layer of his music.

Ferenc Liszt and the Style Hongrois

Ferenc Liszt was born into a German-speaking Hungarian family and went abroad to study music as a child. When he visited his homeland for the first time in 1839, he won the confidence of his compatriots with his improvised piano fantasies to Hungarian melodies and his charity concerts, even though he had no knowledge of the language. The nobles saw in him a potential representative of Hungarians recognized throughout Europe, and Liszt wanted to live up to their expectations. ʻMay fortune’s hand bless or beat you, Here you must live and die’, he confessed with Mihály Vörösmarty, the poet of the Szózat [Appeal]. Liszt later quoted this line from his poem, set to music by Béni Egressy, in his piano piece Sunt lacrymae rerum. The main performers of the Style hongrois were the Gypsy bands. Hearing their inspired playing, Liszt believed they were performing their own folk music. His misconception, expressed in his book The Gypsies and Their Music in Hungary for a time drove a wedge between him and his compatriots.

Liszt’s Hungarian Colleagues: the 1850s-60s

Liszt was commissioned to compose two representative works of church music in Hungary. He was requested by János Scitovszky, Archbishop of Esztergom to write both the Missa solennis and the Hungarian Coronation Mass, the former for the consecration of the Esztergom basilica in 1856 and the latter for the coronation of Franz Joseph and Elisabeth as Hungarian King and Queen in 1867. Although a court composer was to be commissioned in Vienna, Liszt’s Hungarian friends, through Elisabeth’s intercession, succeeded in having the mass written by him. Among them were Liszt’s most devoted Hungarian friend, Antal Augusz, musicians such as Ferenc Erkel, Kornél Ábrányi, Mihály Mosonyi, Mátyás Engeszer and Ede Reményi, and the geographer Pál Rosti. Since Liszt lived in Weimar between 1848 and 1861, and in Rome between 1861 and 1869, the premiere of these two major works could not have taken place without the support of his colleagues in Pest-Buda.

Curated by Adrienne Kaczmarczyk