Franz Liszt
(1811-1886)

Franz Liszt was born at Doborján in Sopron County, the area with the most highly developed musical life in Hungary. His musical education was begun by his father, Ádám Liszt who was steward on the Esterházy estates. For some time Ádám played the cello in the Esterházy orchestra. He was the first piano theacher of his son. The boy began to make public appearnus playing the piano at the age of eight. The future  of the child was decided in the palace of the Pozsony branch of the Esterházy family: 5 Hungarian magnates donated a scholarship towards his studies. In Vienna, Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven, undertook to teach the gifted boy. His first composition was published when he was 11 years old.Before Ádám Liszt set out on a concert tour with his son in western Europe, the 12 year old child played in Pest and was given a fervent reception.His  concert repertoire included alongside virtuoso pieces andextemporizations, also Hungarian works. He listened with keen attention to the playing of the wandering gypsy musicians at Doborján.In 1823 his father took him to Paris. He was friend of noted musicians,leading writers, philosophers, painters and public figures, and got to know all the major compositions and  musical trends of his day. In 1836 he settled in Genova, and from 1836 appeared as a celebrated travelling concert pianist. The great Pest flood of 1838 made him realize for the first time where he really belonged.He gave charty concert in Vienne for Hungarians there, returning to his "wied and remote " contry only at the end of 1839. His first concert in Hungary was in Pozsony, and when he arrived in Pest he was garanted honorary citizenship of Pest, and welcomed with unflagging enthusiasm in Győr, Pozsony, his natwe village of Doborján, in Kismarton and Sopron. Liszt then embarked once again on the life of a virtuoso pianist, travelling ceaselessly, and only in 1846 did he return to Hungary. Here he again met István Széchenyi, a mutual estelm existing between the two  men.(Twenty years later Liszt wrote one of his finest piano pieces to the death of Széchenyi). He began to take an interest in Hungary's musical life and got to know Hungarian musicans and their works. After only a few months, he condueted the overture to Erkel's opera Hunyadi in Vienna. He was excited by Hungary's song tradition, and thought of collecting the  songs of gypsies. In 1846, he toured the southern regions of Hungary and after several concerts in Transylvania, continued his way lastwards. The failure of the war of Independence led him to write funeral composition. He replied to the famous poet Mihály Vörösmarty's ode to him with a sympatic poen:Hungaria. After 1847 he settled in Weimar   In 1859, his book on gypsies was published turning wide sections of the press against him. "Shall I put it in words? The uproar surrounding my voule on the gypsies made me feel that I am much truer Hungarian that my adversaries, the  would-be Magyars..." After 1870, Liszt spend a growing amount of time in Hungary, diving his time each year between Rom, Weimar and Pest . He set up a permanent home in Pest, and followed with keen attention the concert life in the city and the premiers. The 1870s saw a plan to found an Academy of Music, with Liszt to be elected as its president. He developed the piano department. It is not easy to draw lines between the various maniufestation of Liszt's "Hungarian" pieces in his different creative periods. He is incorporating into his own musical world the Hungarian style. He took an active part in Hungarian musical life and was a generous supporter of musical foundations. And musically in that these elements bring something new :works whose themes and character consciously approach Hungarian reality, increasingly incorporate organically Hungarian rhythmic elements, motifs. Liszt's conscious acceptance of his Hungarianness did not fade during the last twenty years of his life, but rather   became more intense.. We see a musical development in the opposite direction to his earlier style, in some senses even to that of his Romantic  contemprorasies. Liszt's new ear could unite Gregorian chant, Palestrina, Bach, Classicism andRomanticsm, also embodied the "national" elements He died in Bayreuth in 1886. Liszt remained to the end of his life  what he had always been: a musican who thought, feet and made music in an universal content, whose white hot activity incorporated everything and everybody in Europe.Liszt was a universal European figure, not confinent to periods and nations. At the same time he was a genius who was enriched by, and who enriches Hungarian music. He declared himself to be Hungarian, while incoporating the whole of  European culture into his thinking. Liszt occupies a palace between Paris, Rome, Weimar and Pest-French Romanticism, Catolicism, German culture and the Hungarian Academy of Music. This is not a matter of what language one seaks or the geneology of one's parents.

Eszter Kosa
Berze Grammar School, Gyongyos