Lehar

""Nothing elsewhere can replace these things, and the physiognomy of the race, when they are linked to childhood memories and when one has kept in tact that tonality of the heart which is a feeling for one's fatherland" (Franz Liszt the Weimar years - Alan Walker, p. 404)."; ""I am Hungarian, and I do not know a greater happiness than to introduce to my beloved country the first fruits of my education and studies-as the first expression of my gratitude. What is missing yet of my maturity I intend to acquire with lasting diligence, and perhaps then I will have the good fortune to become a small branch of my country's glory. -Announcing F.Liszt's "homecoming" concert that took place on May 1, 1823 in Pest. (Franz Liszt the Virtuoso years - Alan Walker, p. 87)"; "

For three generations Liszt's male forbears had worked on Hungarian soil. They loved the country, they identified with its people, they were absorbed in its culture. They lived, they reproduced, and they died in exactly the same way as thousands of other peasant families of Magyar stock. And in the unlikely event of any one of them being questioned about his "nationality", he would have replied, "Hungarian". Given the mass of evidence we now have at our disposal concerning Liszt's family background, it is truly remarkable that so seemingly simple and fundamental a matter as his national identity was ever disputed by modern scholars. (Franz Liszt the Virtuoso years - Alan Walker, p. 48); "Liszt was Hungarian in thought and word and deed. He often said throughout his life that he was Magyar; he never once claimed that he was either French or German. He constantly referred to Hungary as "my homeland" (RGS, vol.2, p.223), and it gave him immense pleasure to write, "I am part of the national pride" (LLB, vol.3, p.77). Liszt was always declaring himself for Hungarian causes. He gave many charity concerts for the people of his country, at which he sometimes appeared wearing national dress. He helped to found the great music academy in Budapest which still bears his name. In 1848 he attempted to buy the humble farm cottage in Raiding where he was born (Acta Mus. no.3877). This does not sound like a man who has no homeland, least of all like a man ashamed of his origins. (Franz Liszt the Virtuoso years - Alan Walker, p. 49); "The fact that Liszt spoke no Hungarian is not important, although Liszt himself always regretted it. Large numbers of nineteenth-century Hungarians never learned their own language. They were part of the Austrian empire and the German tongue dominated their nation, especially the western part of it, where Liszt was born. "I may surely be allowed, in spite of my lamentable ignorance of the Hungarian language, to remain from my birth to the grave Magyar in heart and mind..." -Liszt's letter to Baron Antal Augusz, dated May 7, 1873 (PBUS, p.160)"

 

==Magyar könnyűzene==