Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
Autograph music manuscript 'signed' of the symphonic poem Hungaria, arranged for two pianos, [c.1855-56]
15 pages, 273 x 342mm, on four bifolia, notated in brown ink on 20 staves per page, 'signed' by Liszt in pencil with his private cipher [to Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein], a series of Bs, after the final bar of music.

Provenance:
(1) Musikhistorische Museum Wilhelm Heyer, Cologne: published by Georg Kinsky, Musikhistorisches Museum von Wilhelm Heyer in Cöln, cat. iv, 1916.
(2) Christie's New York, 19 December 1986, lot 143.

Liszt's Hungarian folk music; a manuscript bearing the composer's private cipher 'signature' to Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, the Polish noblewoman with whom he conducted a forty-year relationship. Our manuscript represents Liszt's earliest complete draft of Hungaria arranged for two pianos, showing divergence from the later version issued in print and preserved in a manuscript at the Library of Congress (ML31.M62 no. 2). The composer's cipher is an abbreviation of the macaronic phrase 'Bon Boje benira bons bessons' ('The Good Lord will bless the good twins'). Liszt began a life-long relationship with the Princess in 1847: he saw himself as her intellectual twin and frequently signed his autograph manuscripts in this way during the 1850s and 60s.

Like the Hungarian Rhapsodies Liszt composed in the late 1840s and early 1850s, Hungaria contains writing which builds on the idioms of Hungarian folk music, particularly the csárdás and verbunkos dances. While not a fully programmatic work, the music reflects a distinct nationalistic subject matter at a crucial moment in the establishment of a Hungarian national identity. For example, the work includes a funeral march, beginning on page 12 in the present manuscript, intended to reflect mourning for the nationalists who died during the Hungarian War of Independence.