Franz Liszt in Hungarian attire, reflecting his lifelong fascination with national identity and folk-inspired music. In 1852, while living in Weimar, Franz Liszt reworked one of his piano Hungarian Rhapsodies into a large-scale composition for piano and orchestra, later known as the Hungarian Fantasy . The folk material employed in this work reflects not so much the authentic rural music of Hungary as the urban Gypsy style that Liszt encountered through Gypsy orchestras, particularly in Vienna. For this reason, the full title Fantasia on Hungarian Folk Melodies is somewhat misleading. Many of the themes Liszt uses were drawn from the repertory of Gypsy ensembles, whose musicians often performed melodies adapted or reworked by other composers. Liszt himself had only limited direct knowledge of the ancient Magyar musical tradition—the true indigenous music of Hungary. It was later composers, notably Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály , who systematically revealed the authentic folk son...
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