CATALOGUE OF THE PERMANENT EXHIBITION Mária Eckhardt: Introduction

Impressum Mária Eckhardt: Introduction Dezső Legány: Liszt's homes in Budapest (1984) János Kárpáti: Ferenc Liszt's pianos in the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum in Budapest (1986) CATALOGUE Bibliography List of abbreviations

"Wishing to expand the musical festivities organized for the 50th jubilee of the foundation of the National Hungarian Royal Academy of Music by establishing a Liszt-room attached to the institution, for placing the collections dedicated to the memory of the founding-president, I have marked out the corner-room on the 1st floor, looking on Liszt Ferenc square and Király street, as the most suitable room to accommodate the memorabilia. The aim of our institute is to immortalize the links of the great Master with this institution, and to present by the help of memorabilia its national and international relations" - this is how Jeno Hubay (1858-1937), General Director of the Budapest Academy of Music summarized on 7 July 1925 in a petition to the Ministry of Religion and Public Education1 the reasons for setting up the first memorial room for Ferenc (Franz) Liszt (1881-1886) in Budapest. Unlike in Weimar, where Liszt's last home, the Hofgärtnerei was transformed already in 1887, only one year after the composer's death, into a permanent Liszt-Museum2, in his homeland this was not possible: his last Budapest home was a "service apartment" in the building of the Academy of Music on Sugár street (Radial Strasse) where he gave his official lessons, and the institution needed the rooms afterwards for teaching. Even so, by the turn of the century, the building became too small for the rapidly growing number of students.3 In its place by 1907 a new, representative palace had been built for the Academy of Music, the first building which the institution did not rent but was permanent. It was in this building on Liszt Ferenc square which did not exist in Liszt's lifetime (and which has remained the central building of the Liszt Ferenc University of Music until today) that the first Liszt memorial room, the germ of the present Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum, was opened in 1925. According to the Preface in the Catalogue of the first Liszt Memorial Room of the Academy of Music, "the short period of time between the emergence of the idea of the LISZT ROOM and the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary did not make it possible to assemble a special collection exclusively for the Academy of Music".4 What they were able to present, was "a collection which contains the germs of a later expansion, and reflects the image of Ferenc Liszt's personal greatness". Loans from the Hungarian National Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Ernst Museum and private persons like Jeno Hubay, Emma Földváry, Adolf Szabady, Dávid Streliszky, the widow of Árpád Szendy helped "to create an overall impression of completeness." The arrangement of the Liszt Room was the work of Lajos Ernst.5 The most important part of the exhibition was, and has ever since remained, the "Liszt Estate" of the Academy of Music: his instruments, his Budapest collection of books and sheet music and other personal belongings that had once been in his "service apartment". In a letter to Kornél Ábrányi, the Secretary of the Academy of Music, dated Weimar, 22 May 1881, Liszt himself declared that his Chickering grand piano, placed in the concert hall next to his drawing room, "as well as the whole of my possessions in Budapest, will belong to the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music at my death, which is not far off."6 Two enthusiastic Liszt scholars, Kálmán d'Isoz (1878-1956), author of the 1925 Catalogue, Head Librarian of the National Museum and from 1934 to 1943, secretary general of the Academy of Music, and Margit Prahács (1893-1974), Head Librarian of the Academy of Music did especially much for the development of the Liszt memorial collection; they both took special care over its enlargement and best arrangement. The collection was soon transferred to a larger room on the third floor, formerly the secretary's apartment. During the Second World War the majority of the items that had been on display were packed and stored where they were thought to be safe from air-raids. Although the building of the Academy of Music was fortunately not damaged, it was not before the autumn of 1955 that some of the Liszt material (increased in 1949 by the precious Liszt collection of Mrs. Szinyei-Merse7) was put again on display in a small room on the third floor and its material was listed by Prahács in a French catalogue published in the Liszt jubilee year 1956.8 The collection, of which the holding, erlargening, processing and displaying fell to the library of the Academy, was moved several times within the building, according to the possibilities of display rooms; the 1968 Hungarian catalogue by Prahács, listing 357 items (not everything on display in the two rooms on the third floor used as "Liszt museum" at that time) reflects "that the Academy of Music did its duty and steadily and systematically increased its holdings of great value".9 The last rearrangement in the building at Liszt Ferenc square in 1975, for the centenary of the Academy of Music, was made by the Head Librarian Professor János Kárpáti (born in 1932) whose internationally acknowledged work as a Bartók scholar and specialist in the music of the Far East and of contemporary Hungarian composers, did not prevent him dealing intensively with the history of the Academy of Music and with Liszt. It was in his time, in the academic year 1981/82, that the Ministry of Culture and Education, persistently urged by the board of the Academy of Music and Professor Miklós Forrai (1913-1998), Secretary General of the Liszt Ferenc Society, bought for the Academy of Music the building which had been the site of the institution in the academic years 1879/80 to 1906/07 in the former Sugár (from 1885, Andrássy) street, one of the most elegant streets of Budapest, and since 2002 part of the World Heritage.10 By this action, an old wish was realized. The Academy of Music and the Liszt Ferenc Society hade made efforts towards the reacquisition of the old building already in the 1930's. On 22 October 1935, a Liszt memorial tablet was unveiled on the Andrássy street facade of the building. In 1942, the Ministry of Religion and Education leased the major part of the house for the Academy which had not used it since 1907. General Director Erno Dohnányi (1877-1960) made suggestions for its future use (including the establishing of a permanent Liszt Memorial Museum in Liszt's former apartment), and his successor, Ede Zathureczky (1903-1959) was promised to have the future classrooms furnished by 1944.11 Although the rent was payed till shortly after the end of the war, the Academy of Music, due evidently to political reasons,12 could not take into use its former site which was used as long as until the early 1980's by various other institutions. An honourable but also difficult task devolved onto me when two years before 1986, the year marking the 175th anniversary of the birth and the centenary of Liszt's death, Professor József Ujfalussy, the Rector, and István Dencso, the Financial Director of the Academy of Music, supported by the Ministry of Culture and Education, decided on the reconstruction of the building, and put me in charge of preparing a permanent Liszt Memorial Museum in the master's former home. I was able to rely on the former Liszt memorial rooms of the Academy, on the professional guidance and help of János Kárpáti, and on the results of several excellent Liszt scholars, first of all of Dezso Legány (1916-2006) whose study "Liszt's homes in Budapest" from 1984 was a starting point of my own research. (This study is reprinted on pp.17-23 of the present catalogue.) It was also agreed that the future Liszt Memorial Museum would be a centre for Hungarian Liszt research and part of the international network of institutions dealing with the life and oeuvre of the great Hungarian composer Ferenc (Franz) Liszt. The official licence of the museum dates 7 October 1985; the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre opened its doors for the general public on 20 September 1986, on the day when the renewed building was inaugurated. Since then, the house called "Old Academy of Music" has always been used intensively by the Liszt Ferenc University (Academy) of Music and houses the offices of some important musical societies and foundations, too.13 Although the building on Sugár/Andrássy street14 had undergone considerable alterations during the long time (1907-1981) when it had been used by other institutions, in the course of its reconstruction we have endeavoured to restore it, especially the first floor with Liszt's apartment (serving now as museum) and the adjoining concert hall, to their original state. Minor modifications were needed, naturally, for practical purposes. Apart from sealing up some doors, the most important change of this nature was the repositioning of the platform of the concert hall from the street-front to the opposite inner wall, necessitated partly by the inordinate growth in volume of traffic, partly by the need for a green-room. The servant's room is now a museum storage room, no longer accessible from the study-bedroom, only from the entrance room. The present entrance room of the museum had the same function in Liszt's time. It leads to the dining room, from which the study-bedroom opens on the right, and the drawing-room on the left - just as when Liszt lived there. Direct access between Liszt's drawing room and the concert hall is still possible, although it does not now lead straight to the platform, only into the auditorium. The row of carved seats, which was taken to the new building of the Academy of Music in 1907, has been restored now along the walls of the concert hall. The organ of the concert hall, the pipes of which were sold and built into the Calvinist Church in Berettyóújfalu, while the wooden parts were destroyed a long time ago, could not be restored, neither could the ornamental marble fireplace in the drawing room, which we know from contemporary description only. (There was no general need for stoves in the rooms, since the apartment was hot-air heated according to Vasárnapi Újság 1879/32, a fact confirmed in the course of reconstruction.) We were able to evoke the peacock-blue of the silk hangings of the drawing-room but not the rich decoration of the ceiling painted on a light ground, for the designs attached to the description of the architect (together with all of the sample hangings) perished in the 1956 fire of the National Archives, and the copies of the documents at the Academy of Music15 contain only the list of attachments and not the patterns. A number of items in the contemporary press greatly helped in the reconstruction of the furnishings; of these, Kornél Ábrányi's article "On Ferencz Liszt" in the March 1886 issue of Magyar Salon occupies pride of place. It was illustrated by an original drawing based on a photograph showing part of Liszt's study-bedroom (see No. 20 of this catalogue, reproduced on p.21). Another important piece of information appeared in the August 3, 1886 issue of Budapester Tagblatt in which an eyewitness described the state of the rooms immediately after Liszt's death. These descriptions (some of which were published in papers abroad) do not agree on everything, for instance on the location of the book- and music cases, the nature of the instruments or the pictures, or even the colour of the furniture. Consideration must be given however, to the fact that these items date from different times between 1881 and 1886, and lived-in rooms usually change their appearance. Some of the descriptions are indeed from memory, occasionally confusing the furnishings of Liszt's home in the first building of the Academy of Music on Hal/Fish square with those in the second one in Sugár street (as Arno J. Mayer did in Neue Illustrierte Zeitung 1886/47). Nevertheless we had to rely on these contemporary writings, supplementing their descriptions with facts from Liszt's correspondence and the memoirs of contemporaries. The fact that the objects most important to the musician: his books and sheet music collection, the desk at which he used to compose, and his musical instruments in Budapest (together with two others, which he had placed in the care of the Augusz family in Szekszárd) came into the possession of the Academy of Music immediately after his death, is of great importance.16 Other items of furniture and possessions were, however, dispersed as keepsakes as directed by Liszt's sole heir Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. Those which remained by chance (such as a splendid gas chandelier, which distant cousins of Liszt's claimed, going as far as taking legal action against the Academy of Music in the early years of the 20th century)17 disappeared in the course of time. Thanks to Kálmán d'Isoz, and particularly to Margit Prahács one large and two smaller arm-chairs of the drawing room set as well as Liszt's stove-bench (Cat. Nos. 163-164), his prie-dieu (Cat. No. 51) and two book-cases (Cat. Nos. 57, 94) were found and retrieved. The remaining furniture now on display is contemporary and in harmony with the style of the furnishings, in keeping with the surviving illustrations and the descriptions mentioned. The curtains, carpets, covers and cushions of Liszt's home were returned to those who made or presented them. Even a beautiful cushion embroidered by Queen/Empress Elizabeth was returned to the Haushofmeister's Office in Vienna,18 and of these no more than a reps curtain (Cat. No. 14) and an embroidered carpet (Cat. No. 45) found its way back to the Academy of Music. The fate of the pictures was the same as that of the other objects. Of those, on the drawing-room walls, including a life-size portrait by Sophie Menter, and several valuable paintings and drawings,19 only Gustave Doré's two Liszt illustrations and the signed photographs of Archduchess Maria Valeria and Princess Amelia of Bavaria have been preserved (see Catalogue Nos. 115 and 145). Instead of the missing pictures, contemporary portraits of Liszt are shown here, works by major Hungarian and foreign artists. Of those in the study-bedroom a view of Rome (Cat. No. 40), a print of Sándor Teleki (not the copy which Liszt owned, but a reproduction of an other, see Cat. No. 42), and a head of Christ (Cat. No. 56) hung there originally too. The missing pictures there were substituted by portraits of Liszt's family and friends. A relatively large number of the personal belongings of the composer and of the mementoes of his life as an artist (ornaments, ribbons of wreaths, diplomas, memorial sheets etc.) were collected, but only a little part of them is on display permanently. Personal belongings, such as items of clothing, cutlery, hair locks and the like are shown in a glass case in the study-bedroom. Especially moving among them is the death mask with the last shirt and handkerchief used by the master. (Cat. No. 83-83) Ornaments and artistic mementoes are exhibited in two glass cabinets in the drawing-room. One of the latter contains several objects which are owned by the Hungarian National Museum. In appreciation of the celebration in Hungary of the fiftieth jubilee of his artist's career in 1873, Liszt offered in a letter on 3 May 1874 to Museum Director Ferenc Pulszky (1814-1897) the most important memorabilia of his artistic career,20 including Beethoven's Broadwood piano and the model of the Vienna Beethoven monument (Cat. No. 170), a silver music stand (photo: Cat. No. 101), pieces of goldsmith work, pictures and other valuable objects which were, in fact, delivered after his death to the Hungarian National Museum with the permission of Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. Many items which do not figure in their exhibitions are kindly loaned for lengthy periods to the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum, but this material is changed from time to time. Our present catalogue contains the objects on loan until the end of 2011.21 No items of the furnishing of the dining-room survive and contemporary descriptions are also poor. It was clear, therefore, that this room - unlike the other two - would serve a better purpose as an exhibition room than an imitation of the original interior. This also affords an opportunity to exhibit material related to Liszt, making use of many documents from the rich collection of the museum which is growing year by year and which cannot be exhibited permanently (original music manuscripts, letters, photos, scores etc.) or which simply have no place in the permanent exhibition. The temporary exhibitions (one or two each year) reflect the results of the scholarly work going on in the Liszt Memorial Museum and Research Centre, and our good contacts with other museums and libraries who willingly lend original material or copies. Some exhibitions have been put on with international cooperation and shown abroad, too (e.g. "Liszt and Chopin" in Warsaw, "Liszt and Beethoven" in Weimar and Bonn), and some were in connection with international musicological conferences organized in the Concert Hall attached to the museum (e.g. "Liszt and Schubert", or "Liszt's 125-year-old Academy of Music"). The temporary exhibitions on display in the show-cases of Liszt's former dining-room (and often extended to the ground-floor in the entrance room of the Research Library) present Liszt, his circle, his time and the period afterwards from different angles, ensuring that visitors on their return are always offered something new. In order to recall the atmosphere of Liszt's rooms as authentically as possible and to present his figure and work in as varied as possible a manner, the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum, within the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music endeavours to exhibit not only items in its possession but - as already mentioned - documents and objects owned by other museums, archives, indeed also by private persons. Such material is on display not only in the periodic exhibitions, but also in the two rooms furnished to resemble the original interior. Some items of the essentially permanent furnishings may therefore also change, since owners are at liberty to recall at any time objects they have lent. In the case of drawings, watercolours and photographs the original documents cannot, in any event, be exhibited over a long period of time since their material must be protected. They must therefore be exchanged or substituted by fine copies after a while. We express our sincere appreciation to the institutions and private persons concerned for contributing to the wealth of the material shown. This catalogue is a thoroughly revised new version of the first English catalogue from 1986, and keeps the method of listing the material of the permanent exhibition of the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum in topographic order. In many cases, we have taken over the descriptions from the 1986 catalogue in which the late György Rózsa (Hungarian National Museum) assisted in the description of the pictures, drawings and sculptures, and Ferenc Batári (Museum of Applied Arts) in the descriptions of furniture, furnishings and memorabilia; the goldsmith's works of the National Museum were described by Annamária Németh, and Eszter Gát-Fontana was the advisor on describing the musical instruments. In other cases, completely new descriptions have had to be made, or old descriptions have been revised and enlarged with the results of recent research and data from new publications. During more than twenty years, much has changed in the exhibited material even in the permanent exhibition, thus it was not possible to keep the numbering of the 1986 catalogue.22 Items formerly owned by Ferenc Liszt are marked "*" beside their number; "**" means objects which we know to have been part of the furnishings of the Sugár street apartment. Reference to provenance was considered particularly important in respect of objects, for only this can authenticate their relationship to Liszt in a number of instances. Unfortunately the old inventories of the Academy of Music are generally too brief. The only evidence for the relationship of some objects to Liszt was Margit Prahács's 1968 exhibition catalogue. Prahács's knowledge of and devotion to her subject were unparalleled, there is therefore little reason to doubt her facts. Such instances are nevertheless marked separately. - When it comes to pictures, statues and photographs portraying Liszt, the question of provenance is not so important, and is mentioned only in special cases. The dimensions of documents and the names of their owners are, however, given in each instance, together with their inventory number or mark in the public collections they originate from. Explanation of the markings of collections is given in the list of abbreviations. In some instances it was necessary to explain particular items using quotations from Liszt's correspondence, the contemporary press, memoirs, studies or other sources; these are referred to in a short version in the text, while the complete reference is given in the Bibliography (pp 89-92), listing the most important printed publications about the material of the museum (among them the bilingual annotated catalogues of Liszt's Budapest library).23 The limited size of this catalogue did not allow us to give full commentaries to every item and we have not aimed to provide a full catalogue raisonné (thus, there is no listing of the catalogues of exhibitions where the documents were shown earlier). Also, we were not able to give a picture of every item; the possibility within our framework was to show some examples from different types of the exhibited documents, and to give an idea of the athmosphere of the museum by some "interior" pictures. The digitalizing of not only the exhibited material but the whole collection of the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum is now in process, and our aim is to make it gradually available in some time on the homepage of the museum.24 Budapest, January 2008. ________________________________________________________________ Notes: 1 Archives of the LFAM, 219/1925, xerocopy: LM AD-foto 47. 2 Mirus: Das Liszt-Museum zu Weimar und seine Erinnerungen, 1892; Liepsch: "Der Nachlass Franz Liszts in Weimar", 1996. 3 1875, year of the opening: 38; 1879/80, first academic year in the Sugár street building: 71; 1886/87, the first academic year after Liszt's death: 97; 1899/1900: 356; 1907/08: 598. 4 "A Guide to the Liszt Room of the Royal Hungarian Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music", 1925. In English, see: Eckhardt ed.: Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum, Catalogue, 1986, pp. 15-16. 5 Lajos Ernst (1872-1937) Hungarian art collector and writer. He founded the Ernst Museum in 1912 in which he collected some 6500 objects related to Hungarian history and art, including music manuscripts. 6 Br. II. Nr. 279, in German. English translation: Bache: Letters of Franz Liszt, Vol. II, No. 279. 7 Mrs. Félix Szinyei-Merse née Irén Kandó (1879-1947) was a pupil of the Liszt pupil István Thomán. She was a great collector of Liszt memorabilia and 1943-1945 president of the Liszt Ferenc Society. 8 Prahács: Chambre commémorative de François Liszt, 1956. 9 Prahács: Liszt Ferenc Zenemuvészeti Foiskola. Liszt Ferenc Emlékmúzeum. Leíró katalógus, 1968. The Introduction in English, see: Eckhardt: Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum, Catalogue, 1986, pp. 17-19. 10 The name of the street was changed several times: Sugárút, Andrássy út, Sztálin út, Népköztársaság útja, now it is again Andrássy út (út=street). 11 Archives of the LFAM, 913/1943, copy: LM AD-foto 63. 12 After nationalization, the building became the possession of the Ministry of the Interior (the centre of the ill-famed State Security Department was on the opposite side of Andrássy street; today it is a museum called "House of Terror"). From 1957, it was used by the foreign trade company Tannimpex until the Academy of Music got it back for use. 13 In 2008, the publication year of this catalogue, it is as follows: a/ Ground floor: Research Library, offices and workshop of the Liszt Memorial Museum and Research Centre, J. S. Bach Hall (for organ teaching); b/ first floor: Liszt Memorial Museum, Concert Hall; c/ second floor: Sound Archives, offices for the Liszt Ferenc Society and the Kodály Zoltán Society, council room; d/ third floor: classrooms for teaching church music, chamber music and languages, offices for the Friends of the Liszt Academy, and for the Society for Church Music (this floor is connected to the neighbouring house and some classes are there), e/ attic: school for instrument makers. 14 The entrance of the Academy of Music, a corner-building, was always in Vörösmarty street (No. 35), as a caricature from Liszt's time attests it (see Bory: La vie de François Liszt par l'image, 1936, p. 213, Burger: Franz Liszt, 1986, p. 281, No. 584.) In spite of that, the building was referred to by the name of the major thoroughfare Sugár/Andrássy street (Nr. 67), on which the facade was placed. 15 Archives of the LFAM, VKM 16.481, dated June 9, 1880. Instruction of the Minister of Education, Ágoston Trefort, to Ferenc Erkel, Director of the Academy of Music, to which he attached a copy of the plan submitted by Sándor Fellner, the architect, on 5 June 1880. 16 See p. 65 of the 1886/87 yearbook of the Academy of Music (Az Országos Magyar Királyi Zeneakadémia évkönyve, 1887). 17 The relatives intended to sell by auction not only the chandelier mentioned, but also a number of musical instruments as reported by Budapesti Hírlap, 12 August 1903, Zenevilág, 15 August 1903 etc. At the request of the Academy of Music the auction was indefinitely postponed and long legal proceedings followed, which the Academy of Music eventually won in 1905. However, the gas chandelier was not extant in the 1980's and all the chandeliers had to be replaced by electric lustres from the late 19th century. 18 Date mentioned by Jeno Hubay, quoted in Mátéka: "Az Andrássy-úti régi zeneakadémia...", 1940. 19 Budapester Tagblatt, 3 August 1886. 20 Prahács: Franz Liszt. Briefe, 1966, No. 276, original in the National Széchényi Library. 21 The first exhibition at the opening in 1986 was especially rich in precious documents loaned by the Hungarian National Museum which is reflected in the first catalogues, too. Later, in the 1990's, until 2005, the Beethoven-Liszt piano was also exhibited in the Liszt Memorial Museum. 22 A 2nd edition of the 1986 English catalogue was published in 1996 with a page of addenda and corrigenda, but this was no more possible in 2008. 23 The Liszt collection of the Academy of Music, including the original documents of the Liszt Memorial Museum and materials collected from other sources in copies, is available to those engaged in research in the Research Library for Music History on the ground-floor. 24 In 2008, the publication year of this catalogue, this is still in preparation only. But the homepage advertises regularly the programmes of the matinee concerts of the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum held in the Concert Hall which were introduced in the opening year 1986 and have been organized regularly since then every Saturday morning at 11 a.m. for visitors to the museum (except for August and national holidays).

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