(Boldogasszony, September 4th, 1815 - Budapest, October 31st, 1870)
Music composer, teacher, and writer. Like Liszt, it was born in the border region between Hungary and Austria, a meeting point of different cultures. His name was originally Michael Brand, the same as his father and grandfather, and his first language was German. Fourth of 11 children in a family of furriers, he learned the usual breath of peasant life. Boldogasszonyfalva was a famous pilgrimage place, and in his church, built by Prince Pál Esterházy, he had the opportunity to practice the organ and, between 10 and 12 years old, to replace the singer. In 1829, he left the house to work as an officer of the church in Magyaróvár, where he taught self-taught music by copying the manual of Hummel piano exercises. Around 1832 he moved to Pozsons (the current Bratislava), at that time the capital of the Hungarian kingdom. His cultural life was dominated by the nearby imperial city of Vienna; he met the great works of the Viennese masters and decided to devote himself to music. He earned a living teaching calligraphy, copying music, and working as a crackle, then printer for typography, while studying piano and musical theory with Károly Turányi, who later became a chapel teacher in Aquisgrana. Turányi and another patron, Count Károly Keglevich, obtained a place as a piano teacher for Mosonyi at the residence of Count Péter Pejachevich in the Slavic village of Rétfalu. There, he spent seven years (1835-42), becoming an established pianist and, with the help of Reicha's theoretical works, a composer. The compositions that he finished in Rétfalu reveal a diligent pupil of the classic style.
In 1842, he moved to Pest, where he worked until his death. He never held a public, municipal, or ecclesiastical assignment, nor was he at the service of a theater, a teaching institute, or an aristocratic house. One of the first independent musicians in Hungary to earn a living teaching piano and composition, his most famous students were Kornél Ábrányi (the eldest), Gyula and Sándor Erkel (sons of Ferenc), Sándor Bertha, and future director of the Academy of Music by Budapest, Ödön Mihalovich. He was encouraged to compose from the stimulating intellectual atmosphere in Pest in the decade before the Hungarian War of Independence (1848-49). On October 3, 1846, he married Paulina Weber, sister of the famous portraitist Henrik Weber. In the same year, he began to write his second symphony, which was performed only ten years later. He took part in the War of Independence as a member of the National Guard. In 1849, he wrote a mass (his third) in memory of his benefactor and godfather, Peter Piller. The premature death of his wife (13 July 1851) caused an emotional crisis, which made it impossible to compose for two years. The autumn elegiac lyricism of the German songs (1853-54), which were published by Breitkopf & Härtel, reflect his pain and show him a romantic in all respects.
In 1857, on the occasion of the first visit to Hungary of the empress (then queen) Elisabetta, he composed a piece for Hungarian-style piano, Pusztai Élet ("Puszta Life"). A whole year of compositional activity followed his favorable welcome, and from about 1859, he wrote a series of new national works. To give an external gesture of his stylistic transformation, in 1859, he assumed the Hungarian name of Mosonyi, from his birthplace (the County of Moson). In 1865, he went to Munich to attend the first representation of Tristan and Isolde. In the same year, he played the double bass in the first representation of Pest of Legende der Heiligen Elisabeth of Liszt. In recent years, he has composed Hungarian songs and ballads worthy of noteworthy status, and a series of choral and sung works have been of lesser importance. In 1870, a few months before his death, he was appointed member of the Selection Committee of the Pest's National Theater Program. He was also a member of the Committee for preparing the Hungarian Festival of the Centenary of Beethoven. He died with many ambitious hopes for Hungarian national music.
The concert for piano in Mi Minore of 1844 is a work never performed in the composer's life. The manuscript of the concert was found in 1950, during a renovation of the Budapest musical library. The first execution was performed 109 years after the date of composition, in 1953, with the pianist Károly Váczi and the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Frigyes Sándor. The work follows the classical and Baroque tradition of Viennese, with romantic laps of melody and harmony. The instrumentation follows Beethoven's technique, with orchestral parts that make the job accessible from a youth orchestra. The three movements follow one another without interruption. After responding to the oboe material, the first movement's main theme is introduced by the bundle, taken from Tutta, the orchestra. As in many classic Viennese concerts, the solo tool has no role in introducing the main themes, the last of which is a familiar reason for the horn. After a tremolo di Timpani, the solo piano begins with a short cadenced passage, similar to that of Liszt Totentanz. Despite the very different character of the music, there are structural similarities between the two works, suggesting the possibility that Liszt, who wrote his Totentanz five years later, had seen a copy of the Mosonyi concert. The sections of the second subject in Sol Maggiore, played by the orchestra, are connected by short pianistic interludes in dialogue. Like the roles of each change, there are colored variations of the theme in the piano, which lead to a second passage similar to a cadence with the same motif of horn. This section becomes slower, preparing the way for the subsequent adage in Do Maggiore.
The beautiful melody of the descending staircase of the slow movement is felt in a new dialogue involving the French horn and the piano. This exchange leads to a complete orchestral discussion of the material as in the first movement. The material varied by the piano and the Oboe in Mi Bemolle Maggiore, suddenly passing to the minor shade. As in the baroque ciaccona, the rhythmic movement becomes more elaborate, while the recapitulation brings a new sound with the pinched notes of the ropes. The tail offers new material, with an ascending chromatic line in contrast with the diatonic descending diatonic scale, suggesting something new, while the music advances up to the last movement.
The central theme of Allegro in Mi Maggiore is based on an interesting meter and constantly evolving. Irregular impulses and even metrics alternate in an asymmetrical rhythm. The sequential elements bring to a second theme, all the sections of which start unwanted after a short break, providing a contrast with the accented asymmetries of the first theme. Sequential repetitions occur in the second theme, in a way that Bach suggests, with a more extended variation the third time. An essential element of the entire concert is the frequent use of unison in the solo part, making a piano a single-line melodic tool, something unusual in the romantic style. The natural cadence of the soloist is introduced by a line extending tremolo of tympans, with the agreement that precedes the cadence of a whole dominant seventh, an unusual feature.
