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Hungarian Melody D 817 by Franz Schubert. Piano. Advanced. MCL101

During the summer of 1818, Schubert had agreed to teach music to the two daughters of Johann Esterházy de Galántha in their secondary residence in Zseliz, not far from Vienna (the count was a descendant of the same Hungarian noble family Esterházy whose Josef Haydn had been appointed choirmaster a few decades earlier). The composer returned there from May to October 1824, still as a teacher. It was during this period that he composed the famous Hungarian melody in B minor D 817, September 2, 1824. If we refer to the writings of Karl von Schönstein - one of the greatest singers of Schubert's melodies of the time - the composer would probably have been inspired by a melody that he had heard singing by a Hungarian servant in the Esterházy kitchen. The work was not known to the public until 1925 following the acquisition of his autograph manuscript by the writer Stefan Zweig. The first edition was published in 1928 (Edition Strache, Vienna), exactly one century after the death of the composer.