In 1879, Emil Ábrányi published an expansive study on Ferenc Liszt, underlining that the composer was the most important creator of modern church music. ‘He has made use of all the achievements of modern music, and in doing so, instead of profaning the religious feeling in any way, he raised the religious inspiration to its multiple power. One painter uses colours to paint exuberant orgies with dazzling effect; another paints the Madonna with the same colours, the eternal ideal of what is chastely sublime. This was how Liszt turned the splendour of modern music into the ideal expression of religion, of faith. The holy flame burning in his soul melted the slag from the gold, and brought no unclean element to the altar. This reform of church music could only be performed by one who had been afflicted by the phantom of the afterlife since childhood; who had felt the poetry of religion when kneeling on the church floor and before the crucifix above his bed, praying; who listens to the song of cherubim in his most mysterious solitude.’
At the marathon compiled from the choral works of Liszt, the Eötvös Loránd University Bartók Béla Choir will also sing a composition by Josef Rheinberger, a younger contemporary of Liszt who adapted a somewhat different approach to revitalizing church music.