Gyula Beliczay
[1835~1893)
(1835-1893) was a Hungarian composer and teacher.
Serenade for Strings Op. 36, in D minor (1885?)
I. Moderato ma non troppo [00:00]
II. Allegretto vivace [04:35]
III. Adagio cantabile [07:19]
IV. Allegro con fuoco - Allegretto vivace [13:10]
He studied music and music theory with Joseph Kumlik in Pozsony (Bratislava). From 1851 to 1857 he was a student at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna, at the same time studying composition with Joachim Hoffmann, Franz Krenn and Nottebohm and the piano with August Halm. From 1857 to 1871 he lived in Vienna, where he worked as an engineer, composed and taught music. In the 1850s his piano pieces and sacred compositions began to be published in Vienna, Leipzig and Paris; their dedications bear witness to Beliczay’s extensive connections with important figures in the contemporary musical world, including Anton Rubinstein, Liszt, Wagner and A.-F. Marmontel. For the dedication of his Ave Maria to Franz Joseph I (1867) he was awarded the gold decoration ‘Viribus unitis’. From 1862 to 1888 he was a correspondent for the magazines Zenészeti lapok (Pest), Wanderer (Vienna), Blätter für Theater und Kunst (Vienna), Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (Leipzig), and Neues politisches Volksblatt (Budapest). From 1888 until his death he taught theory at the Academy of Music in Budapest.
Among the minor Hungarian composers of the second half of the 19th century, Beliczay was one of the best known at home and abroad. A cultured and cultivated composer, if not particularly original, he acted as a mediator between different cultures: his sacred works, influenced by Schubert, and his chamber and piano music influenced by Schumann, spread the spirit of German Romanticism in France and Hungary; his piano works, which owed their inspiration to Liszt’s and Mihály Mosonyi’s Hungarian style, contributed to the popularity of this eastern European art in western Europe.