Research Centre
The Liszt Ferenc Research Centre at the Liszt Academy of Music was established in 1986 in conjunction with the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum, forming a joint organisational unit. The primary task of the Research Centre is to develop Liszt-research in Hungary, to represent Liszt and Hungarian Liszt-research in Hungarian and foreign scientific forums, and to provide the musicological background for the museum's professional programmes, primarily for the locally organised temporary and travelling exhibitions.
An important activity of the Research Centre consists of presenting the main part of the collection of the Liszt Museum – the manuscripts, scores, books, and other documents important for the research – on the homepage of the Liszt Museum, in Hungarian and English, making it thus accessible through Internet in Hungary and abroad. The annotated catalogues of Liszt’s books and scores were compiled and published in the late 1980s. An impressive collection of secondary literature pertaining to Liszt’s life and work is preserved in the same building of the Old Academy of Music, in the Liszt Research library, where the study of the documents is possible.
The musicologists working at the Research Centre focus primarily on Liszt's life and oeuvre, but the outlook to the music of the 19th century in Hungary and abroad raises implicitly. Presenting papers and publishing studies and books, they add an important part to Hungary’s musical history. The Department of Musicology of the Academy of Music is glad to lean on the support of the Research Centre in study matters: the members are asked to give special Liszt courses, to be supervisors to theses written on Liszt, and to participate as examiners and opponents of doctoral dissertations written on Liszt or on related topics. The sources and literature newly acquired by the Museum make the topic Liszt attractive to students. The Liszt Research Centre maintains active collaboration with other musicological research groups, in particular with the 19th century department of the Institute of Musicology and the Museum of Music History.
The Research Centre organises national and international conferences and publishes scientific publications in Hungarian and English. It maintains a number of international professional contacts in the form of joint conferences, publications, and exhibitions. Staff members provide ongoing professional assistance to foreign researchers and give master classes in Liszt's oeuvre to doctoral schools at prestigious universities abroad.
The Research Centre site on the Museum's homepage also offers the opportunity to publish studies which thus become official publications. Several conference papers have already been published in this form. The Research Centre's scientific publications are available (in Hungarian language) in book form at the museum and in the webshop of the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music.
The current programme of the Research Centre is to present Liszt's multifaceted activities in Hungary in the light of 19th century Hungarian cultural history.