Count Leó Festetics de Tolna (8 October 1800, Pécs

Pécs

Pécs is the fifth largest city of Hungary, located on the slopes of the Mecsek mountains in the south-west of the country, close to its border with Croatia. It is the administrative and economical centre of Baranya county...

, Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 — 15 November 1884), was a patron of music and an amateur composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, from a prominent Hungarian family, Festetics

Festetics

Festetics is a noble Hungarian family, prominent during the Austro-Hungarian Empire.On August 8, 1746, Josef and Kristof Festetics added de Tolna to their surname...

.

He was a friend and correspondent of Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

, who dedicated to him his Hungarian Rhapsody

Hungarian Rhapsodies

Hungarian Rhapsody redirects here. For the 1979 Hungarian film Hungarian Rhapsody . For the 1928 German film Ungarische Rhapsodie.The Hungarian Rhapsodies, S.244, R106, is a set of 19 piano pieces based on Hungarian folk themes, composed by Franz Liszt during 1846-1853, and later in 1882 and 1885...

 No. 13, in a minor (1853). Liszt based his Spanisches Ständchen (R 161, SW 487) on a melody provided by Count Festetics. In 1856, Festetics published his designs for a theatre (British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

collection).