Dedicated to the singer Karl Strakatky (1803-1863) who sang at the Stavovské divadlo in Prague from 1825, the 'Hussitenlied' was Liszt's tribute to the Czech people composed especially for his first concert tour of Prague in 1840. Believing it to be derived from a fifteenth century choral in praise of the great Czech Protestant reformer Jan Hus, it had been conceived as a drinking song less than twenty years earlier but had quickly been elevated by anonymity and established in common lore as ...