This Rakoczy March, full of passion, temperament, sorrow, and pain, soon became popular among the music loving gipsies as well as among the Hungarian people. The first copy of the Rakoczy March came from Carl Vaczek, of Jaszo, in Hungary, who died in 1828, aged ninety-three. Vaczek was a prominent dilettante in music, who had often appeared as flautist before the Vienna Court, and enjoyed the reputation of a great musical scholar. Vaczek heard the Rakoczy March from a granddaughter of Michael Barna, a gipsy girl of the name of Panna Czinka, who was famous in her time for her beauty and her noble violin playing throughout all Hungary. Vaczek wrote down the composition and handed the manuscript to the violinist Ruzsitska. He used the Rakoczy Lied as the basis of a greater work by extending the original melody by a march and a "battle music." All three parts formed a united whole.
The original melody composed by Michael Barna remained, however, the one preferred by the Hungarian people. In the Berlioz transcription the composition of Ruzsitska was partially employed. Berlioz worked together the original melody; that is, the Rakoczy Lied proper, and the battle music of Ruzsitska and placed them in his Damnation de Faust.
The Rakoczy March owes its greatest publicity to the above named Panna Czinka. The gipsy girl's great talent as a violinist was recognised by her patron, Joann von Lanyi, who had her educated in the Upper Hungarian city of Rozsnyo, where as a pupil of a German kapellmeister she received adequate musical instruction. When she was fifteen she married a gipsy, who was favourably known as the player of the viola de gamba in Hungary. With her husband and his two brothers, who also were good musicians, she travelled through all Hungary and attracted great attention, especially by the Rakoczy March. Later her orchestra, over which she presided till her death, consisted only of her sons. Her favourite instrument, a noble Amati, which had been presented to her by the Archbishop of Czaky, was, in compliance with her wishes expressed in life, buried with her.
The Rakoczy March has meanwhile undergone countless revisions, of which the most important is beyond doubt that of Berlioz.