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Franz Liszt

October 22, 1811 - July 31, 1886

Franz Liszt (Hungarian: Ferenc Liszt,[1] from 1859 to 1865 officially Franz Ritter von Liszt was a Hungarian[3][4][5] composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher. He was also the father-in-law of Richard Wagner. In 1865 he became abbot in the Roman Catholic Church.
Liszt became renowned throughout Europe during the 19th century for his great skill as a performer. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age and perhaps the greatest pianist of all time.[6] He was also an important and influential composer, a notable piano teacher, a conductor who contributed significantly to the modern development of the art, and a benefactor to other composers and performers, notably Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg and Alexander Borodin.
As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the 'Neudeutsche Schule' ('New German School'). He left behind a huge and diverse body of work, in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony.[7]

Early life
The earliest known male ancestor of Franz Liszt is his great-grandfather, Sebastian List, who as one of the thousands of German-speaking migrant serfs entered Hungary from Lower Austria in the first half of the 18th century, and died in 1793 in Rajka, Moson County.[8] Liszt's venerable grandfather was an overseer on several Esterházy estates, he could play the piano, violin and organ.[9] The Liszt clan dispersed throughout Austria and Hungary and gradually lost touch with one another.[10]
Franz Liszt was born to an Austrian mother Marie Anna Lager and a Hungarian father Adam Liszt on October 22, 1811, in the village of Raiding (Hungarian: Doborján) in Sopron County, Kingdom of Hungary, (today the village is in Austria). He often said throughout his life he was Magyar;[11] he never once claimed he was French or German.[11] He constantly referred to Hungary as his homeland.[11] When later in his life he gave charity concerts in the country, he sometimes appeared wearing national dress.[11]
Liszt's father played the piano, violin, cello, and guitar. He had been in the services of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel and Beethoven personally. At age six, Franz Liszt began listening attentively to his father's piano playing as well as to show an interest in both sacred and gypsy music. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz Liszt began composing in an elementary manner when he was eight. He appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pozsony (present day Bratislava) in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy Hungarians offered to finance Franz's musical education abroad.[6]
In Vienna, Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, who was then music director of the Viennese court. His public debut in Vienna on December 1, 1822, at a concert at the 'Landständischer Saal,' was a great success. He was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and also met Beethoven and Schubert.[12] In spring 1823, when the one year's leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt asked Prince Esterházy in vain for two more years. Adam Liszt therefore took his leave of the Prince's services. At the end of April 1823, the family for the last time returned to Hungary. At end of May 1823, the family went to Vienna again.
Towards the end of 1823 or early 1824 Liszt's first published composition appeared in print, a Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli (now S. 147), which was Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. This anthology, commissioned by Diabelli, included 50 variations on his waltz by 50 different composers (Part II), Part I being taken up by Beethoven's 33 variations on the same theme, which are now better known as the Diabelli Variations, Op. 120.
[edit]Adolescence in Paris
After his father's death Liszt returned to Paris; for the next five years he was to live with his mother in a small apartment. He gave up touring. To earn money, Liszt gave lessons in piano playing and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he often had to cross long distances. Because of this, Liszt kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking and drinking—all habits he would continue throughout his life.[13][14]
The following year he fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the daughter of Charles X's minister of commerce. However, her father insisted that the affair be broken off. Liszt again fell ill (there was even an obituary notice of him printed in a Paris newspaper), and he underwent a long period of religious doubts and pessimism. He again stated a wish to join the Church but was dissuaded this time by his mother. He had many discussions with the Abbé de Lamennais, who acted as his spiritual father, and also with Chrétien Urhan, a German-born violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists.[13] Urhan also wrote music that was anti-classical and highly subjective, with titles such as Elle et moi, La Salvation angélique and Les Regrets, and may have whetted the young Liszt's taste for musical romanticism. Equally important for Liszt was Urhan's earnest championship of Schubert, which may have stimulated his own lifelong devotion to that composer's music.[15]
During this period Liszt read widely to overcome his lack of a general education, and he soon came into contact with many of the leading authors and artists of his day, including Victor Hugo, Lamartine and Heinrich Heine. He composed practically nothing in these years. Nevertheless, the July Revolution of 1830 inspired him to sketch a Revolutionary Symphony based on the events of the 'three glorious days,' and he took a greater interest in events surrounding him. He met Hector Berlioz on December 4, 1830, the day before the premiere of the Symphonie fantastique. Berlioz's music made a strong impression on Liszt, especially later when he was writing for orchestra. He also inherited from Berlioz the diabolic quality of many of his works.[13]



After attending an April 20, 1832 charity concert, for the victims of a Parisian cholera epidemic, by Niccolò Paganini,[16] Liszt became determined to become as great a virtuoso on the piano as Paganini was on the violin. Paris in the 1830s had become the nexus for pianistic activities, with dozens of pianists dedicated to perfection at the keyboard. Some, such as Sigismond Thalberg and Alexander Dreyschock, focused on specific aspects of technique (e.g. the 'three-hand effect' and octaves, respectively). While it was called the 'flying trapeze' school of piano playing, this generation also solved some of the most intractable problems of piano technique, raising the general level of performance to previously unimagined heights. Liszt's strength and ability to stand out in this company was in mastering all the aspects of piano technique cultivated singly and assiduously by his rivals.[17]
In 1833 he made transcriptions of several works by Berlioz, including the Symphonie fantastique. His chief motive in doing so, especially with the Symphonie, was to help the poverty-stricken Berlioz, whose symphony remained unknown and unpublished. Liszt bore the expense of publishing the transcription himself and played it many times to help popularise the original score.[18] He was also forming a friendship with a third composer who influenced him, Frédéric Chopin; under his influence Liszt's poetic and romantic side began to develop.[13]
[edit]With Countess Marie d'Agoult


In 1833, Liszt began his relationship with the Countess Marie d'Agoult. In addition to this, at the end of April 1834 he made the acquaintance of Felicité de Lamennais. Under the influence of both, Liszt's creative output exploded. In 1834 Liszt debuted as a mature and original composer with his piano compositions Harmonies poetiques et religieuses and the set of three Apparitions. These were all poetic works which contrasted strongly with the fantasies he had written earlier.[19]
In 1835 the countess left her husband and family to join Liszt in Geneva; their daughter Blandine was born there on December 18. Liszt taught at the newly founded Geneva Conservatory, wrote a manual of piano technique (later lost)[20] and contributed essays for the Paris Revue et gazette musicale. In these essays, he argued for the raising of the artist from the status of a servant to a respected member of the community.[13]
For the next four years Liszt and the countess lived together, mainly in Switzerland and Italy, where their daughter, Cosima, was born in Como, with occasional visits to Paris. On May 9, 1839 Liszt and the countess's only son, Daniel, was born, but that autumn relations between them became strained. Liszt heard that plans for a Beethoven monument in Bonn were in danger of collapse for lack of funds, and pledged his support. Doing so meant returning to the life of a touring virtuoso. The countess returned to Paris with the children while Liszt gave six concerts in Vienna then toured Hungary.[13]
[edit]Touring virtuoso


For the next eight years Liszt continued to tour Europe; spending holidays with the countess and their children on the island of Nonnenwerth on the Rhine in summers 1841 and 1843. In spring 1844 the couple finally separated. This was Liszt's most brilliant period as a concert pianist. Honours were showered on him and he was adulated everywhere he went.[13] Since Liszt often appeared three or four times a week in concert, it could be safe to assume that he appeared in public well over a thousand times during this eight-year period. Moreover, his great fame as a pianist, which he would continue to enjoy long after he had officially retired from the concert stage, was based mainly on his accomplishments during this time.[21]
After 1842 'Lisztomania' swept across Europe. The reception Liszt enjoyed as a result can only be described as hysterical. Women fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves, which they ripped to shreds as souvenirs. Helping fuel this atmosphere was the artist's mesmeric personality and stage presence. Many witnesses later testified that Liszt's playing raised the mood of audiences to a level of mystical ecstasy.[22]
Adding to his reputation was the fact that Liszt gave away much of his proceeds to charity and humanitarian causes. In fact, Liszt had made so much money by his mid-forties that virtually all his performing fees after 1857 went to charity. While his work for the Beethoven monument and the Hungarian National School of Music are well known, he also gave generously to the building fund of Cologne Cathedral, the establishment of a Gymnasium at Dortmund, and the construction of the Leopold Church in Pest. There were also private donations to hospitals, schools and charitable organisations such as the Leipzig Musicians Pension Fund. When he found out about the Great Fire of Hamburg, which raged for three weeks during May 1842 and destroyed much of the city, he gave concerts in aid of the thousands of homeless there.[23]
[edit]Liszt in Weimar
In February 1847, Liszt played in Kiev. There he met the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who dominated most of the rest of his life. She persuaded him to concentrate on composition, which meant giving up his career as a travelling virtuoso. After a tour of the Balkans, Turkey and Russia that summer, Liszt gave his final concert for pay at Elisavetgrad in September. He spent the winter with the princess at her estate in Woronince.[24] By retiring from the concert platform at 35, while still at the height of his powers, Liszt succeeded in keeping the legend of his playing untarnished.[25]


The following year, Liszt took up a long-standing invitation of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia to settle at Weimar, where he had been appointed Kapellmeister Extraordinaire in 1842, remaining there until 1861. During this period he acted as conductor at court concerts and on special occasions at the theatre. He gave lessons to a number of pianists, including the great virtuoso Hans von Bülow, who married Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857 (before she later married Richard Wagner). He also wrote articles championing Berlioz and Wagner. Finally, Liszt had ample time to compose and during the next 12 years revised or produced those orchestral and choral pieces upon which his reputation as a composer mainly rests. His efforts on behalf of Wagner, who was then an exile in Switzerland, culminated in the first performance of Lohengrin in 1850.
Princess Carolyne lived with Liszt during his years in Weimar. She eventually wished to marry Liszt, but since she had been previously married and her husband, Russian military officer Prince Nikolaus zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Ludwigsburg (1812–1864), was still alive, she had to convince the Roman Catholic authorities that her marriage to him had been invalid. After huge efforts and a monstrously intricate process, she was temporarily successful (September 1860). It was planned that the couple would marry in Rome, on October 22, 1861, Liszt's 50th birthday. Liszt having arrived in Rome on October 21, 1861, the Princess nevertheless declined, by the late evening, to marry him. It appears that both her husband and the Czar of Russia had managed to quash permission for the marriage at the Vatican. The Russian government also impounded her several estates in the Polish Ukraine, which made her later marriage to anybody unfeasible.

Liszt in Rome

The 1860s were a period of severe catastrophes of Liszt's private life. On December 13, 1859, he had lost his son Daniel, and on September 11, 1862, his daughter Blandine also died. In letters to friends Liszt afterwards announced that he would retreat to a solitary living. He found it at the monastery Madonna del Rosario, just outside Rome, where on June 20, 1863, he took up quarters in a small, Spartan apartment. He had on June 23, 1857, already joined a Franciscan order.[26]
On April 25, 1865, he received from Gustav Hohenlohe the tonsure and a first one of the minor orders of the Catholic Church. Three further minor orders followed on July 30, 1865. Until then, Liszt was Porter, Lector, Exorcist, Acolyte and finally Abbot.
At some occasions, Liszt took part in Rome's musical life. On March 26, 1863, at a concert at the Palazzo Altieri, he directed a programme of sacred music. The 'Seligkeiten' of his 'Christus-Oratorio' and his 'Cantico del Sol di Francesco d'Assisi', as well as Haydn's 'Die Schöpfung' and works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Jornelli, Mendelssohn and Palestrina were performed. On January 4, 1866, Liszt directed the 'Stabat mater' of his 'Christus-Oratorio', and on February 26, 1866, his 'Dante Symphony'. There were several further occasions of similar kind, but in comparison with the duration of Liszt's stay in Rome, they were exceptions. Bódog Pichler, who visited Liszt in 1864 and asked him for his future plans, had the impression that Rome's musical life was not satisfying for Liszt.[27][citation needed]
[edit]Threefold life
Liszt was invited back to Weimar in 1869 to give master classes in piano playing. Two years later he was asked to do the same in Budapest at the Hungarian Music Academy. From then until the end of his life he made regular journeys between Rome, Weimar and Budapest, continuing what he called his 'vie trifurquée' or threefold existence. It is estimated that Liszt travelled at least 4000 miles a year during this period in his life—an exceptional figure given his advancing age and the rigours of road and rail in the 1870s.[28]
[edit]Last years


On July 2, 1881, Liszt had fallen down the stairs of the Hotel in Weimar. Though friends and colleagues had noted swelling in Liszt's feet and legs when he had arrived in Weimar the previous month, Liszt had up to this point been in reasonably good health, and his body retained the slimness and suppleness of earlier years. The accident, which immobilised him for eight weeks, changed this. A number of ailments manifested—dropsy, asthma, insomnia, a cataract of the left eye and chronic heart disease. The last-mentioned eventually contributed to Liszt's death. He became increasingly plagued with feelings of desolation, despair and death—feelings which he expressed in his works from this period. As he told Lina Ramann, 'I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound.'[29]
He died in Bayreuth, Germany, on July 31, 1886, at age 74, officially as a result of pneumonia which he may have contracted during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by his daughter Cosima. Questions have been posed as to whether medical malpractice played a direct part in Liszt's demise.[30]
Composer Camille Saint-Saëns, an old friend, whom Liszt had once called 'the greatest organist in the world' dedicated his Symphony No. 3 'Organ Symphony' to Liszt; it had premiered in London only a few weeks before his death.
[edit]Liszt as pianist

Performing style
There are few, if any, good sources that give an impression of how Liszt really sounded from the 1820s. Carl Czerny claimed Liszt was a natural who played according to feeling, and reviews of his concerts especially praise the brilliance, strength and precision in his playing. At least one also mentions his ability to absolutely never change tempo,[31] which may be due to his father's insistence that he practice with a metronome.[citation needed] His repertoire at this time consisted primarily of pieces in the style of the brilliant Viennese school, such as concertos by Hummel and works by his former teacher Czerny, and his concerts often included a chance for the boy to display his prowess in improvisation.


Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano (1840), by Danhauser, commissioned by Conrad Graf. The imagined gathering shows seated Alfred de Musset or Alexandre Dumas, père, George Sand, Franz Liszt, Marie d'Agoult; standing Hector Berlioz or Victor Hugo, Niccolò Paganini, Gioachino Rossini; a bust of Beethoven on the grand piano (a 'Graf'), a portrait of Byron on the wall, a statue of Joan of Arc on the far left.[32][33][34]
Following the death of Liszt's father in 1827 and his hiatus from the life as a touring virtuoso, it is likely Liszt's playing gradually developed a more personal style. One of the most detailed descriptions of his playing from this time comes from the winter of 1831/1832, during which he was earning a living primarily as a teacher in Paris. Among his pupils were Valerie Boissier, whose mother Caroline kept a careful diary of the lessons. From her we learn that:
'M. Liszt's playing contains abandonment, a liberated feeling, but even when it becomes impetuous and energetic in his fortissimo, it is still without harshness and dryness. [...] [He] draws from the piano tones that are purer, mellower and stronger than anyone has been able to do; his touch has an indescribable charm. [...] He is the enemy of affected, stilted, contorted expressions. Most of all, he wants truth in musical sentiment, and so he makes a psychological study of his emotions to convey them as they are. Thus, a strong expression is often followed by a sense of fatigue and dejection, a kind of coldness, because this is the way nature works.'
Possibly influenced by Paganini's showmanship, once Liszt began focusing on his career as a pianist again his emotionally vivid presentations of the music were rarely limited to mere sound. His facial expression and gestures at the piano would reflect what he played, for which he was sometimes mocked in the press.[35] Also noted was the extravagant liberties he could take with the text of a score at this time. Berlioz tells us how Liszt would add cadenzas, tremolos and trills when playing the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and created a dramatic scene by changing the tempo between Largo and Presto.[36] In his Baccalaureus letter to George Sand from the beginning of 1837, Liszt admitted that he had done so for the purpose of gaining applause, and promised to follow both the letter and the spirit of a score from now on. It has been debated to what extent he realized his promise, however. By July 1840 the British newspaper The Times could still report
'His performance commenced with Händel's Fugue in E minor, which was played by Liszt with an avoidance of everything approaching to meretricious ornament, and indeed scarcely any additions, except a multitude of ingeniously contrived and appropriate harmonies, casting a glow of colour over the beauties of the composition, and infusing into it a spirit which from no other hand it ever received.'
[edit]Repertoire
During his years as a travelling virtuoso Liszt performed an enormous amount of music throughout Europe,[37] but his core repertoire always centered around his own compositions, paraphrases and transcriptions. Studying Liszt's German concerts between 1840 and 1845, the five most frequently-played pieces were the Grand Galop chromatique, Schubert's Erlkönig (in Liszt's transcription), Réminiscences de Don Juan, Réminiscences de Robert le Diable, and Réminiscences de Lucia de Lammermoor.[38] Among the works by other composers we find compositions like Weber's Aufforderung zum Tanz, Chopin Mazurkas, Études by composers like Ignaz Moscheles, Chopin and Hiller[disambiguation needed], but also major works by Beethoven, Weber and Hummel, and from time to time even selections of Bach, Händel and Scarlatti.
Most of the concerts at this time were shared with other artists, and as a result Liszt also often accompanied singers, participated in chamber music, or performed works with an orchestra in addition to his own solo part. Frequently played works include Weber's Konzertstück, Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and Choral Fantasy, and Liszt's reworking of the Hexameron for piano and orchestra. His chamber music repertoire included Hummel's Septet, Beethoven's Archduke Trio and Kreutzer Sonata, and a large selection of songs by composers like Rossini, Donizetti, Beethoven and especially Schubert. At some concerts Liszt could not find musicians to share the program with, and consequently was among the first to give solo piano recitals in the modern sense of the word. The term was coined by the publisher Frederick Beale, who suggested it for Liszt's concert at the Hanover Square Rooms in London on June 9, 1840,[39] even though Liszt had given concerts all by himself already by March 1839.[40]