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Franz Liszt
Portrait by Henri Lehmann, 1839
Background information
Born	October 22, 1811(1811-10-22) Raiding, Kingdom of Hungary
Died	July 31, 1886 (age 74) Bayreuth, German Empire
Genre(s)	Romantic
Occupation(s)	Composer, conductor, pedagogue, pianist
Instrument(s)	Piano
Years active	1822 - 1886

Franz Liszt (Hungarian: Liszt Ferenc; pronounced /lɪst/, in English: list) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a Hungarian^[1] virtuoso pianist and composer of the Romantic period. He was a renowned performer throughout Europe during the 19th century, noted especially for his showmanship and great skill with the piano. Today, he is considered to be one of the greatest pianists in history. Liszt is frequently credited with re-defining piano playing itself, and his influence is still visible today, both through his compositions and his legacy as a teacher. He is credited with the invention of the symphonic poem, as well as the modern solo piano recital, in which his virtuosity won him approval by composers and performers alike.

Liszt contributed greatly toward the Romantic idiom in general. His writings and philosophies about the nature of music as an art, the role of the artist, and the necessary future direction of music had a significant effect on the musical culture of the time. His great generosity with both time and money benefited many people, including victims of disasters, orphans, and the many students he taught free. He was also a benefactor and advocate of many composers, most famously Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz.

Many of his piano compositions have entered the standard repertoire, including the Hungarian Rhapsodies, Transcendental Etudes (Études d'exécution transcendante), Années de Pèlerinage (Years of Pilgrimage), the Piano Sonata in B minor, and two piano concertos. He also made many piano transcriptions of operas, famous symphonies, Paganini Caprices (some of the most demanding works of the violin repertoire in his day), and Schubert lieder. Many of his piano compositions are among the most technically challenging in the repertoire. Liszt was also a composer of lieder and choral music, of symphonic poems and other orchestral works. He also wrote for the organ, and his compositions for that instrument are lauded and well-established in the organ repertoire.

A statue of the young Liszt

Franz Liszt was born in 1811 the village of Raiding (also known by its Hungarian name of Doborján) in the German-speaking Burgenland region of the Kingdom of Hungary. His father was a Hungarian of German ancestry and his mother was Austrian.^[2] From earliest childhood, young Franz was surrounded by music. His father, who worked at the court of Prince Esterházy, was himself a talented amateur pianist and cellist who had played in Esterházy's summer orchestra in Eisenstadt, and he frequently organized chamber music evenings with amateur musicians from the surrounding villages in which his old friends from Eisenstadt occasionally took part.

Franz received his first piano lessons from his father when he was six years old and quickly displayed incredible talent, easily sight-reading the most difficult music he could find. He made his first performance at the age of nine at Oedenburg^[3]; Local aristocrats noticed his talent and enabled him to travel to Vienna and later to Paris with his family.

In Vienna, he was taught by Beethoven's student Carl Czerny, who proved to be the only professional piano teacher Liszt ever had. Antonio Salieri taught him the technique of composition and fostered the young Liszt's musical taste.

On April 13, 1823, Liszt gave a concert at which, according to legend, he impressed Beethoven to such an extent that he personally congratulated Liszt, kissing him on the forehead and giving him enthusiastic praise.

By 1823, the Liszt family was in a difficult financial situation, and so they decided (over Czerny's objections) that it was time for young Franz's first concert tour. The tour was a great success, with the twelve-year-old Liszt being lauded as a prodigy of astonishing talent and skill; some even drew parallels between him and the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. On September 20, 1823, the family left Vienna and settled in Paris.^[4] Franz quickly made the acquaintance of the piano manufacturer Sébastien Érard, pioneer of the "double-escapement" system of piano mechanics, and was soon named an official "Erard artist," playing exclusively on that manufacturer's instruments. Liszt continued his concertizing to great acclaim, and also began composing in earnest. In 1824, under supervision of his composition teacher Ferdinando Paer, he started working on the opera Don Sanche, which premiered on October 17, 1825. However, in the midst of this blossoming musical career the passionately Catholic Liszt felt drawn in a different direction; at the age of fourteen, he begged his father to let him abandon his musical career and become a priest. His father refused, considering that this would be a waste of Liszt's musical brilliance. Throughout his life, Liszt would be torn between his religion and more worldly desires.

Tragedy struck several years later, when Franz was fifteen. After a series of concerts, he went with his father to Boulogne-sur-Mer, a spa town on the English Channel, to "take the waters," but shortly after their arrival Adam Liszt fell ill with typhus and died a few days later (August 28, 1827).^[5] Devastated, Franz fled back to Paris alone.

After his father's death, Liszt rebelled against the life of a touring prodigy and took to giving piano lessons to the daughters of the Paris aristocracy. He quickly fell in love with one of his students, the seventeen-year-old Countess Caroline de Saint-Cricq, and the feeling was mutual. The young couple hoped to marry, but Caroline's father would have nothing of it: he considered Liszt, as a mere piano teacher, to be far too low-class for his daughter, and married her off to a wealthy count.

This was the final blow for Liszt, and he suffered a nervous breakdown and fell into a deep depression. He stopped composing and playing the piano altogether, his health weakened, and he hardly left his room except to spend hours prostrate on the floor of the nearby church. But then in July of 1830, a revolution swept through Paris. King Charles X had attempted to overturn the constitutional monarchy and re-establish the absolute monarchy, and the students and workers of Paris erupted in revolt. The Liszt's apartment was very near to the main centers of fighting, and young Franz had a clear view of the "Three Glorious Days." The excitement and idealism galvanized him and he ran into the streets to join the revolution; by the end of the uprising, in the words of his mother, "the guns had cured him." He began playing and composing again, and his health improved.

On April 20, 1832, he attended a concert by the virtuoso violinist Niccolò Paganini and became suddenly determined to become as great a virtuoso on the piano as Paganini was on the violin. He often took to seclusion in his room, and was heard practicing for over five hours a day. In 1832-34 he wrote the Grande Fantaisie de Bravoure sur La Clochette de Paganini ("Grand Bravura Fantasy on Paganini's La Campanella").

After 1842, when "Lisztomania" swept across the European continent, Liszt's recitals were in an overwhelming demand. His admirers praised and courted him, and ladies reputedly fought over his handkerchiefs and green silk gloves as souvenirs, which they often ripped to pieces in their struggle. Some of Liszt's contemporaries saw this kind of worship as vulgar and inappropriate, and eventually came to despise Liszt because of it.

Also, from 1835 to 1839 Liszt lived with Marie d'Agoult and had three children with her. They did not marry, maintaining their independent views and other differences, while Liszt was busy composing and touring throughout Europe. Their children were Blandine (1835-1862), who was the first wife of Émile Ollivier but died at the age of 28; Cosima (1837-1930) (who married Richard Wagner, the second marriage for them both); and Daniel (1839-1859), who was already a promising pianist and gifted scholar when he died of tuberculosis at age 20.

In 1847, Liszt gave up public performances on the piano and in the following year finally took up the 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, gave lessons to a number of pianists.

Among his compositions written during his time at Weimar are the two piano concertos, No. 1 in E flat major and No. 2 in A major, the Totentanz, the Concerto pathetique for two pianos, the Piano Sonata in B minor, a number of Etudes, fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, twelve orchestral symphonic poems, the Faust Symphony and Dante Symphony, the 13th Psalm for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra, the choruses to Herder's dramatic scenes Prometheus, and the Graner Fest Messe. Much of Liszt's organ music also comes from this period, including the well-known Prelude and Fugue on the theme B-A-C-H (later arranged for solo piano).

Also in 1847, while touring in Russia, Liszt met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. The Princess was an author, whose major work was published in 16 volumes, each containing over 1,600 pages. Her longwinded writing style had some effect on Liszt himself. His biography of Chopin and his chronology and analysis of Gypsy music were both written in the Princess's loquacious style (Grove's Dictonary says that she undoubtedly collaborated with him on this and other works). Princess Carolyne lived with Liszt during his years in Weimar.

The couple had intended to marry in 1860, but since the Princess had been previously married and her husband was still alive, the Roman Catholic authorities would not approve the wedding, eventually intervening in dramatic fashion only moments before the couple were to take their vows. Although Liszt and Princess Carolyne remained friends, the stress of trying to persuade the Church authorities to let them marry, only to have their efforts eventually be in vain, proved an emotional blow from which neither completely recovered.

Liszt moved to Rome in 1861, in anticipation of his marriage to Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein. On the failure of his hopes for marriage, he turned instead to the dream of his youth: religious life. In 1863, after the deaths of his daughter Blandine the previous year and his son Daniel in 1859, he moved to the Madonna del Rosario monastery just outside Rome, where he lived the next five years. Liszt joined the Franciscan order in 1865 and received the minor orders (he never went on to ordination to the diaconate or priesthood); for the rest of his life he was known as the Abbé Liszt.

Liszt returned to Weimar in 1869. He began a series of piano master classes there, which he would teach a few months every year. From 1876 he also taught for several months every year at the Hungarian Music Academy at Budapest. He continued to live part of each year in Rome, as well. Liszt continued this threefold existence, as he is said to have called it, for the rest of his life.

On July 2, 1881, Liszt fell down the stairs of the Hofgärtnerei 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, his body retained the slimness and suppleness of earlier years. The accident, which immobilized him eight weeks, changed all this. A number of ailments manifested—dropsy, asthma, insomnia, a cataract of the left eye and chronic heart disease. The last mentioned would eventually contribute to Liszt's death.

Seven weeks after the fall, on August 24, 1881, Liszt wrote the piano work Nuages Gris. With its dark tone, its compositional austerity and an ending which drifts away into nothingness, the piece could be taken as a soundscape of desolation: Liszt had expected to make a quick recovery, but his condition was now compounded by dropsy, failing eyesight and other difficulties. Liszt would become increasingly plagued with feelings of desolation, despair and death—feelings he would continue to express nakedly 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." ^[6]

He died in Bayreuth on July 31, 1886, officially as a result of pneumonia. Questions have been posed as to whether medical malpractice played a direct part in Liszt's demise. At 11:30 Liszt was given two injections in the area of the heart. Some sources have claimed these were injections of morphine. Others have claimed the injections were of camphor, shallow injections of which, followed by massage, would warm the body. An accidental injection of camphor into the heart itself would result in a swift infarction and death. This series of events is exactly what Lina Schmalhaussen describes in the eyewitness account in her private diary, the most detailed source regarding Liszt's final illness. ^[7]

The issue on Liszt's nationality remains controversial for it triggered many interpretations. Some wanted him to be French like Émile Haraszti who identified the Liszt's case with his own (he was an Hungarian exiled in France). Others claimed that he was slovac, and even, Italian. In fact, Liszt had undoubdtly German origins: his grandfather, Georg, was a German, who magyarized his name(List) in Liszt, and his mother was a German from Bohemia named Laager.

Liszt was a prolific composer. Most of his music is for the piano and much of it requires formidable technique. His thoroughly revised masterwork, Années de Pèlerinage ("Years of Pilgrimage") arguably includes his most provocative and stirring pieces. This set of three suites ranges from the pure virtuosity of the Suisse Orage (Storm) to the subtle and imaginative visualizations of artworks by Michaelangelo and Raphael in the second set. Années contains some pieces which are loose transcriptions of Liszt's own earlier compositions; the first "year" recreates his early pieces of Album d'un voyageur, while the second book includes a resetting of his own song transcriptions once separately published as Tre sonetti di Petrarca ("Three sonnets of Petrarch"). The relative obscurity of the vast majority of his works may be explained by the immense number of pieces he composed. In his most famous and virtuosic works, he is the archetypal Romantic composer. Liszt pioneered the technique of thematic transformation, a method of development which was related to both the existing variation technique and to the new use of the leitmotif by Richard Wagner.

Liszt is generally recognized as the inventor of the symphonic poem^[8], although an unperformed piece by César Franck could be considered the first piece of the genre.^[9] A symphonic poem is a single-movement, programmatic orchestral piece usually inspired by a literary work, character sketch, or a historical or mythological subject. Liszt's inspiration often came from classical literature, including "Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne," based on a Victor Hugo poem of the same title, and "Les Préludes" from Lamartine. Other pieces are based on works by Lord Byron, Goethe and Dante. Liszt's symphonic poems represent his ideal and philosophy of "The Music of the Future", in which music and art and literature would all join together in a grand synthesis. Although the works were generally successful, they were often criticised by those who preferred the traditional absolute music as exemplified by Johannes Brahms.

His transcriptions met with less criticism. As a transcriber he tackled even the most unlikely and complicated orchestral works, such as his transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies. He created piano arrangements which stood on their own merits; many other pianist-composers followed his example.

Liszt at the piano, 1886. An engraving based on an old photograph.

His piano works have always been well represented in concert programs and recordings by pianists throughout the world. Many of his works have been recorded a multitude of times. However, the only pianist who has recorded his entire pianistic oeuvre is the Australian Leslie Howard. The project took almost 15 years to complete, and comprised 95 full-length CDs. Howard was awarded a place in the Guinness Book of Records for having completed the largest recording project ever in the history of music (including both pop and classical). The series has also earned several Gramophone Grands Prix du Disque, and a special award from the Hungarian government. This massive undertaking included a number of premiere recordings, including many unpublished pieces, recorded from manuscript, which had not been played by anyone since Liszt himself.

See also: Late works of Franz Liszt

Although in his later years his compositional style became less overtly virtuosic, it also became more experimental harmonically. Works such as The Lugubrious Gondola use the augmented triad as a tool to create tonal ambiguity. This work and Bagatelle sans tonalité ("Bagatelle without Tonality") foreshadow composers who would further explore the modern concept of atonality. A famous example of this later style is Nuages Gris; it can also be seen to some extent in the third volume of the Années de Pèlerinage. Liszt's work also foreshadowed the impressionism that would characterize the work of Debussy and Ravel, as shown in 'Les Jeux d'Eaux à la Villa d'Este (The Fountains of the Villa d'Este) from the third volume of Années de Pèlerinage.

Liszt also worked until at least 1885 on a treatise for modern harmony. Pianist Arthur Friedheim, who also served as Liszt's personal secretary, remembered seeing it among Liszt's papers at Weimar. Liszt told Friedheim that the time was not yet ripe to publish the manuscript, titled Sketches for a Harmony of the Future. Unfortunately, this treatise has been lost.

Liszt helped found the Liszt School of Music Weimar [1] as well as the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest. Throughout his later years Liszt took on many private students and his influence as a pedagogue was immense. Among his students were Eugen d'Albert, Arthur Friedheim, Sophie Menter, Moriz Rosenthal, Emil von Sauer, and Alexander Siloti.

Liszt's playing was described as theatrical and showy, and all those who saw him perform were stunned at his unrivalled mastery over the piano. Perhaps the best indication of Liszt's piano-playing abilities comes from his Douze Grandes Etudes and early Paganini Studies, written in 1837 and 1838 respectively, and described by Schumann as "studies in storm and dread designed to be performed by, at most, ten or twelve players in the world". To play these pieces, a pianist must connect with the piano as an extension of his own body (Walker, 1987).

Liszt claimed to have spent ten or twelve hours each day practicing scales, arpeggios, trills and repeated notes to improve his technique and endurance. All of these piano techniques were frequently applied in his compositions, often resulting in music of extreme technical difficulty (his Transcendental Etude No.5 "Feux follets" is an example). He would challenge himself and his immaculate fingering by presenting random problems to his playing.

Perhaps a large contributing factor to Liszt's affinity for extreme technical difficulty was the structure of his own hands. An original 19th century plaster cast of Liszt's right hand has been reproduced, and is now held in the Liszt House at Marienstrasse 17 (also known as the Liszt Museum). The plaster cast reveals that while Liszt's fingers were undoubtedly slender, they were of no exceptionally abnormal length. However, the small "webbing" connectors found between the fingers of any normal hand were practically nonexistent for Liszt. This allowed the composer to cover a much wider span of notes than the average pianist, perhaps even up to 12 whole steps.

During the 1830s and 1840s — the years of Liszt's "transcendental execution" — he revolutionised piano technique in almost every sector. Figures like Rubinstein, Paderewski and Rachmaninoff turned to Liszt's music to discover the laws which govern the keyboard.

While revolutionary and famously spectacular, Liszt's playing was far from mere flash and acrobatics. He also was reported to have played with a depth and nobility of feeling that would move sturdy men to tears. It seems that this quality to his playing may have continued to develop during his life, overtaking the youthful fire and bravura. Indeed, reports of his playing in old age include observations that it was surprisingly and distinctly subtle and poetic, with great purity of tone and effortlessness of execution; in distinction to the more tumultuous "Liszt school" of playing, which by then had already started to become traditional in Europe. Examination of the late piano works seems to back up this expressive requirement, where the composer seems to be deliberately rejecting the showiness of his earlier works.

Liszt was also a brilliant sight reader and stunned Edvard Grieg in the 1870s by playing his Piano Concerto perfectly by sight. The year before, Liszt played Grieg's violin sonata from sight. Decades earlier Liszt had played Chopin's studies at sight, prompting Chopin to write that he was consumed by envy, and wished to steal from Liszt his manner of playing his own pieces. This is all the more remarkable when one remembers that Liszt was playing at sight from a hand-written manuscript.

The term recital was first used by Liszt at his concert in London of June 9, 1840, although the term had been suggested to him by the publisher Frederick Beale, and his career model is still followed by performing artists to this day. Before Liszt no one had given a piano-only concert. There would always have been a chamber work, or some songs too. It was Liszt who elevated the piano to its status today, and who demonstrated that a satisfying concert can be given by the piano alone.

Liszt's recitals traversed the European continent from the Urals to Ireland. He would often play before as many as three thousand people. He was the first solo pianist to play entire programmes from memory, and the first to play with the piano at right angles to the platform, with its lid open, reflecting sound across the auditorium.

For a full list of works, see main articles: List of compositions by Franz Liszt (S.1 - S.350) and also (S.351 - S.999)

The sound of the fountains of the famous garden of Villa d'Este inspired Liszt to write a piano piece called "Fountains of the Villa d'Este". The villa and the portrait of the composer can be seen in the same image made by István Orosz

Liszt wrote about many subjects, including: an obituary of Paganini; the position of music in Italy; Robert and Clara Schumann; Chopin; Robert Franz; Beethoven's "Fidelio"; Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"; the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Foundation at Weimar; Wagner's Lohengrin and Tannhäuser; the music of the Hungarian Gypsies; John Field's nocturnes; Berlioz's "Harold in Italy"; and many more. His letters and musical essays are published in six volumes.

Some literary works that appeared under his name were written with the aid of Marie d'Agoult and Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein; a number of revisions were left to Caroline von Sayn-Wittgenstein in Liszt's later years. However, a work only he could have written himself is a "Manual of Pianoforte Technique" for the Geneva Conservatoire. This has never been discovered however, and no conclusive proof that such a work was completed has ever been produced. According to Walker, it is unlikely to ever have existed.^[10] Despite this, a history of the work has been detailed by Robert Bory.^{[citation needed]} If in fact it was completed, it is believed to be a technical manual for use of student pianists. It is now considered a lost work, which if discovered would provide an invaluable insight into the playing style of one of the greatest pianists who ever lived, and may well be of use to future pianists aspiring to play his works.

Piano Concerto no. 1, mvts. 1, 2 Piano Concerto no. 1, mvts. 3, 4 Au bord d'une source (Beside a Spring) Hungarian Rhapsody no. 2

Third Concert Etude, Un Sospiro (A Sigh) Liebesträume No. 3 Mephisto Waltz no. 1 Totentanz

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• 1954: Hungarian Rhapsody at the Internet Movie Database, a German movie
• 1960: Song Without End (TCM), fictionalized account of Franz Liszt betrayal of his lover to court a married Russian princess.
• 1970: Franz Liszt. Dreams of love (Ференц Лист), a Hungarian - Russian production, directed by Márton Keleti.
• 1975: Lisztomania, a fictionalized account of his life starring Roger Daltry and Directed by Ken Russell
• 1982: Liszt Ferenc at the Internet Movie Database, a TV movie in 24 episodes, filmed by Hungarian television with actors from several countries of Europe.
• 1996: Liszt's Rhapsody at the Internet Movie Database, a drama TV movie about him with Geordie Johnson as Liszt.

• Category:Compositions by Franz Liszt
• War of the Romantics

• Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years (1811-1847) by Alan Walker, Cornell University Press, Revised Edition (1993) ISBN 0-8014-9421-4
• Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years (1848-1861) by Alan Walker, Cornell University Press, Reprint (1993) ISBN 0-8014-9721-3
• Franz Liszt: The Final Years (1861-1886) by Alan Walker, Cornell University Press, reprint (1997) ISBN 0-8014-8453-7
• The Death of Franz Liszt: Based on the Unpublished Diary of His Pupil Lina Schmalhausen by Lina Schmalhausen, annotated and edited by Alan Walker, Cornell University Press (2002) ISBN 0-8014-4076-9
• The Piano Master Classes of Franz Liszt 1884-1886: Diary Notes of August Gollerich by August Gollerich, edited by Wilhelm Jerger, translated by Richard Louis Zimdars, Indiana University Press (1996) ISBN 0-253-33223-0
• Liszt by Serge Gut, De Falois, Paris (1989) ISBN 287706042X

• Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt, The Virtuoso Years (revised edition) Cornell University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-8014-9421-4.
• Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt, The Weimar Years Cornell University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8014-9721-3.
• Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt: The Final Years Cornell University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8014-8453-7.
• Walker, Alan: "Franz Liszt", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (Accessed November 5, 2007), (subscription access)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Franz Liszt

• The Franz Liszt Site with timeline
• The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 by Rupert Hughes, full-text from Project Gutenberg
• Franz Liszt Project - A comprehensive Liszt site with searchable databases.
• Franz Liszt discography at MusicBrainz
• Letters of Franz Liszt
• Concert programme for September 16, 1840 at The Centre for Performance History
• Old cylinder recordings of orchestral arrangements of Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• International Franz Liszt Piano Competition - official page
• Catalogue of the Complete Liszt Recording by Leslie Howard
• Liszt in Limerick, The Old Limerick Journal, Richard Ahern
• Sausage Lynx Franz Liszt Page,Frenetically filled with fascinating Franz Liszt information
• Liszt Archive

• www.kreusch-sheet-music.net Liszt's piano works
• Franz Liszt was listed in the International Music Score Library Project
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• [2]-Free Sheet Music at SheetMusicFox

• Kunst der Fuge: Franz Liszt - (Live) MIDI files
• Liszt at Magnatune MP3 Creative Commons recordings
• Liszt's page at Classical Archives
• Liszt, Franz - Biography and Music.

• Works by Franz Liszt at Project Gutenberg