Composer and pianist, born in Raiding, Hungary. He studied and played at Vienna and Paris, touring widely in Europe as a virtuoso pianist. From 1835 to 1839 he lived with the Comtesse d'Agoult, by whom he had three children. He gave concerts throughout Europe, and in 1847 met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein with whom he lived until his death. In 1848 he went to Weimar, where he directed the opera and concerts, composed, and taught. His works include 12 symphonic poems, Masses, two symphonies, and a large number of piano pieces. In 1865 he received minor orders in the Catholic Church, and was known as Abbé.
Franz Liszt (Hungarian: Liszt Ferenc) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer. Indeed, Liszt is frequently credited with re-defining piano playing itself, and his influence is still visible today.
Liszt studied and played at Vienna and Paris and for most of his early adulthood toured throughout Europe giving concerts. He is credited with inventing the modern piano recital, where his virtuosity won him approval by composers and performers alike.
Many of his piano compositions have entered the standard repertoire, including the Hungarian Rhapsodies, his 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), and Schubert Lieder. Liszt was himself a composer of lieder and choral music, of symphonic poems and other orchestral works.
Biography
Liszt was born in the village of Doborján, near Sopron, Hungary, (now Raiding, Austria).
Franz was a weak and sickly child, and was surrounded from his early childhood with music.
His father gave him his first music lessons when he was six years old.
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.
He formed an early friendship with Frédéric Chopin, but later fierce competition turned the men into rivals. He was a lifelong friend of Camille Saint-Saëns, and the latter dedicated his Symphony #3 in C Minor to Liszt.
Although he always proudly considered himself a Hungarian, Liszt never fully learned to speak the Hungarian language;
On April 13, 1823, Liszt gave a concert. An account of the episode can be found in the separate article "Liszt and Beethoven".
Years of Pilgrimage
Liszt left Vienna in 1823 to travel. Also composed in this period were the 12 Grandes Etudes (Liszt later rewrote these into the 12 Transcendental Etudes in 1851).
He fraternized with such noted composers of his time as Frédéric Chopin, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, and Richard Wagner, who later married Liszt's daughter Cosima. He was very widely read in philosophy, art and literature and was on friendly terms with the painter Ingres and the authors Heine, Lamennais, Hans Christian Andersen, and Baudelaire, who addressed his prose poem "Le thyrse" to Liszt.
In 1840-1841 Liszt took part in two tours of the British Isles arranged by the young musician and conductor Lewis Henry Lavenu, accompanied by Lavenu's half brother Frank Mori, two female singers and John Orlando Parry, an all round musician, singer and entertainer (who vividly recorded the tour in his diary). The tour was however a financial failure, and Liszt waived his promised fee of 500 guineas a month.
After 1842, when "Lisztomania" swept across the European continent, Liszt's recitals were in an overwhelming demand. Some of Liszt's contemporaries saw this kind of worship as vulgar and inappropriate, and eventually came to despise Liszt because of it.
During the years in which he appeared regularly in public, he was almost universally acknowledged (even by musical conservatives who disliked his compositions) as the foremost piano performer.
Liszt in Weimar
In 1847, Liszt gave up public performances on the piano and in the following year finally took up the invitation of 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, including the great virtuoso Hans von Bülow, who married Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857 (before she was married to Wagner).
The compositions belonging to the period of his residence at Weimar comprise two piano concertos, in E flat and in A, the Totentanz, the Concerto pathetique for two pianos, the Piano Sonata in B minor, sundry Etudes, fifteen Rhapsodies Hongroises, twelve orchestral Poemes symphoniques, Eine Faust Symphonie, and Eine Symphonie zu Dantes Divina Commedia, 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 comes from this period, including the Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H (later arranged for solo piano).
Also in 1847 Liszt met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. Her longwinded writing style had some effect on Liszt himself. 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.
In 1851 he published a revised version of the 1838 Etudes d'Execution Transcendante d'apres Paganini, now titled Grandes Etudes de Paganini (Grand etudes after Paganini), the most famous and challenging of which is La Campanella (The Bell), a study in octaves, shakes (trills) and leaps.
In retirement
Liszt moved to Rome in 1861, in anticipation of his marriage to Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein. From 1869 onwards, Abbé Liszt divided his time between Rome, Weimar and Budapest where during the summer months he continued to receive pupils gratis, including Alexander Siloti. Devout Catholic that he was, he was deeply hurt by his daughter's conversion to Protestantism upon her marriage to Wagner, and for a number of years, Liszt did not correspond with either, even while championing the music of his new son-in-law. Eventually, they were reconciled and Liszt subsequently attended the Bayreuth Festival.
From 1876 until his death he also taught for several months every year at the Hungarian Conservatoire at Budapest.
Musical style and influence
The majority of Liszt's piano compositions reflect his advanced virtuosity;
In his most popular and advanced 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's "First Mephisto Waltz" was based on Lenau's Faust, and he composed a second waltz from the poem in 1881.
Other pieces are based on works by Lord Byron, Goethe and Dante. Liszt's symphonic poems, although successes, were criticised because they were not Absolute music. As a transcriber of even the most unlikely and complicated orchestral works, he created piano arrangements which stood on their own merits;
While his Hungarian Rhapsodies are widely recognized, his understanding of form, expression and use of virtuosity for musical effect are more apparent elsewhere.
Later works of the composer such as Bagatelle sans tonalité ("Bagatelle without Tonality") foreshadow composers who would further explore the modern concept of atonality. Années contains some pieces which are loose transcriptions of Liszt's own earlier compositions;
To Franz Liszt's honor, he helped found the Liszt School of Music Weimar , which bears his name. Besides the Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest, a music school and a concert hall is also named after him.
His piano works have always been well represented in concert programs and recordings by pianists throughout the world.
Liszt's virtuosity and technical reforms
Liszt's playing was described as theatrical and showy, and all those who saw him perform were stunned at his unrivaled mastery over the keyboard. Perhaps the best indication of Liszt's piano-playing abilities comes from his Transcendental and Paganini Studies, written in 1838-39, and described by Schumann as "playable at the most, by 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).
During the 1830s and 1840s — the years of Liszt's "transcendental execution" — he revolutionized 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 not only flash and acrobatics.
Piano recital
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.
Liszt's recitals traversed the European continent from the Urals to Ireland. 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.
Noted works
(1822) Variation on a Theme by Diabelli (S/G147, R26) (1826) Etude in Twelve Exercises, including No. 10 in F Minor (1832) Grande Fantasie de Bravoure sur La Clochette, variations (S/G420, R321) (1833) Arrangement of "March to the Scaffold" from Berlioz, Symphonie Fantastique (S/G470, R136) (1833) Divertissement on the Cavatina "I tuoi frequenti palpiti" from Pacini's La Niobe (S/G419, R230) (1838) Grandes Etudes de Paganini, including No. 39 (piano solo) (S/G144, R5) (1848-53) Années de Pèlerinage: Première Année — Suisse; before 1854) Orpheus, (1853-4) Prometheus, (1850) Mazeppa, (1851) Festklänge, (1853) Héroïde funèbre, (1849-50) Hungaria, (1854) Hamlet, (1858) Hunnenschlacht, (1857) Die Ideale (1857), after Schiller (1849) Piano Concerto no. 1 in E-flat Major (S/G124) (1849) Piano Concerto no. 2 in A Major (S/G125) (revised 1861) (1849) Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses, (S/G173) a collection of solo piano pieces, including the often-performed No. 3 ("Dreams of Love") in A-flat Major (piano solo) (S/G541, R211) (1851) Transcendental Etudes (Prelude, Molto Vivace, Paysage, Mazeppa, Feux Follets, Vision, Eroica, Wilde Jagd, Ricordanza, Allegro Agitato Molto, Harmonies du soir, and Chasse-niege. 1 (piano solo) (S/G514, R181) (1866) Christus (S/G3) (1877) Dem Andenken Petőfis (1881) Nuages Gris ('Grey clouds') (S/G199, R78) (1885) Bagatelle sans tonalité (S216a)Note: Although Liszt provided opus numbers for his works during his lifetime, these are rarely used today. Less commonly used is the "R" number, which derives from Peter Raabe's 1931 catalogue Franz Liszt: Leben und Schaffen.
Literary Works
He wrote about many subjects, such as: a necrology of Paganini;
Some literary works that appeared under his name were written with the aid of Marie d'Agoult and Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein; one or two revisions were left to Caroline von Sayn-Wittgenstein in Liszt's last years.
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