Liszt, Franz 1811-1886

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Franz Liszt (Hungarian: Liszt Ferenc) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer. He was a renowned performer throughout Europe during the 19th century, noted especially for his showmanship and great skill with the keyboard. Today, he is generally considered to be one of the greatest pianists who ever lived, despite the fact that no recordings of his playing exist. Liszt also contributed greatly towards the Romantic idiom; he is credited with the invention of the symphonic poem.

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. His great generosity with both time and money benefited the lives of many people: victims of disasters, orphans and the many students he taught for free. He also contributed to the Beethoven memorial fund.

His piano compositions include works such as the Hungarian Rhapsodies, his Piano Sonata in B minor, and two piano concertos, which have entered the standard repertoire. He also made many exuberant piano transcriptions of operas, famous symphonies, Paganini Caprices and Schubert Lieder. Many of his piano compositions are among the most technically challenging in the repertoire.

His music is well loved in part because of its melodic and emotional harmonies. He would often add a few pages of flamboyance to his music to impress the young women. He deeply loved women and wrote many love songs for them.

Liszt was born in the village of Doborján , near Sopron , Hungary, in what was then the Austrian Empire (Doborján is now Raiding in Austria after the Treaty of Trianon of 1920). His baptism record is in Latin and lists his first name as Franciscus. The Hungarian variant Ferenc is often used, though Liszt never used this himself. His father, Ádám Liszt, was Hungarian and his mother was Austrian-born Anna Liszt, née Lager.

Franz was a weak and sickly child, and was surrounded from his early childhood with music. His father, who worked at the court of Count Esterházy, was himself a pianist and cellist (he used to play in Esterházy's summer orchestra in Eisenstadt); he organized chamber music evenings with amateur musicians from the surrounding villages, in which his old friends from Eisenstadt occasionally took part.

Liszt displayed incredible talent at a young age, easily sight-reading multiple staves at once. His father gave him his first music lessons when he was six years old. Local aristocrats noticed his talent and enabled him to travel to Vienna and later to Paris with his family. As a result, Liszt never fully learned Hungarian; his later letters and diaries show that he came to regret this deeply. One letter to his mother begins in faltering Hungarian, and after an apology continues in French (his preferred language).

In Vienna he was taught by Beethoven's student Carl Czerny, the only piano teacher Liszt ever had. His father had first taken him to be taught by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, but Hummel's fees were too high. 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.

Liszt left Vienna in 1823 to travel. In Paris , he studied composition with Ferdinando Paer and Anton Reicha. On April 22, 1832 , he attended a concert by the virtuoso violinist Paganini and became motivated to become the greatest pianist of his day. He often took to seclusion in his room, and was heard practicing for over 10 hours a day. In 1832 he wrote the Grande Fantaisie de Bravoure sur La Clochette de Paganini ("Great Bravura Fantasy on Paganini's La Campanella"). A shorter piece using the same thematic content was included in the 1838 Etudes d'Execution Transcendante d'apres Paganini (Studies of Transcendental Execution inspired by Paganini). 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, H.C. 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). Between August 17 and September 26, they gave 50 concerts around England which were generally unsuccessful, having an average attendance of 140. The second tour which encompassed Liverpool , Ireland and Scotland from November 1840- January 1841 was mildly more successful, with audiences of more than 1200 in Dublin . 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. His admirers praised and courted him, and ladies 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.

In 1847 Liszt met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. The Princess was an author, whose major work was published in 16 volumes, each containing over 1600 pages. Her longwinded writing style had some effect on Liszt himself. His biography of Chopin and his chronology and analysis of Gypsy music (which later inspired Béla Bartók) were both written in the Princess' loquacious style. 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. Liszt and Princess Carolyne remained friends, although Liszt never recovered from being unable to marry her.

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. His main rival in public esteem as a virtuoso was Sigismond Thalberg, who specialized in salon music, especially operatic fantasies. Thalberg's reputation has faded, and in current opinion, only Chopin is comparably significant among romantic pianists - though for his composition rather than this technique.

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. He also wrote articles championing Berlioz and Wagner, and 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.

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.

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.

Liszt moved to Rome in 1861, in anticipation of his marriage to Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein. In 1865, he received the tonsure and four Minor Orders of the Catholic Church (namely, Porter, Lector, Exorcist and Acolyte). 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. During this time, his relationship with Wagner grew more strained. His daughter Cosima (see previous section) left Bülow, for Wagner in 1869. Devout Catholic that he was, he was deeply hurt by his Daughter's conversion to Protestantism upon her marriage to Wagner and for number of years Liszt did not correspond with either, while champion the music of his new son-in-law. Evetually 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 of Budapest. He died in Bayreuth on July 31, 1886 as a result of pneumonia which he contracted during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by his daughter, Cosima. At first he was surrounded by some of his more adoring pupils, including Arthur Friedheim, Siloti and Bernhard Stavenhagen, but they were denied access to his room by Cosima shortly before his death at 11:30pm . He is buried in the Bayreuth Friedhof.

The majority of Liszt's piano compositions reflect his advanced virtuosity; however he was a prolific composer, and wrote works at several levels of difficulty, some being accessible to intermediate- (and even beginner-) level pianists. Abschied (Farewell) and Nuages Gris are examples of this less virtuosic style, as are at least some of the six Consolations.

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. He also largely invented the symphonic poem, or tone poem, in a series of single-movement orchestral works composed in the 1840s and 1850s. His poems all came from classical literature, including Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne, based on a Victor Hugo poem of the same title, and Les preludes from Lamartine. 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. His transcriptions met with less criticism. As a transcriber of even the most unlikely and complicated orchestral works, he created piano arrangements which stood on their own merits; many other pianist-composers followed his example.

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. 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 del 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.

To Franz Liszt's honor, he helped found the Liszt School of Music Weimar, which bears his name. Besides, Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest (a music school and a concert hall) is also named after him.