Early life

Franz Liszt's mother, Anna Liszt

Franz Liszt was born to Anna Liszt (née Maria Anna Lager)^[10] and Adam Liszt on 22 October 1811, in the village of Doborján (German: Raiding) in Sopron County, in the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire.^{[11][n 2]} Liszt's father was a land steward in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy;^[11] a keen amateur musician, he played the piano, cello, guitar and flute,^[12][13] and knew Haydn and Hummel personally.^[14] Franz began to improvise at the piano from before the age of five, and his father diligently encouraged his progress.^[13] Franz also found exposure to music through attending Mass, as well as traveling Romani bands that toured the Hungarian countryside.^[15] His first public concert was in Sopron in 1820 at the age of nine; its success led to further appearences in Pressburg and for Prince Nikolaus' court in Eisenstadt. The publicity led to a group of wealthy sponsors offering to finance Franz's musical education in Vienna.^[16]

There, Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of Beethoven and Hummel. Czerny, already extremely busy, had only begrudgingly agreed to hear Liszt play, and had initially refused to entertain the idea of regular lessons. Being so impressed by the initial audition, however, Czerny taught Liszt regularly, free of charge, for the next eighteen months, at which point he felt he had nothing more to teach.^[17] Liszt also received lessons in composition from Antonio Salieri, who was then the music director of the Viennese court.^[18][19] Liszt's public debut in Vienna on 1 December 1822, at a concert at the "Landständischer Saal", was a great success. He was greeted in Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles and met Beethoven and Schubert.^{[n 3]} In the spring of 1823, when his one-year leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt asked Prince Esterházy for two more years. This was refused, so Adam Liszt took his leave of the Prince's services. The family briefly returned to Hungary, and Liszt played a concert in traditional Hungarian dress, in order to emphasise his roots, in May 1823.^[20] At the end of May 1823, the family traveled to Vienna once more.

In 1824 a piece Liszt had written at the age of 11 – his Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli (S. 147) – appeared in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein as his first published composition. This volume, commissioned by Anton Diabelli, includes 50 variations on his waltz by 50 different composers (Part I being taken up by Beethoven's 33 variations on the same theme, which are now separately better known simply as his Diabelli Variations).^[21][22] Liszt was the youngest contributor to the project, described in it as "a boy of eleven years old",^[23] and his involvement was almost certainly at the instigation of Czerny, also a participant.^[24]

Adolescence

Having made significant sums from his concerts, Liszt and his family moved to Paris in 1823, with the hope of his attending the Conservatoire de Paris. The director Luigi Cherubini refused his entry, however, as the Conservatoire did not accept foreigners. Nevertheless, Liszt studied under Anton Reicha and Ferdinando Paer, and gave a series of highly successful concerts debuting on 8 March 1824. Accompanied by his father, he toured France and England, where he played for King George IV.^[25]

His father died in the summer of 1827 and for the next eight years Liszt continued to live in Paris with his mother. He gave up touring, and in order to earn money, he gave lessons on piano and composition, often from early morning until late at night. His students were scattered across the city and he had to cover long distances. Because of this, he kept uncertain hours and also took up smoking and drinking— habits he would continue throughout his life.^[26][27] During this period Liszt fell in love with one of his pupils, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the daughter of Charles X's minister of commerce, Pierre de Saint-Cricq. Her father, however, insisted that the affair be broken off.^[28]

Liszt fell very ill, to the extent that an obituary notice was printed in a Paris newspaper, and he underwent a long period of religious doubts and introspection. He stopped playing the piano and giving lessons, and developed an intense interest in religion, having many conversations with Abbé de Lamennais and Chrétien Urhan, a German-born violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists, but de Lamennais dissuaded Liszt from becoming a monk or priest.^[29] Urhan was an early champion of Schubert, which inspired Liszt's own lifelong love of his songs, and his emotive music that moved beyond the Classical paradigm, with titles such as Elle et moi, La Salvation angélique and Les Regrets, may have helped to develop Liszt's taste and style.^[30]

During this period, Liszt read widely to overcome his lack of general education, and he soon came into contact with many of the leading authors and artists of his day, including Victor Hugo, Alphonse de 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 4 December 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.^[26]

Influence of Paganini

Portrait of Liszt by Henri Lehmann (1839)

After attending a charity concert on 20 April 1832, for the victims of the Parisian cholera epidemic, organized by Niccolò Paganini,^[31] 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, such as the "three-hand effect" and octaves, respectively. While it has since been referred to as 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.^[32]

He was also forming a friendship with Hector Berlioz^[33] and Frédéric Chopin; under Chopin's influence, Liszt's poetic and romantic side began to develop.^[26]

Affair with Countess Marie d'Agoult

Liszt's fundraising concert for the flood victims of Pest, where he was the conductor of the orchestra, Vigadó Concert Hall, Pest, Hungary, 1839

In 1833, Liszt began a relationship with the Countess Marie d'Agoult. In 1835, she left her husband and family to join Liszt in Geneva; Liszt's daughter with the countess, Blandine, was born there on 18 December.^[34] Liszt taught at the newly founded Geneva Conservatory, wrote a manual of piano technique (later lost)^[35] and contributed essays for the Paris Revue et gazette musicale.^[26]

For the next four years, Liszt and the countess lived together. From August 1837 until November 1839 they travelled to Italy and Switzerland, staying successively in Bellagio, Milan, Venice, Lugano, Modena, Florence, Bologna and Rome. It was these travels that inspired the composer to write his cycle of piano collections entitled Années de pèlerinage.^[36][37] Their daughter, Cosima, was born in Como on 24 December 1837, and their son Daniel on 9 May 1839 in Rome.^[38] 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, raising funds through concerts.^[39] The countess returned to Paris with the children, while Liszt gave six concerts in Vienna, then toured Hungary.^[26]

Touring Europe

Earliest known photograph of Liszt (1843) by Hermann Biow

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 the summers of 1841 and 1843.^[40] In May 1844, the couple finally separated.^[41] This was Liszt's most brilliant period as a concert pianist; honors were showered on him and he was met with adulation wherever he went.^[26] Liszt wrote his Three Concert Études between 1845 and 1849.^[42] It is estimated that he appeared in public well over one thousand times during this eight-year period.^[43] 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.^[44]

Liszt in concert (1846) drawn by Fritz von Dardel

During his virtuoso heyday, Liszt was described by the writer Hans Christian Andersen as a "slim young man...[with] dark hair hung around his pale face".^[45] He was seen as handsome^[4][46][47] by many, with the German poet Heinrich Heine writing concerning his showmanship during concerts: "How powerful, how shattering was his mere physical appearance".^[41]

In 1841, Franz Liszt was admitted to the Freemason's lodge "Unity" "Zur Einigkeit", in Frankfurt am Main. He was promoted to the second degree and elected master as a member of the lodge "Zur Eintracht", in Berlin. From 1845, he was also an honorary member of the lodge "Modestia cum Libertate" at Zürich and in 1870 of the lodge in Pest (Budapest-Hungary).^[48][49] After 1842, "Lisztomania"—coined by 19th-century German poet and Liszt's contemporary, Heinrich Heine—swept across Europe.^[6] The reception that Liszt enjoyed, as a result, can be described only as hysterical. Women fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves, which they ripped to shreds as souvenirs. This atmosphere was fuelled in great part by 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.^[50]

On 14 March 1842, Liszt received an honorary doctorate from the University of Königsberg—an honor unprecedented at the time and an especially important one from the perspective of the German tradition. Liszt never used 'Dr. Liszt' or 'Dr. Franz Liszt' publicly. Ferdinand Hiller, a rival of Liszt at the time, was allegedly highly jealous of the decision made by the university.^[51]

On the 7 July 1853, Liszt, the composer Richard Wagner and the poet Georg Herwegh made a boat ride on Lake Lucerne from Brunnen to Rütli where the three took a brotherly potion from the three mythical sources.^[52] Wagner and Herwegh were living in exile in Switzerland at the time due to their revolutionary activities in Germany.^[52]

Adding to his reputation was that Liszt gave away much of the proceeds of his work to charity and humanitarian causes. Liszt had made so much money by his mid-forties that nearly all his performing fees after 1857 went to charity. He donated large sums to the building fund of Cologne Cathedral, and St. Stephen's Basilica in Pest, and made private donations to public services such as hospitals and schools, as well as charitable organizations such as the Leipzig Musicians Pension Fund. After the Great Fire of Hamburg in May 1842, he gave concerts in aid of those left homeless.^[3]

Liszt in Weimar

Franz Liszt, portrait by Hungarian painter Miklós Barabás, 1847

In February 1847, Liszt played in Kiev. There he met the Polish Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, who was to become one of the most significant people in the rest of his life. She persuaded him to concentrate on composition, which meant giving up his career as a traveling virtuoso. After a tour of the Balkans, Turkey,^[53] and Russia that summer, Liszt gave his final paid concert at Yelisavetgrad in September. He spent the winter with the princess at her estate in Woronince.^[54] 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.^[55]

In July 1848 Liszt settled in Weimar, where he had been appointed the honorary title of Kapellmeister Extraordinaire six years previously. He acted as the official court kapellmeister at the expense of Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia until 1859, and left the city two years later.^[56] During this period he acted as conductor at court concerts and on special occasions at the theatre, arranged several festivals celebrating the work of his erstwhile friend Hector Berlioz, and produced the premiere of Lohengrin.^[57] He gave lessons to a number of pianists, including the great virtuoso Hans von Bülow, who married Liszt's daughter Cosima in 1857 (years later, she would marry Richard Wagner, who was a close friend of Liszt's).^[58][59] 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 rested.

At first, after arriving in Weimar, Princess Carolyne lived apart from Liszt, in order to avoid suspicions of impropriety. She eventually wished to marry Liszt, but since her husband, Russian military officer Prince Nicholas von Sayn-Wittgenstein, was still alive, she had to convince the Roman Catholic authorities that her marriage to him had been invalid. Her appeal to the Archbishop of St Petersburg for an annulment, lodged before leaving Russia, was ultimately unsuccessful, and the couple abandoned pretence and began to live together in the autumn of 1848.^[60]

Nicholas was aware that the couple's marriage had effectively ended, and Carolyne and Nicholas reached an agreement to annul in 1850 whereby the prince would receive some of Carolyne's estates. However, this arrangement was struck down in 1851 by the Consistory Court of Zhytomyr.^[61] Over the following years the couple would continue to negotiate through what became an extremely complex situation.^[62]

After a visit to Rome and an audience with Pope Pius IX in 1860, Carolyne finally secured an annulment.^[63] It was planned that she and Liszt would marry in Rome, on 22 October 1861, Liszt's 50th birthday. Liszt arrived in Rome on 21 October, but a Vatican official had arrived the previous day in order to stop the marriage. It appears that both her husband and the Tsar of Russia had managed to quash permission for the marriage at the Vatican.^[64] The Russian government also impounded her several estates in the Polish Ukraine, which made her later marriage to anybody unfeasible.

Rome, Weimar, Budapest

Liszt, photo (mirror-imaged) by Franz Hanfstaengl, June 1870

The 1860s were a period of great sadness in Liszt's private life. On 13 December 1859, he lost his 20-year-old son Daniel to an unknown illness.^[65] On 11 September 1862, his 26-year-old daughter Blandine also died, having contracted sepsis after surgery on a breast growth which developed shortly after giving birth to a son she named in memory of Daniel.^[66] In letters to friends, Liszt announced that he would retreat to a solitary living. He found it at the monastery Madonna del Rosario, just outside Rome, where on 20 June 1863, he took up quarters in a small, spartan apartment.^[67] He had on 23 June 1857, already joined the Third Order of Saint Francis.^[68] On 25 April 1865, he received the tonsure at the hands of Cardinal Hohenlohe, who had previously worked against Carolyne's efforts to secure an annulment.^[69] On 31 July 1865, Liszt received the four minor orders of porter, lector, exorcist, and acolyte. After this ordination, he was often called Abbé Liszt. On 14 August 1879, he was made an honorary canon of Albano.^[70]

On some occasions, Liszt took part in Rome's musical life. On 26 March 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, Jommelli, Mendelssohn, and Palestrina were performed. On 4 January 1866, Liszt directed the "Stabat mater" of his Christus-Oratorio, and, on 26 February 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.

In 1866, Liszt composed the Hungarian coronation ceremony for Franz Joseph and Elisabeth of Bavaria (Latin: Missa coronationalis). The Mass was first performed on 8 June 1867, at the coronation ceremony in the Matthias Church by Buda Castle in a six-section form. After the first performance, the Offertory was added, and, two years later, the Gradual.^[71]

Grand Duke Charles Alexander had been attempting to arrange Liszt's return to Weimar ever since he'd left, and in January 1869 Liszt agreed to a residency to give masterclasses in piano playing.^[72][73] He was based in the Hofgärtnerei (court gardener's house), where he taught for the next seventeen years.^[74] From 1872 until the end of his life, Liszt made regular journeys between Rome, Weimar, and Budapest, continuing what he called his "vie trifurquée" or tripartite existence.^[75] It is estimated that he traveled at least 4,000 miles a year during this period in his life – an exceptional figure given his advancing age and the rigors of road and rail in the 1870s.^[76]

Royal Academy of Music at Budapest

Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music in Budapest

From the early 1860s, there were attempts to obtain a position for Liszt in Hungary. On 4 June 1871 the Hungarian Prime Minister Gyula Andrássy wrote to Franz Joseph I requesting an annual grant of 4,000 Gulden and the rank of a "Königlicher Rat" ("Crown Councillor") for Liszt, who in return would permanently settle in Budapest, directing the orchestra of the National Theatre as well as musical institutions.^{[n 4]}

The plan of the foundation of the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest was agreed upon by the Hungarian Parliament in 1873, and in March 1875 Liszt was nominated its president.^[77] The academy was officially opened on 14 November 1875 with Liszt's colleague Ferenc Erkel as director and Kornél Ábrányi and Robert Volkmann on the staff.^[78] Liszt himself only arrived to deliver lessons in March 1876.^[79] From 1881 when in Budapest he would stay in an apartment in the Academy, where he taught pupils in much the same way as he did in Weimar.^[80]

In spite of the conditions under which Liszt had been appointed as "Königlicher Rat", he neither directed the orchestra of the National Theatre nor permanently settled in Hungary. Typically, he would arrive in mid-winter in Budapest. After one or two concerts of his students, by the beginning of spring, he left. He never took part in the final examinations, which were in the summer of every year. Some of the pupils joined the lessons that Liszt gave in the summer in Weimar.

In 1873, on the occasion of Liszt's 50th anniversary as a performing artist, the city of Budapest instituted a "Franz Liszt Stiftung" ("Franz Liszt Foundation"), to provide stipends of 200 Gulden for three students of the academy who had shown excellent abilities with regard to Hungarian music. Liszt alone decided the allocation of these stipends.

It was Liszt's habit to declare all students who took part in his lessons as his private students. In consequence, almost none of them paid any fees to the academy. A ministerial order of 13 February 1884 decreed that all those who took part in Liszt's lessons had to pay an annual charge of 30 Gulden. In fact, the academy was, in any case, a net gainer, since Liszt donated its revenue from his charity concerts.

Last years

Liszt in March 1886, four months before his death, photographed by Nadar

Liszt fell down a flight of stairs at the Hofgärtnerei in July 1881.^[81] Though friends and colleagues had noticed swelling in his feet and legs when he had arrived in Weimar the previous month, he had been in good health up to that point.^[82] He was bedridden for several weeks after the accident^[81] and never fully recovered from it. A number of ailments subsequently manifested themselves— a cataract in the left eye,^[83] dental issues,^[84] asthma, insomnia, and heart disease. He became increasingly plagued by feelings of desolation, despair, and preoccupation with death—feelings that he expressed in his works from this period.^[85] As he told Lina Ramann, "I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound."^[86]

On 13 January 1886, while Claude Debussy was staying at the Villa Medici in Rome, Liszt met him there with Paul Vidal and Ernest Hébert, director of the French Academy. Liszt played Au bord d'une source from his Années de pèlerinage, as well as his arrangement of Schubert's Ave Maria for the musicians. Debussy in later years described Liszt's pedalling as "like a form of breathing." Debussy and Vidal performed their piano duet arrangement of Liszt's Faust Symphony; allegedly, Liszt fell asleep during this.^[87]

Liszt travelled to Bayreuth, Germany, in the summer of 1886, in order to support his daughter Cosima's festival dedicated to her late husband Wagner, which was struggling to generate sufficient interest.^[88] Already frail, in his final week of life Liszt's health deteriorated further, as he experienced a fever, cough and delirium.^[89] He died during the festival, near midnight on 31 July 1886, at the age of 74— officially as a result of pneumonia, which he had contracted prior to arriving in Bayreuth, although the true cause of death may have been a heart attack.^[90][91] He was buried on 3 August 1886, in the municipal cemetery of Bayreuth, according to Cosima's wishes; despite controversy over this as his final resting place, Liszt's body was never moved.^[92]

Performing style

Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano (1840), by Danhauser, commissioned by Conrad Graf. The imagined gathering shows seated Alfred de Musset or Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, 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 Lord Byron on the wall, and a statue of Joan of Arc on the far left.^[96][97][98]

There are few, if any, good sources that give an impression of how Liszt really sounded from the 1820s. Carl Czerny said 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 keep absolute tempo,^[99] which may be caused by his father's insistence on practicing with a metronome.^[100] His repertoire then 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. Liszt possessed notable sight-reading skills.^[101]

Following the death of Liszt's father in 1827 and his hiatus from life as a touring virtuoso, Liszt's playing likely gradually developed a more personal style. One of the most detailed descriptions of his playing from that time comes from the winter of 1831–32 when he was earning a living primarily as a teacher in Paris. Among his pupils was Valerie Boissier, whose mother, Caroline, kept a careful diary of the lessons:

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.

Liszt was sometimes mocked in the press for facial expressions and gestures at the piano.^{[n 5]} Also noted were the extravagant liberties that he could take with the text of a score. Berlioz tells how Liszt would add cadenzas, tremolos, and trills when he played the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and created a dramatic scene by changing the tempo between Largo and Presto.^{[n 6]} In his Baccalaureus letter to George Sand from the beginning of 1837, Liszt admitted that he had done so to gain applause and promised to follow both the letter and the spirit of a score from then 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 Handel's Fugue in E minor, which was played by Liszt with avoidance of everything approaching meretricious ornament and indeed scarcely any additions, except a multitude of appropriate harmonies, casting a glow of color over the beauties of the composition and infusing into it a spirit which from no other hand it ever before received.^[102]

Repertoire

Liszt giving a concert for Emperor Franz Joseph I on a Bösendorfer piano

During his years as a traveling virtuoso, Liszt performed an enormous amount of music throughout Europe,^[103] but his core repertoire always centered on his own compositions, paraphrases, and transcriptions. Of Liszt's German concerts between 1840 and 1845, the five most frequently played pieces were the Grand galop chromatique, his transcription of Schubert's Erlkönig, Réminiscences de Don Juan, Réminiscences de Robert le Diable, and Réminiscences de Lucia di Lammermoor.^[104] Among the works by other composers were Weber's Invitation to the Dance; Chopin mazurkas; études by composers like Ignaz Moscheles, Chopin, and Ferdinand Hiller; but also major works by Beethoven, Schumann, Weber, and Hummel and from time to time even selections from Bach, Handel, and Scarlatti.

Most of the concerts were shared with other artists, so 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 Johann Nepomuk Hummel's Septet, Beethoven's Archduke Trio and Kreutzer Sonata, and a large selection of songs by composers like Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Beethoven, and especially Franz Schubert. At some concerts, Liszt could not find musicians to share the program with and so 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 9 June 1840,^[105] even though Liszt had already given concerts by himself by March 1839.^[106]

Instruments

One of Franz Liszt's pianos from his apartment in Budapest

After arriving in Paris in 1823, Sébastien Érard presented Liszt with a grand piano featuring his newly-patented double escapement mechanism, a key development in piano technology allowing for faster note repetition.^[107] Among the composer's pianos in Weimar were an Érard, a Bechstein, the Beethovens' Broadwood grand and a Boisselot. It is known that Liszt was using Boisselot pianos in his Portugal tour^[108] and then later in 1847 in a tour to Kiev and Odessa. Liszt kept the piano at his Villa Altenburg residence in Weimar.^[109] This instrument is not in a playable condition now, and in 2011, at the order of Klassik Stiftung Weimar, a modern builder, Paul McNulty, made a copy of the Boisselot piano which is now on display next to the original Liszt's instrument.^[110]

Liszt's interest in Bach's organ music in the early 1840s prompted him to commission a piano-organ from the Paris company Alexandre Père et Fils. The instrument was made in 1854 under Berlioz's supervision, using an 1853 Érard piano, a combination of piano and harmonium with three manuals and a pedal board. The company called it a "piano-Liszt" and installed it in Villa Altenburg in July 1854,^[111] the instrument is now exhibited in the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde collection in Vienna.^[112][109]

Liszt owned two other organs that were installed later in his Budapest residence. The first was a smaller version of Weimar's instrument, a combination piano and harmonium with two independent manuals, upper for the 1864 Érard piano, and lower for the harmonium, built again by Alexandre Père et Fils in 1865. The second was a "cabinet organ", a large concert harmonium built in Detroit and Boston by Mason & Hamlin and given to Liszt in 1877.^[112] Mason & Hamlin later sold a revised mass-produced model of this single manual reed organ as a "Liszt Organ". This harmonium was eventually sold to a "Mr. Smith", an Englishman living in the United States. Mr. Smith sold it to an American collector in 1911 for $50,000.^[113]

Piano music

The largest and best-known portion of Liszt's music is his original piano work. During the Weimar period, he composed 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies, themselves revisions of his own Magyar Dalok/Rhapsódiák. His thoroughly revised masterwork, "Années de pèlerinage" ("Years of Pilgrimage"), includes arguably his most provocative and stirring pieces. This set of three suites ranges from the virtuosity of the Suisse Orage (Storm) to the subtle and imaginative visualizations of artworks by Michelangelo and Raphael in the second set. "Années de pèlerinage" 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, and the level of technical difficulty which was present in much of his composition.

Liszt's piano works are usually divided into two categories: original works, and transcriptions, paraphrases, or fantasies on works by other composers. Examples of his own works are Harmonies poétiques et religieuses of May 1833 and the Piano Sonata in B minor (1853). Liszt's transcriptions of other composers include Schubert songs, fantasies on operatic melodies, and his piano arrangements of symphonies by Hector Berlioz and Ludwig van Beethoven. Liszt also made piano arrangements of his own instrumental and vocal works, such as the arrangement of the second movement "Gretchen" of his Faust Symphony, the first "Mephisto Waltz," the "Liebesträume No. 3," and the two volumes of his "Buch der Lieder."

Transcriptions

Liszt wrote substantial quantities of piano transcriptions of a wide variety of music. Indeed, about half of his works are arrangements of music by other composers.^[114] He played many of them himself in celebrated performances. In the mid-19th century, orchestral performances were much less common than they are today and were not available at all outside major cities; thus, Liszt's transcriptions played a major role in popularising a wide array of music such as Beethoven's symphonies.^[115] The pianist Cyprien Katsaris has stated that he prefers Liszt's transcriptions of the symphonies to the originals, and Hans von Bülow admitted that Liszt's transcription of his Dante Sonett "Tanto gentile" was much more refined than the original he himself had composed.^{[n 7]} Liszt's transcriptions of Schubert songs, his fantasies on operatic melodies, and his piano arrangements of symphonies by Berlioz and Beethoven are other well-known examples of piano transcriptions.

In addition to piano transcriptions, Liszt also transcribed about a dozen works for organ, such as Otto Nicolai's Ecclesiastical Festival Overture on the chorale "Ein feste Burg", Orlando di Lasso's motet Regina coeli, some Chopin preludes, and excerpts of Bach's Cantata No. 21 and Wagner's Tannhäuser.^[116]

Organ music

Liszt wrote his two largest organ works between 1850 and 1855 while he was living in Weimar, a city with a long tradition of organ music, most notably that of J.S. Bach. Humphrey Searle calls these works—the Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam" and the Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H—Liszt's "only important original organ works"^[117] and Derek Watson, writing in his Liszt, considered them among the most significant organ works of the nineteenth century, heralding the work of such key organist-musicians as Reger, Franck, and Saint-Saëns, among others.^[118] Ad nos is an extended fantasia, Adagio, and fugue, lasting over half an hour, and the Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H include chromatic writing which sometimes removes the sense of tonality. Liszt also wrote the monumental set of variations on the first section of the second movement chorus from Bach's cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, BWV 12 (which Bach later reworked as the Crucifixus in the Mass in B minor), which he composed after the death of his daughter in 1862.^[119] He also wrote a Requiem for organ solo, intended to be performed liturgically, along with the spoken Requiem Mass.^[117]

Lieder

Franz Liszt composed about six dozen original songs with piano accompaniment. In most cases, the lyrics were in German or French, but there are also some songs in Italian, Russian, and Hungarian, and one song in English. Liszt began with the song "Angiolin dal biondo crin" in 1839, and, by 1844, had composed about two dozen songs. Some of them had been published as single pieces. In addition, there was an 1843–1844 series Buch der Lieder. The series had been projected for three volumes, consisting of six songs each, but only two volumes appeared.

Today, Liszt's songs are relatively obscure. The song "Ich möchte hingehn" is sometimes cited because of a single bar, which resembles the opening motif of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. It is often claimed that Liszt wrote that motif ten years before Wagner started work on Tristan in 1857.^{[n 8]} The original version of "Ich möchte hingehn" was certainly composed in 1844 or 1845; however, there are four manuscripts, and only a single one, a copy by August Conradi, contains the bar with the Tristan motif. It is on a paste-over in Liszt's hand. Since in the second half of 1858 Liszt was preparing his songs for publication and he had at that time just received the first act of Wagner's Tristan, it is most likely that the version on the paste-over was a quotation from Wagner.^{[n 9]}

Program music

Liszt, in some of his works, supported the relatively new idea of program music—that is, music intended to evoke extra-musical ideas such as a depiction of a landscape, a poem, a particular character or personage. (By contrast, absolute music stands for itself and is intended to be appreciated without any particular reference to the outside world.)

Liszt's own point of view regarding program music can for the time of his youth be taken from the preface of the Album d'un voyageur (1837). According to this, a landscape could evoke a certain kind of mood. Since a piece of music could also evoke a mood, a mysterious resemblance with the landscape could be imagined. In this sense, the music would not paint the landscape, but it would match the landscape in a third category, the mood.

In July 1854, Liszt stated in his essay about Berlioz and Harold in Italy that not all music was program music. If in the heat of a debate, a person would go so far as to claim the contrary, it would be better to put all ideas of program music aside. But it would be possible to take means like harmony, modulation, rhythm, instrumentation, and others to let a musical motif endure a fate. In any case, a program should be added to a piece of music only if it was necessarily needed for an adequate understanding of that piece.

Still later, in a letter to Marie d'Agoult of 15 November 1864, Liszt wrote:

Without any reserve I completely subscribe to the rule of which you so kindly want to remind me, that those musical works which are in a general sense following a program must take effect on imagination and emotion, independent of any program. In other words: All beautiful music must be first-rate and always satisfy the absolute rules of music which are not to be violated or prescribed.^{[n 10]}

Symphonic poems

Die Hunnenschlacht, as painted by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, that in turn inspired one of Liszt's symphonic poems

A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in one movement in which some extramusical program provides a narrative or illustrative element. This program may come from a poem, a story or novel, a painting, or another source. The term was first applied by Liszt to his 13 one-movement orchestral works in this vein. They were not pure symphonic movements in the classical sense because they dealt with descriptive subjects taken from mythology, Romantic literature, recent history, or imaginative fantasy. In other words, these works were programmatic rather than abstract.^[120] The form was a direct product of Romanticism which encouraged literary, pictorial, and dramatic associations in music. It developed into an important form of program music in the second half of the 19th century.^[121]

The first 12 symphonic poems were composed in the decade 1848–58 (though some use material conceived earlier); one other, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (From the Cradle to the Grave), followed in 1882. Liszt's intent, according to Hugh MacDonald in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, was for these single-movement works "to display the traditional logic of symphonic thought."^[122] That logic, embodied in sonata form as musical development, was traditionally the unfolding of latent possibilities in given themes in rhythm, melody and harmony, either in part or in their entirety, as they were allowed to combine, separate and contrast with one another.^[123] To the resulting sense of struggle, Beethoven had added intensity of feeling and the involvement of his audiences in that feeling, beginning from the Eroica Symphony to use the elements of the craft of music—melody, bass, counterpoint, rhythm and harmony—in a new synthesis of elements toward this end.^[124]

Liszt attempted in the symphonic poem to extend this revitalization of the nature of musical discourse and add to it the Romantic ideal of reconciling classical formal principles to external literary concepts. To this end, he combined elements of overture and symphony with descriptive elements, approaching symphonic first movements in form and scale.^[121] While showing extremely creative amendments to sonata form, Liszt used compositional devices such as cyclic form, motifs and thematic transformation to lend these works added coherence.^[125] Their composition proved daunting, requiring a continual process of creative experimentation that included many stages of composition, rehearsal, and revision to reach a version where different parts of the musical form seemed balanced.^[126]

Late works

With some works from the end of the Weimar years, Liszt drifted more and more away from the musical taste of his time. An early example is the melodrama "Der traurige Mönch" ("The sad monk") after a poem by Nikolaus Lenau, composed at the beginning of October 1860. While in the 19th-century harmonies were usually considered as major or minor triads to which dissonances could be added, Liszt used the augmented triad as the central chord.

More examples can be found in the third volume of Liszt's Années de Pélerinage. "Les Jeux d'Eaux à la Villa d'Este" ("The Fountains of the Villa d'Este"), composed in September 1877, foreshadows the impressionism of pieces on similar subjects by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Other pieces such as the "Marche funèbre, En mémoire de Maximilian I, Empereur du Mexique" ("Funeral march, In memory of Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico")^{[n 11]} composed in 1867 are, however, without stylistic parallel in the 19th and 20th centuries.

At a later stage, Liszt experimented with "forbidden" things such as parallel 5ths in the "Csárdás macabre"^{[n 12]} and atonality in the Bagatelle sans tonalité ("Bagatelle without Tonality"). Pieces like the "2nd Mephisto-Waltz" are unconventional because of their numerous repetitions of short motives. Also showing experimental characteristics are the Via crucis of 1878, as well as Unstern!, Nuages gris, and the two works entitled La lugubre gondola of the 1880s.

Liszt's students

Liszt's teaching approach

Liszt offered his students little technical advice, expecting them to "wash their dirty linen at home," as he phrased it. Instead, he focused on musical interpretation with a combination of anecdote, metaphor, and wit. He advised one student tapping out the opening chords of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata, "Do not chop beefsteak for us." To another who blurred the rhythm in Liszt's Gnomenreigen (usually done by playing the piece too fast in the composer's presence): "There you go, mixing salad again." Liszt also wanted to avoid creating carbon copies of himself; rather, he believed in preserving artistic individuality.^[130]

Liszt did not charge for lessons. He was troubled when German newspapers published details of pedagogue Theodor Kullak's will, revealing that Kullak had generated more than one million marks from teaching. "As an artist, you do not rake in a million marks without performing some sacrifice on the altar of Art," Liszt told his biographer Lina Ramann. Carl Czerny, however, charged an expensive fee for lessons and even dismissed Stephen Heller when he was unable to afford to pay for his lessons. Liszt spoke very fondly of his former teacher—who gave lessons to Liszt free of charge—to whom Liszt dedicated his Transcendental Études. He wrote to the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, urging Kullak's sons to create an endowment for needy musicians, as Liszt himself frequently did.^[130]

Films

• Claudio Arrau in Dreams of Love (1935)
• Brandon Hurst in Suez (1938)
• Ian Colin in A Dream of Love^[131] (1939)
• Fritz Leiber in Phantom of the Opera (1943)
• Stephen Bekassy in A Song to Remember (1945)
• Henry Daniell in Song of Love (1947)
• Sviatoslav Richter in Glinka – The Composer (1952)
• Will Quadflieg in Lola Montès (1955)
• Carlos Thompson in Magic Fire (1955)
• Dirk Bogarde in Song Without End (1960)
• Imre Sinkovits in Dreams of Love – Liszt (1970)
• Roger Daltrey in Lisztomania (1975)
• Anton Diffring in Wahnfried (1986)
• Julian Sands in Impromptu (1991)^[132]

Other portrayals

• Jeremy Irons in Notorious Woman (1974 BBC Television series)
• Iván Darvas and Géza D. Hegedűs in Liszt (1982 Hungarian television series)
• Patrick Rapold in The Empress (2022 German-language Netflix series)
• A fictionalized Liszt appears in A Book of Liszts: Variations on the Theme of Franz Liszt, by John Spurling. Seagull Books, 2011.

Notes

Citations

Sources