 |
{list, frahnts}
Franz (Ferencz) Liszt, b. Raiding, Hungary, Oct. 22, 1811,
d. July 31, 1886, was one of the most celebrated pianists
of the 19th century and one of its most innovative composers.
As a small child he showed immense musical gifts. At the age
of 10 he moved with his family to Vienna, where he studied
with Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri and played for Beethoven.
In 1823 his family moved to Paris, but Liszt was denied admission
to the conservatory because of his youth and foreign origin.
He had no further formal piano instruction, though he studied
composition with Ferdinando Paer and Anton Reicha.
Liszt toured for several years as a recitalist before he settled
(1834) in Geneva, Switzerland, with the Countess Marie d'Agoult.
One of their three children, Cosima, married the conductor
Hans von Bulow and then Richard Wagner; another, Blandine,
married Emile Ollivier, premier of France at the outbreak
of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. In 1839, Liszt embarked
on a series of concert tours throughout Europe.
In 1844, Liszt was appointed musical director in Weimar; he
settled there in 1848 and abandoned concertizing to devote
himself to conducting and composition. From these Weimar years
come his best-known large compositions: the two piano concertos,
the Totentanz (Dance of Death) for piano and orchestra, the
Dante Symphony (1856), and the monumental Faust Symphony (1854-57).
Liszt also invented a new form, the SYMPHONIC POEM, an orchestral
composition that follows a literary or other program; it consists
of a single movement, generally organized either as a loose
sonata form, as in Tasso, or as a one-movement symphony, as
in Les Preludes . Eleven of his twelve symphonic poems date
from his first Weimar period. Liszt unified his larger works
by deriving their thematic materials from one or more short
motifs. The Hungarian Rhapsodies, Liszt's best-known solo
piano works, were based on Hungarian urban popular music rather
than folk music.
Liszt left Weimar for Rome in 1859 with the Princess Carolyne
von Sayn-Wittgenstein, whom he met on a concert tour in Russia
in 1847 and with whom he lived until 1863. After they separated,
Liszt turned to writing religious music, including two masses,
the Legends for piano, and the oratorio Christus (1863). In
1865 he received minor orders and was made an abbe by Pope
Pius IX. Liszt returned to Weimar in 1869, but after his appointment
as president of the New Hungarian Academy of Music in Budapest
in 1875 he divided his time between Budapest, Weimar, and
Rome.
The works of Liszt's late years, misunderstood by his contemporaries,
are surprisingly modern in concept and anticipate many of
the devices of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartok,
and the Austrian expressionists. He died while attending the
Wagner festival in Bayreuth, Germany.
Liszt was one of the great altruists in the history of music:
he performed the large piano works of Robert Schumann and
Frederic Chopin when they were physically unable to do so;
he provided opportunities for Hector Berlioz, Wagner, and
Camille Saint-Saens to have their music performed; and he
also arranged for piano much music in other media--from Bach's
organ works to Wagner's originally written operas. His piano
writing incorporates both the orchestral style of Beethoven
and the delicate pianistic effects of Chopin. He was a distinguished
piano teacher, with pupils from all over Europe and the United
States.
Though many of Liszt's works contain passages of bombast or
sentimentality, his innovations in harmony, musical form,
and writing for the piano make him one of the most important
and influential composers of the 19th century.
 |
 |
|
- 
