1811–1886 · Austria · Romantic
Franz Liszt (1811–1886) was a Hungarian-German composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, teacher and writer, one of the leading figures of musical Romanticism. He created the rhapsody and the symphonic poem, became one of the founders of the Weimar school, and left a rich legacy, from concert pieces to lyrical cycles such as Années de pèlerinage and Consolations.
Franz Liszt was born on 22 October 1811 in the Hungarian village of Doborján — known by its Austrian name, Raiding — and was an only child. At his baptism his name was recorded in Latin as Franciscus and pronounced in German as Franz; the Hungarian form Ferenc was rarely used by the composer himself, though it later became standard in Russian and a number of other literatures.
His father, Adam Liszt, was an official in the administration of Prince Esterházy and in his youth played cello in an orchestra led by Joseph Haydn. He spent two years as a novice in the Franciscan order before leaving it, reportedly keeping a lifelong friendship with one of the friars — some researchers link this to the choice of his son's name. His mother, Anna Maria Lager, was a baker's daughter from Krems an der Donau; orphaned young, she moved to Vienna to work as a maid and later to her brother's home in Mattersburg, where she met Adam Liszt.
His father taught him piano himself, while at church the boy learned singing and the local organist taught him the organ. After three years of study, eight-year-old Franz gave his first public concert, and his father began taking him to the homes of noble families. Convinced that his son needed serious training, Adam took him to Vienna, where from 1821 Carl Czerny taught him piano free of charge and Antonio Salieri taught him composition theory, struck by his improvisation and sight-reading; the young pianist's appearances caused a sensation among the Viennese public.
In 1823 the family moved to Paris — Adam Liszt hoped to enrol his son at the Paris Conservatoire, but it accepted only French students, and admission was refused by its own director, the Italian Cherubini. Despite limited means, his father decided to stay in the city, so Franz had to earn money through concerts from an early age. He studied composition with Ferdinando Paer and Anton Reicha, but after Czerny no one taught him piano again. During these years Liszt began composing — mostly études for his own performances — and at fourteen he wrote his only opera, Don Sanche, or the Castle of Love, staged at the Grand Opéra in 1825.
In 1827, during a trip to the seaside meant to restore his health, Adam Liszt fell gravely ill and died. His father's death shook Franz deeply — for about three years he lived in a depressed state, weary of being treated as a society curiosity, and withdrew from Parisian life for a while, to the point that a newspaper printed his own obituary. He returned to public life only in 1830, the year of the July Revolution, which drew him in with its ideas of justice; it was then that he conceived a Revolutionary Symphony based on revolutionary songs. A circle of close musician friends gathered around Liszt — Berlioz, and Paganini, who arrived in Paris in 1831; Paganini's playing pushed Liszt to perfect his own technique to the utmost, and after setting concerts aside for a while, he arranged Paganini's caprices for piano, publishing them as six études.
Liszt's Parisian circle included Dumas, Hugo, Musset and George Sand. Around the same time, about 1835, he began publishing essays — on the condition of French artists, on Schumann's work — and took up teaching, which stayed with him for the rest of his life. He had grown close to Countess Marie d'Agoult — a friend of George Sand's, drawn to contemporary art, writing under the name Daniel Stern — somewhat earlier. Their closeness turned into a deep attachment, and in 1835 the countess left her husband and cut ties with her former circle; Liszt took her to Switzerland, where the next chapter of his life began.
The period from 1835 to 1848 became known in Liszt's life as the Years of Pilgrimage, after the title of his piano collection. Living with Marie d'Agoult in Geneva and nearby villages in Switzerland, he sketched the first pieces for this cycle, taught at the Geneva Conservatoire and worked on an unfinished Method of Piano Playing. In 1837, already the father of a daughter, Blandine, the couple travelled to Italy — Rome, Naples, Venice, Florence — and Liszt described his impressions in essays for Parisian publications. It was in Italy that he gave, for the first time in history, a solo recital with no other performers on the programme — a decision that finally separated the concert stage from the salon.
Between 1842 and 1848 Liszt toured Europe several times, including Russia, Spain, Portugal and Turkey — the peak of his concert career. He performed in Russia in 1842, 1843 and 1847; in St Petersburg he was heard by Stasov, Serov and Glinka, though Glinka did not care for Liszt's playing, rating Field more highly. Liszt took a keen interest in Russian music: he greatly admired Ruslan and Lyudmila, made a piano transcription of the March of Chernomor, and corresponded with the composers of the Moguchaya Kuchka. During these same years he met Princess Carolyne Wittgenstein; in 1847 they decided to marry, but since Carolyne was already married and a devout Catholic, the new marriage required a divorce and permission from both the Russian emperor and the pope.
At the height of his educational efforts, Liszt included works by Beethoven and Bach in his concerts, along with his own arrangements of symphonies and songs; on his initiative, celebrations in honour of Beethoven were held in Bonn in 1845, and he personally covered the shortfall for the composer's monument. In time Liszt grew disillusioned with this mission, realising that audiences preferred an opera potpourri to a Beethoven sonata, and his active concert career came to an end. He had long wanted to visit Hungary, but Marie d'Agoult opposed the trip; when a great flood struck the country, Liszt felt it his duty to help his compatriots — the trip led to a break with the countess, and he went to Hungary alone.
Austria and Hungary both gave Liszt a warm welcome: in Vienna his long-standing rival Sigismond Thalberg publicly acknowledged his superiority, and at home Liszt became a figure symbolising the patriotic upsurge, giving the proceeds of his concerts to flood victims. Moving to Weimar, he entered the most productive creative period of his life: there 12 of his 13 symphonic poems were born — a new genre of programme orchestral music drawing its subjects from poetry, drama or painting, including Les Préludes, Mazeppa and Hamlet. The same years produced the programme symphonies Faust and Dante, revised editions of his two piano concertos, the cycle Consolations, two volumes of Années de pèlerinage, the Sonata in B minor, and fifteen of his nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies.
On the stage of the Weimar theatre, Liszt the conductor presented 43 operas — starting with Gluck and Mozart and going all the way to Verdi and Wagner, with eight productions counted as world premieres. He also performed Beethoven's symphonies and works by Schubert, Berlioz, Schumann and Glinka, arranging themed music weeks and writing his own programme essays for them. This work turned small Weimar into a real hub of German musical life, drawing musicians from many countries; among them was the conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow, who married Liszt's younger daughter Cosima. The Weimar public, however, was conservative and barely accepted the composer's innovations, and his concerts often played to half-empty halls; his private life was further complicated by the fact that Carolyne Wittgenstein, however hard she tried, never obtained a divorce and could not marry Liszt. The difficult emotional state of these years grew heavier still after his son and elder daughter died one after the other.
Not long afterwards, Liszt and Carolyne Wittgenstein moved to Rome, though they lived apart: she urged him to take holy orders, and in 1865 Liszt received the minor order of acolyte. His compositions from these years were mostly sacred music: the oratorios The Legend of St Elizabeth and Christus, four psalms, a requiem, the Hungarian Coronation Mass, and the third volume of Années de pèlerinage, steeped in philosophical themes; he now gave concerts only very rarely. In 1866 Liszt briefly returned to Weimar, settling in the modest house of a former gardener — a period known as his second Weimar years; as before, young musicians visited him, among them Grieg, Borodin and Siloti.
From 1875 Pest became the centre of Liszt's work: he was elected president of the new Academy of Music there and taught a great deal. Among those he taught in these years were Sophie Menter, Vera Timanova, Moritz Rosenthal, Eugen d'Albert, Károly Aggházy, Carl Tausig, Alexander Siloti and Emil von Sauer. In these years Liszt also wrote the Valses oubliées, new piano rhapsodies, and a cycle portraying figures of the Hungarian independence movement.
By this time Liszt's daughter Cosima had become Wagner's wife, and their son Siegfried later also became a well-known conductor; after Wagner's death Cosima continued to run the Bayreuth festivals. At one of them, in 1886, Liszt caught a cold that turned into pneumonia, his heart began to fail, and swelling in his legs meant he could only move with help. His last concert took place on 19 July, and on 31 July 1886 Franz Liszt died in a Bayreuth hotel in the arms of his valet.
Liszt expanded the language of music with innovations in harmony, melody, form and texture. He brought two new instrumental genres into use — the rhapsody and the symphonic poem — and became one of the founders of what came to be called the Weimar, or New German, school. He is also credited with shaping the single-movement cyclic form: in Schumann and Chopin it had only been hinted at, while Liszt brought it to full maturity. The composer believed in a kinship between the arts — music with painting, architecture and literature — which is why so much of his output is programme music, its musical form resting on a specific subject drawn from a picture, a sculpture or a book. Liszt also began his conducting career in Weimar, where he staged operas, including works by Wagner, and performed symphonies by other composers.
The greater part of his legacy consists of piano works — from virtuoso concert pieces and Hungarian rhapsodies to lyrical cycles such as Années de pèlerinage and Consolations. Liszt was also the author of programme symphonies and symphonic poems for orchestra, of numerous piano arrangements of other composers' works, and, in his later years, of sacred music — oratorios, masses and psalms. Among Liszt's large-scale choral works is the Gran Mass.
An important part of Liszt's legacy is teaching: in Weimar he gave free open lessons to pianists who came from all over Europe, a practice regarded as the forerunner of the modern masterclass. Liszt made a point of never charging for his open lessons; Russian musicians also came to hear him in Weimar, among them Borodin and Siloti. Liszt also wrote about music — his texts include a book on Chopin and a study of the music of Hungarian Roma musicians.
The site has three of Liszt's pieces from the Consolations cycle — a good place to start once you are past an intermediate repertoire — and the more extended Second Ballade, better left for later, once technique and experience have grown. All four pieces are written for solo piano.