Liszt
was born in Paiding, Hungary, and grew up in a musical environment - his father
was an official at the Esterhazy court where Haydn had worked. The family soon
moved to Vienna where Liszt studied the piano with Carl Czerny and composi- tion
with Mozart's rival, Antonio Salieri. At a concert given in the presence of
Beethoven, Liszt is said to have been rewarded with a kiss on the forehead from
the aging master.
In
1823 Liszt arrived in Paris, where he soon became a celebrated performer and
toured France. He also played in England in 1824, where he was received by King
George TV, before illness and the death of his father from typhoid prompted his
return. He went back to Paris in 1826, where he befriended Berlioz and Chopin
and began his career as a progressive and visionary composer. He also considered
becoming a priest and on top of everything else fell in love - these three sides
to his character competed for ascendancy during the rest of his life.
As
a composer Liszt was influenced by leading Romantics, such as the author Victor
Hugo and the painter Eugene Delacroix; while Chopin brought out his poetic
nature, Berlioz encouraged the latent Mephistophelian character in his music. On
hearing Paganini in 1831 Liszt set out to match the violinist's astonishing
virtuosity in his own work, and wrote a piano transcription of Paganini's La Campanella.
These diabolical and fiendishly virtuoso elements would later find
expression in the swirling Mephisto
Waltzes for piano.
In
1834 Liszt began a long affair with the Countess Marie d'Agoult, and the couple
moved to Geneva the following year. He continued to perform widely, and won a
famous piano duel against his rival Sigismond Thalberg in 1837. In 1839 he began
touring extensively as he sought to raise funds for a Beethoven memorial in
Bonn. His piano-playing created a sensation wherever he went. He was honoured in
his native Hungary, where he rediscovered the interest in gypsy music that would
later inspire his Hungarian Rhapsodies. He
also proposed the establishment of a national Conservatoire in Budapest. But
his long absences from home cost him his relationship with the countess and they
separated in 1844.
Liszt
had a succession of mistresses during these touring years until, in 1847, the
Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein of Kiev persuaded him to give up travelling
and settle as a full-time conductor and composer in Weimar, Germany. In the
course of the next 12 years he conducted music by Wagner (including the first
performance of Lohengrin in 1850)
Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi and others, in addition to performances of his own
works. Weimar became the shrine of the 'New German School', and pianists and
composers flocked there for lessons or consultations with Liszt, for which he
refused payment. However, his cohabitation with the married princess was
becoming a court scandal, and his enthusiastic support of Wagner (then a
political exile) was highly controversial. He resigned his post in 1858 and
eventually left Weimar in 1861.
Liszt
is credited with the invention of the symphonic poem and he completed all but
one of the works employing this quintessentially Romantic form during his Weimar
years. The main technique was 'thematic transformation', in which one or more
musical themes, representing heroic people or ideas, evolved throughout the
work, thus providing both musical structure and Romantic narrative. The
technique reached its zenith in his Piano
Sonata in B Minor (1853) and in the Faust
Symphony (1854).
Liszt
eventually joined Princess Carolyne in Rome where she had tried, in the
end unsuccessfully, to persuade the Pope to grant a divorce. He remained there
for eight years, occupying himself mainly with music inspired by religion,
including the reflective Annees dep pelerinage (Years of Pilgrimage) for piano. These pieces
are in three volumes: the first deals with Swiss subjects, the second with
Italian, and the third is an unauthorized volume published after Liszt's death.
In 1865 he took the four minor orders of the Catholic Church.
Invitations
to Weimar in 1869 and to Budapest in 1871 marked the beginning of a new phase in
his life and he subsequently travelled continually between these two cities and
Rome. The three centres symbolized the visionary artist, the passionate gypsy
and the pious Catholic that lived within the same man.
Liszt's
final tour in 1886 took him once again to Paris and London, but he soon became
weak with dropsy and spent his last days in the Wagner festival town of Bayreuth.
There he was looked after by Cosima, his second daughter by the Countess
d'Agoult and by then Wagner's widow, and wag able to attend a production of Parstfal
before dying from pneumonia. Liszt left behind more than 400 original works
in addition to many transcriptions and arrangements, and he made an impact
during his life as the most phenomenal pianist of his time.
Piano Sonata in B minor
A Faust Symphony
Piano Concertos Nos. 1 & 2
Annees de pelerinage
Etudes d'execution transcendante
Mephisto Waltzes
Hungarian Rhapsodies
Prelude and Fugue on the name B-A-C-H
