FRANZ LISTZ,

Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist and
teacher of the Romantic period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than six decades,
he is considered to be one of the most prolific and influential composers of his era and remains
one of the most popular composers in modern concert piano repertoire.
He literally redefined what 10 fingers were capable of, producing one scintillating sleight-of-
hand keyboard effect after another.

Such was the sheer force of his musical personality that adoring women collapsed swooning
following just a single touch of the ivories. Even the normally unimpressionable Matthew
Arnold reported after a Liszt concert that “as soon as I returned home, I pulled off my coat,
flung myself on the sofa, and wept the bitterest, sweetest tears”.

There were even those who thought Liszt’s unearthly powers were the result of a pact with the
Devil, exacerbated by such dark and “paranormal” pianistic whirlwinds as the Dante Sonata and
Mephisto Waltz.

Learning Beethoven’s C minor Piano Concerto from memory at a day’s notice, and sight-reading
the score of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto with a cigar held between the first and second
fingers of his right hand, were like child’s play to Liszt.

Yet he was more than a mere musical showman. He virtually invented the piano recital as we
know it, ensuring that the ordinary man in the street got to hear music that was normally the
exclusive preserve of the educated classes.

Orchestral concerts were still comparatively rare in the pre-gramophone age, so Liszt set about
arranging many symphonic scores for solo piano (most famously Beethoven’s nine
symphonies), in addition to composing countless sets of virtuoso fantasias on themes from
operas, both popular and obscure. He was also a keen supporter of new music, and did much to
establish the rising Nationalist schools in Russia and Bohemia, as well as encouraging the likes
of Berlioz, Grieg and, most notably, Wagner.

LIFE:
Franz Liszt was born to Anna Liszt (née Maria Anna Lager) and Adam Liszt on 22 October 1811,
in the village of Doborján (German: Raiding) in Sopron County, in the Kingdom of Hungary,
Austrian Empire. Liszt's father played the piano, violin, cello, and guitar. He had been in the
service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel, and Beethoven personally. At
age six, Franz began listening attentively to his father's piano playing. Franz also found exposure
to music through attending mass as well as traveling Romani bands that toured the Hungarian
countryside.Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz began composing in
an elementary manner when he was eight. He appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg
(Hungarian: Pozsony, present-day Bratislava, Slovakia) in October and November 1820 at age
nine. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors (probably including composer Elise
Schlick) offered to finance Franz's musical education in Vienna.

There, Liszt received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student
of Beethoven and Hummel. He also received lessons in composition from Ferdinando Paer and
Antonio Salieri, who was then the music director of the Viennese court. 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.In
the spring of 1823, when his one-year leave of absence came to an end, Adam Liszt asked
Prince Esterházy in vain for two more years. Adam Liszt, therefore, took his leave of the Prince's
services. At the end of April 1823, the family returned to Hungary for the last time. At the end
of May 1823, the family traveled to Vienna once more.

Towards the end of 1823 or early 1824, Liszt's first composition was published, his Variation on
a Waltz by Diabelli (now S. 147), which appeared as Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer
Künstlerverein. This anthology, commissioned by Anton Diabelli, includes 50 variations on his
waltz by 50 different composers (Part II), 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, Op.
120. Liszt's inclusion in the Diabelli project (he was described in it as "an 11-year-old boy, born
in Hungary") was almost certainly at the instigation of Czerny, his teacher, and also a
participant. Liszt was the only child composer in the anthology.[citation needed]

Adolescence
After his father's death in 1827, Liszt moved to Paris;for the next five years, he lived with his
mother in a small apartment. He gave up touring, and in order to earn money, Liszt gave
lessons on playing 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.

The following year, 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.
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 pessimism. He again stated a wish to join the
Church but was dissuaded this time by his mother. He had many discussions with the Abbé de
Lamennais, who acted as his spiritual father, and also with Chrétien Urhan, a German-born
violinist who introduced him to the Saint-Simonists.Urhan also wrote music that was anti-
classical and highly subjective, with titles such as Elle et moi, La Salvation angélique and Les
Regrets, and may have whetted the young Liszt's taste for musical romanticism. Equally
important for Liszt was Urhan's earnest championship of Schubert, which may have stimulated
his own lifelong devotion to that composer's music.
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.

Influence from Paganini

After attending a charity concert on 20 April 1832, for the victims of the Parisian cholera
epidemic, organized by Niccolò Paganini, Liszt became determined to become as great a
virtuoso on the piano as Paganini was on the violin.He again became interested in virtuoso
technique and resolved to transfer some of Paganini’s fantastic violin effects to the piano,
writing a fantasia on his La campanella.
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.

In 1833, he made transcriptions of several works by Berlioz including the Symphonie

fantastique. His chief motive in doing so, especially with the Symphonie, was to help the
poverty-stricken Berlioz, whose symphony remained unknown and unpublished. Liszt bore the
expense of publishing the transcription himself and played it many times to help popularize the
original score. He was also forming a friendship with a third composer who influenced him,
Frédéric Chopin; under his influence, Liszt's poetic and romantic side began to develop.

Last years
Liszt in March 1886, four months before his death, photographed by Nadar
Liszt fell down the stairs of a hotel in Weimar on 2 July 1881. Though friends and colleagues had
noticed swelling in his feet and legs when he had arrived in Weimar the previous month (an
indication of possible congestive heart failure), he had been in good health up to that point and
was still fit and active. He was left immobilized for eight weeks after the accident and never
fully recovered from it. A number of ailments manifested themselves—dropsy, asthma,
insomnia, a cataract in the left eye, and heart disease. The latter eventually contributed to
Liszt's death. He became increasingly plagued by feelings of desolation, despair, and
preoccupation with death—feelings that he expressed in his works from this period. As he told
Lina Ramann, "I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in
sound."

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.

The composer Camille Saint-Saëns, an old friend, whom Liszt had once called "the greatest
organist in the world", dedicated his Symphony No. 3 "Organ Symphony" to Liszt; it had
premiered in London only a few weeks before the death of its dedicatee.

Liszt died in Bayreuth, Germany, on 31 July 1886, at the age of 74, officially as a result of
pneumonia, which he may have contracted during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by his daughter
Cosima. Questions have been posed as to whether medical malpractice played a part in his
death.[48] He was buried on 3 August 1886, in the municipal cemetery of Bayreuth [de] against
his wishes.

Religious influence
From his earliest years, Liszt expressed a deep devotion to the Almighty and desired to enter
the priesthood rather than pursue a career in music. He once wrote his mother, "You know,
dearest mother, how during the years of my youth, I dreamed myself incessantly into the world
of the saints. Nothing seemed to me so self-evident as heaven, nothing so true and so rich in
blessedness as the goodness and compassion of God."

Though his lifestyle often belied his religious convictions, he nonetheless continued to espouse
religious ideals in the most profound manner, especially as they pertained to music. Once
writing to a friend, he stated, "I have taken a serious stand as a religious, Catholic composer.
Among the composers I know, none has a more intense and deeper feeling for religious music
than your humble servant." He possessed a fervent belief that as a musician he was in the
position to connect others to God through his art, once stating, "The church composer is also a
preacher and priest and where words cannot suffice to convey the feeling, music gives them
wings and transfigures them." This is not unlike Martin Luther's assertion that, "Music is a gift
and largesse of God…. Praise through the word and music is a sermon in sound."

Musical style and influence

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.
Liszt's virtuosity and technical reforms
Liszt's playing was described as theatrical and showy, and all those who saw him perform were
stunned at his unrivaled mastery over the keyboard. Perhaps the best indication of Liszt's
piano-playing abilities comes from his Transcendental Etudes and Grandes Etudes de Paganini,
written in 1838-39, and described by Robert Schumann as "playable at the most, by ten or
twelve players in the world." To play these pieces, a pianist must connect with the piano as an
extension of his own body (Walker, 1987).

Liszt claimed to have spent ten or twelve hours each day practicing scales, arpeggios, trills and
repeated notes to improve his technique and endurance. All of these piano techniques were
frequently applied in his compositions, often resulting in music of extreme technical difficulty
(his Transcendental Etude No. 5 "Feux follets" is an example). He would challenge himself and
his immaculate fingering by presenting random problems to his playing.

During the 1830s and 1840s—the years of Liszt's "transcendental execution"—he

revolutionized piano technique in almost every sector. Figures like Anton Rubinstein, Ignacy Jan
Paderewski and Sergei Rachmaninoff turned to Liszt's music to discover the laws which govern
the keyboard.

While revolutionary and famously spectacular, Liszt's playing was not only flash and acrobatics.
He also was reported to have played with a depth and nobility of feeling that would move
sturdy men to tears.

Piano recital
The term "recital" was first used by Liszt at his concert in London of June 9, 1840, although the
term had been suggested to him by the publisher Frederick Beale, and his career model is still
followed by performing artists to this day.

Liszt's recitals traversed the European continent from the Urals to Ireland. He would often play
before as many as three thousand people. He was the first solo pianist to play entire
programmes from memory, and the first to play with the piano at
right angles to the platform, with its lid open, reflecting sound across the auditorium.

Liszt and Chopin

Both considered Romantic composers, Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin connected through their
music. While Chopin is considered the better composer, Liszt is considered the better pianist,
playing at a far more difficult level than his peer. The two men enjoyed a level of competition,
as they were only a year apart in age. They became friends, and Liszt introduced Chopin to
George Sand, who became Chopin's mistress. Both composers were part of the movement that
transitioned musical style from the Classical period to the Romantic period and its inventive,
expressive, and innovative styles. Liszt outlived Chopin, and even wrote a book about him; he
revered Chopin's artistic and creative style, which he incorporated into his own performances.

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"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.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.He also wrote a Requiem for organ solo, intended to be
performed liturgically, along with the spoken Requiem Mass.

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 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.

Others
La campanella
Liebesträume
Liebestraum No. 3 As-dur
Piano Sonata in B minor
Hungarian Rhapsodies
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
Transcendental Études
Années de pèlerinage
Mephisto Waltzes
Via crucis
Les préludes
Piano Concerto No. 1
Totentanz
Mazeppa
Un sospiro
Grandes études de Paganini
Consolation No.3
Piano Concerto No. 2
Faust Symphony
Dante Sonata
Christus
Rhapsodie espagnole
Dante Symphony
Liebestraum
Sonetto 104 del Petrarca
Ballade No. 2 in B minor
Transcendental Étude No. 4
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 6
Transcendental Étude No. 5

REFERENCES:
Wikipedia.
Concise history of western music.
Study.com.
Classical fm
Britannia.
Leon Botstein, What makes Franz Liszt still important, accessed 28 October 2022
Searle, 11:29.
Walker 1987, p. 290.
Hensher, Philip (29 July 2016). "Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar by Oliver Hilmes
review – a man who transformed music". The Guardian.
HISTORY OF WESTERN CLASSICAL MUSIC 2023 PRESENTATION
ON
LIFE AND WORKS OF FRANZ LISZT.
Presenters:
Ottah Chukwuemeka Elisha.
Alebiowu Ayomide.
Edit Smith.
Oboh Deborah.
Victory.

Lecturer : Prof. Olusoji