Franz [Ferenc] Liszt
( Born; Raiding, 22 Oct 1811; Died; Bayreuth, 31 July 1886).
Hungarian composer and pianist. He was taught the piano by his father and then Czerny
(Vienna, 1822-3), establishing himself as a remarkable concert artist by the age of 12. In
Paris he studied theory and composition with Reicha and Paer; he wrote an opera and
bravura piano pieces and undertook tours in France, Switzerland and England before
ill-health and religious doubt made him reassess his career. Intellectual growth came
through literature, and the urge to create through hearing opera and especially Paganini,
whose spectacular effects Liszt eagerly transferred to the piano in original works and
operatic fantasias. Meanwhile he gave lessons and began his stormy relationship (1833-44)
with the (married) Countess Marie d'Agoult. They lived in Switzerland and Italy and had
three children.
He gave concerts in Paris, maintaining his legendary
reputation, and published some essays, but was active chiefly as a composer (Années de
pèlerinage). To help raise funds for the Bonn Beethoven monument, he resumed the life
of a travelling virtuoso (1839-47); he was adulated everywhere, from Ireland to Turkey,
Portugal to Russia. In 1848 he took up a full-time conducting post at the Weimar court,
where, living with the Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, he wrote or revised most of
the major works for which he is known, conducted new operas by Wagner, Berlioz and Verdi
and, as the teacher of Hans von Bülow and others in the German avant-garde, became the
figurehead of the 'New German school'. In 1861-9 he lived mainly in Rome, writing
religious works (he took minor orders in 1865); from 1870 he journeyed regularly between
Rome, Weimar and Budapest. He remained active as a teacher and performer to the end of his
life.
Liszt's personality appears contradictory in its
combination of romantic abstraction and other-worldliness with a cynical diabolism and
elegant, worldly manners. But though he had a restless intellect, he also was ceaselessly
creative, seeking the new in music. He helped others generously, as conductor, arranger,
pianist or writer, and took artistic and personal risks in doing so. The greatest pianist
of his time, he composed some of the most difficult piano music ever written (e.g. the Transcendental
Studies) and had an extraordinarily broad repertory, from Scarlatti onwards; he
invented the modern piano recital.
Two formal traits give Liszt's compositions a personal
stamp: experiment with large-scale structures (extending traditional sonata form, unifying
multi-movement works), and thematic transformation, or subjecting a single short idea to
changes of mode, rhythm, metre, tempo or accompaniment to form the thematic basis of an
entire work (as in Les préludes, the Faust-Symphonie). His 'transcendental'
piano technique was similarly imaginative, springing from a desire to make the piano sound
like an orchestra or as rich in scope as one. In harmony he ventured well beyond the use
of augmented and diminished chords and the whole-tone scale; the late piano and choral
works especially contain tonal clashes arising from independent contrapuntal strands,
chords built from 4ths or 5ths, and a strikingly advanced chromaticism.
Piano works naturally make up the greater part of Liszt's
output; they range from the brilliant early studies and lyric nature pieces of the first
set of Années de pélerinage to the finely dramatic and logical B minor Sonata, a
masterpiece of 19th-century piano literature. The piano works from the 1870s onwards are
more austere and withdrawn, some of them impressionistic, even gloomy (Années,
third set). Not all the piano music is free of bombast but among the arrangements, the
symphonic transcriptions (notably of Berlioz, Beethoven and Schubert) are often faithful
and ingenious, the operatic fantasias (on Norma and Ernani, for example)
more than mere salon pieces.
Liszt invented the term 'sinfonische Dichtung' ('symphonic
poem') for orchestral works that did not obey traditional forms strictly and were based
generally on a literary or pictorial idea. Whether first conceived as overtures (Les
préludes) or as works for other media (Mazeppa), these pieces all emphasize
musical construction much more than scene-painting or story-telling. The three-movement Faust-Symphonie
too, with its vivid character studies of Faust, Gretchen and Mephistopheles, relies on
technical artifice (especially thematic transformation) more than musical narrative to
convey its message; it is often considered Liszt's supreme masterpiece. Although he failed
in his aim to revolutionize liturgical music, Liszt did create in his psalm settings, Missa
solemnis and the oratorio Christus some intensely dramatic and moving choral
music, successful in his lifetime and well suited to concert performance.
Dramatic and vocal music Don Sanche, opera
(1825); Circa; 70 songs; recitations
Choral music Die Legende von der heiligen
Elisabeth, oratorio (1857-62); Christus, oratorio (1853-66); Missa solemnis (1855); Missa
choralis (1865); Hungarian Coronation Mass (1867); Requiem (1867-8); Psalm xiii (1855);
Psalm xviii (1860); Via crucis (1878-9); Circa; 50 others; 2 Beethoven cantatas (1845;
1869-70); An die KUuml;nstler (1853); Hungaria 1848, cantata (1848); Circa; 26 others.
Orchestral and chamber music Les
préludes, sym. poem (1848); Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne, sym. poem (1849); Tasso,
sym. poem (1849); Héroïde funèbre, sym. poem (1850); Prometheus, sym. poem (1850);
Mazeppa, sym. poem (1851); FestklAuml;nge, sym. poem (1853); Orpheus, sym. poem (1854);
Hungaria, sym. poem (1854); Hunnenschlacht, sym. poem (1857); Die Ideale, sym. poem
(1857); Faust-Symphonie (1857); Dante Symphony (1857); Hamlet, sym. poem (1858); First
Mephisto Waltz (1861); Trois odes funèbres (1866); Second Mephisto Waltz (1881); Pf Conc.
no.1, EFlat; (1855); Pf Conc. no.2, A (1857); Totentanz, pf/orch (1865); other orch works;
9 chamber works
Keyboard music Grand galop chromatique
(1838); Grosses Konzertsolo (1849); [12] Transcendental Studies (1851); [6] Paganini
Studies (1851); AnnEacute;es de pèerinage, i, Suisse (1854), ii, Italie (1849), iii
(1877); Sonata, b (1853); [19] Hungarian Rhapsodies (1853, 1885); Third Mephisto Waltz
(1883); ballades
Arrangements, transcriptions Circa; 250
paraphrases, mostly for pf, of works by other composers, incl. fantasias on opera themes
by Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Auber, Mozart, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Verdi; transcrs. of orch
works, songs and opera themes by Beethoven, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Weber, Wagner,
Saint-Saëns; Circa; 90 arrs. of his own works
(c)Groves Dictionaries, MacMillan Publishers Limited, UK