Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, organist, philanthropist, author and nationalist.
Background
Franz Liszt was born on October 22, 1811, in the village of Doborján (now Raiding), the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (present-day Hungary), the son of Adam Liszt, a talented amateur musician who played the cello in the court concerts, and Marie Anna Lager.
Education
Franz learnt his first lessons in piano from his talented father. Unlike most kids, the young lad started composing music at the tender age of eight and even began performing at concerts when he was 9.
Franz Liszt later on went on to learn lessons in music from renowned composers Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri.
He moved to Paris in 1823 and even tried performing at the Paris Conservatoire the same year, but was denied permission for not being a French national; instead, he studied with Anton Reicha, a theorist, who had been a pupil of Joseph Haydn’s brother Michael, and Ferdinando Paer, the director of the Théâtre-Italien in Paris and a composer of light operas.
Career
Paris was Liszt's home for 2 decades. Here he participated in the cultural life of the city, becoming friendly with Frédéric Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn, A. M. L. de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, and eventually Richard Wagner. After hearing Niccolò Paganini in 1831, Liszt determined to transfer the violinist's style of virtuosity to the keyboard.
Between 1835 and 1843 Liszt concertized extensively in Vienna, Leipzig, Prague, and Dresden, and he also continued to compose. Except for several fine songs, however, most of these works were transcriptions and arrangements of compositions by others. In 1843, Liszt accepted an appointment at Weimar as Grand Ducal Director of Music Extraordinary.
In 1846 Liszt returned to Hungary, where he became interested in gypsy music and eventually incorporated some of their melodies in his Hungarian Rhapsodies. Then Liszt moved to the Villa Altenberg, a home he bought in Weimar in 1848, where he settled down to compose, teach and conduct. He wrote the two piano concertos, the Todtentanz for piano and orchestra, and the symphonic poems Tasso, Les Préludes, Mazeppa, and Hunnenschlacht at Weimar; and he conducted the first performances of numerous works, including Wagner's Lohengrin (1850).
In 1863 Liszt, who had often shown an interest in becoming a member of the Church, joined the Oratory of the Madonna del Rosario. Many of his sacred works, such as the Legend of St. Elizabeth and Christus, derive from this decade.
In 1871 Liszt was appointed Royal Hungarian Counselor and began the three-cornered journey to Rome, Weimar, and Budapest that became the pattern for the rest of his life. In 1873 the fiftieth anniversary of his career was celebrated at Budapest as a national occasion. In 1877 he participated in a concert in Vienna for the fiftieth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven's death, just as he had contributed to the activities celebrating the centennials of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1856 and of Beethoven in 1870. Liszt was actively engaged in conducting and performing until his death.
In 1881 Liszt's seventieth birthday was celebrated in Rome with a concert of his own music. On May 22, 1883, Liszt gave a memorial concert for Wagner, who had died in February. Liszt gave his last concert on July 19, 1886, just 12 days before he died in Bayreuth. Franz Liszt succumbed to pneumonia on July 31, 1886.
Quotations:
"My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys, and all my sorrows lay."
"Music is the heart of life. " She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful."
"Real men are sadly lacking in this world, for when they are put to the test they prove worthless."
"Beware of missing chances; otherwise it may be altogether too late some day."
"Music embodies feeling without forcing it to contend and combine with thought, as it is forced in most arts and especially in the art of words."
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Franz Liszt was described as tall and very thin, his face was very small and pale, his forehead was remarkably high and beautiful; he wore his perfectly lank hair so long that it spread over his shoulders, which looked very odd, for when he got a bit excited and gesticulates, it fell right over his face and one saw nothing of his nose.
He was very negligent in his attire, his coat looked as if it had just been thrown on, he wore no cravat, only a narrow white collar.
Quotes from others about the person
"His playing was free, poetic, replete with imaginative shadings, and, at the same time, characterizes by noble, artistic repose. And his technique, his virtuosity? I hesitate to speak if it. It suffices to observe that he has not lost it but has rather added to it in clarity and moderation. What a remarkable man! After a life incomparably rich and active, full of excitement, passion, and pleasure, he returns at the age of sixty-two and plays the most difficult music with the ease and strength and freshness of a youth…." (Eduard Hanslick)
"Perhaps the greatest source of wonder in Liszt's life was that he composed anything at all, let alone anything of lasting greatness. The man who, from an early age, had crisscrossed Europe as the greatest travelling virtuoso, providing, with the onset of puberty, much material for gossip columns, might have been forgiven for taking the Wildean view, 'My art is my life', and leaving it at that. [...] Exactly how Liszt could have found the time to compose is difficult to imagine." (Kenneth Hamilton)
Connections
From 1835 to 1839, Franz Liszt lived with Marie d’Agoult, a renowned author. Liszt had three children with D'Agoult; however, he and D'Agoult did not marry, maintaining their independent views and other differences while Liszt was busy composing and touring throughout Europe.
In 1849, Liszt travelled to Kiev, Ukraine, for a performance, where he met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a royal of Polish origin. Carolyne eventually became a really important person in the musician’s life. The princess and the composer were also romantically involved, but sadly the relationship ran into several complications, mainly because Carolyne was already married.