Consider Franz Liszt. He was the greatest pianist of his day and most likely the greatest of all time. As a musician he had everything - a perfect ear, the ability to hear a long and complicated piece of music and immediately play it back as written. He was probably the greatest sightreader who ever lived. Poorly educated, he pulled himself up and ended a thoroughly literate man. Incredibly good-looking as a young man, his amours were the talk of Europe. Later in life he befriended all struggling composers who crossed his path. He also turned out most of the great pianists of the later half of the 19th century.
He was a complicated man, pulled by religion in one direction, the flesh in another. And his music is equally complicated. More than any of the early romantics, he broke free of previous influences and worked out his own rules. His larger forms were generally cyclic in nature, featured by transformation of thematic material. Often an entire work would be evolved from a cell at the beginning. In this there is a direct link from Liszt to serial composition.
Harmonically the man was a raving genius. He was experimenting with chordal combinations that carried the seeds of atonality long before Wagner. Wagner was always stealing from his father-in-law, and admitted as much. There is the story of Liszt and Wagner sitting in a box as the curtain goes up on "Tristan and Isolde." Says Wagner, "That's your chord, papa." Says Liszt, "At least now it will be heard."
It was Liszt who invented the symphonic poem. Without Liszt, the career of Richard Strauss would have taken a different turn. It was Liszt who invented a kind of piano technique without which the "Jeux d'eau" of Ravel would be inconceivable. It was only Liszt who could write the strange works of his last period - works that he never attempted to have published, works bare and lean, works that strongly suggest the impressionism of Debussy and the dissonance's of Bartok.
In Recent years there has been the beginnings of a reconsideration of Liszt, and conductors and scholars have been discovering, through a study of the scores, that old Franz was a mighty creative figure, that he was more prophetic than some of the current idols. For without Liszt, music would probably not have developed the way it did.
* This "introduction" is an excerpt from an article by Harold C. Schoenberg which appeared in the N.Y. Times on 1/31/71.
Franz Liszt was born in Raiding Hungary on October the 22, 1811 to Adam and Ana Liszt. His father was Hungarian and his mother was German. Adam worked for Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy , though we're not sure doing exactly what because Liszt was never in the habit of talking about his familiar background. We do know that his father loved music (he played the piano, violin and guitar well enough to receive encouragement from Haydn) and that this likely had something to do with his pushing of young Franz.
Franz was six years old when his father started teaching him piano but as with many prodigies he could repeat melodies he heard long before his feet to touch the ground. Adam was dumb struck by the boy's progress. Friends and family were speechless when at age nine Franz played Ferdinand Rie's Concerto in E flat Major. Soon Adam arranged a concert for Prince Esterhazy. The concert was a great success and with permission from the Prince, Adam arranged another concert to raise money for a serious musical education. This concert came to pass on the twenty sixth of November 1820 and though there is no record of exactly what he played , it is mentioned that he "scored a great success with his playing of Beethoven, his own improvisations on themes called from the audience, and sight reading of some extremely difficult bravura passages placed before him on the piano's music rest by several noblemen." (Seroff pg.6)
Shortly following this concert due to its fiscal success (several aristocrats established a quite a generous annual fund to provide for the boys education) Adam packed up Ana and Franz and headed for Vienna. On arrival Adam immediately sought to enlist Joahann Hummel (a former student of Moazart) as the boy's teacher. Disappointingly Johann was too expensive for this to be possible and Adam had to settle for Karl Czerny. On meeting Czerny Little Franz played Beethoven's Sonata in A flat Major to which Czerny, an acclaimed master of piano technique and one not given to excessive praise, supposedly said, "You may become a greater pianist than any of us." In fact, Czerny was so pleased with Franz's talent and progress that he was soon giving him two and three hour lessons every day free of charge.
Soon Franz had the opportunity to play for the great Beethoven himself, then in the twilight years of life. On April 13,1823 in front of no less than four thousand people the little Wunderkindperformed Hummel's Concerto in A minor and a fantasia of his own the andante of Beethoven's Symphony in C minor, after which Beethoven supposedly walked up to young Franz and either kissed him on the forehead or gave him a hug. Either of which is rather amazing considering that Beethoven was a walking bad temper with a particular dislike for Wunderkinds! Nonetheless; the story weather true or false served to further the living legend that was already becoming of little Franz. "Later that year Franz was being hailed as the eighth wonder of the world . He was compared to Mozart, and his pianism was called equal to, if not superior to, that of Ignaz Moschles and Hummel, the two acknowledged virtuosi of the day."(Seroff pg. 12)
Franz toured across the continent incessantly until his father died in 1827 leaving him alone to face the world as a man at age 16. After this traumatic event Franz returned to Paris where he met his mother. There he gave lessons to the children of Aristocrats and performed in Salons across the great city.
He was all sunshine and dazzling splendor, subjugating his hearers with a power that none could withstand. For him there were no difficulties of execution, the most incredible seeming child's play under his fingers. One of the transcendent merits . . . was the crystal-like clearness which never failed him for a moment, even in the most complicated . . . passages; it was as if he had photographed them in the minutest detail upon the ear of his listener. The power he drew from his instrument was such as I have never heard since, but never harsh, never suggesting "thumping." His daring was as extraordinary as his talent. At . . . a concert given by him and conducted by Berlioz, the "Marche au supplice", from the latter's "Symphonie Fantastique, that most gorgeously orchestrated piece, was performed, at the conclusion of which Liszt sat down and played his own arrangement, for the piano alone, of the same movement, wit an effect even surpassing that of the full orchestra, and creating an indescribable furore. (Perenyi p.63)
This particular review by Charles Halle was a typical review of Liszt's playing for pretty much his entire career. In fact, it is said that Liszt was so confident of his skills at the piano that he often liked to perform at a piano that perhaps didn't have the greatest tone and/or was slightly out of tune as a challenge to his musicality and his ability to transport his listeners beyond the limitations of the instrument. He was always successful! No doubt due in part to the fact that by then ,only in his early twenties, he already acquired a status not unlike that of Babe Ruth who was said to be less than a God but more than a man. In other words, some listeners undoubtedly did a lot of their own "transporting" simply because they were in the presence of someone with such a reputation
The following is a quote from Liszt himself and is not only reflective of his teaching style but also about his attitudes towards his own technique and the process by which he acquired it. It should be noted that Liszt only accepted advanced students for private study but that while in Weimar between 1850-1862, he regularly (about twice a week) gave open lectures to which anyone could attend; and they did by the hundreds. So much in fact was Weimar overrun by pianists that it was illegal to practice piano in front of an open window under penalty of a stiff fine. It should also be noted that later in life he never accepted payment for his services. Undoubtedly part of one of his guiding mottoes of life, genie oblige, the obligation of genius.
You are to learn all you can from my playing, relating to conception, style, phrasing, etc., but do not imitate my touch, which I am aware is not a good model to follow. In the early years I was not patient enough to make haste slowly - to develop in an orderly, logical and progressive way. I was impatient for immediate results, and took short cuts, so to speak, and jumped through sheer force of will to the goal of my ambition. It is true that I was successful, but I do not advise you to follow my way, for you lack my personality.
I could ramble on and on about what great performer Liszt was but basically it comes down to this. Liszt was a freak of nature. A few more examples should make this more than adequately clear.
Once a young Brahms ,about twenty, came to visit Liszt in Wiemar. With him he brought loads of barely legible manuscript. Perhaps this is part of where Liszt gets his reputation for being a sightreader of nearly godlike proportions. Among the piles of manuscript was a scribbled copy of Brahm's Scherzo in B minor an acknowledged masterpiece from the young artist. Liszt was asked to play from this copy and it is said that he performed as though he wrote it himself and was aware of all its intimate details. (To me that would be impressive enough if it had been from a nicely printed ,ready to publish edition, but to have deciphered scribble into a masterful rendition on first sight is unbelievable.)
Chopin once wrote to a friend, "I write to you without knowing what I am scribbling, because Liszt is playing my studies and transporting me out of my respectable thoughts. I should like to steal from him his way of playing my own etudes."(Parenyi p.61)
Finally an account of his playing by an anonymous visitor at the Villa d"Este in Rome at age seventy one just five years before his death should suffice to complete a brief account of Liszt the pianist.
"You know", said Liszt, turning to me, "they ring the Angelus in Italy carelessly; the bells swing irregularly, and leave off, and the cadences are often broken up thus": and he began a little swaying passage in the treble - like bells tossing high up in the air: it ceased, but so softly that the half-bar of silence made itself felt, and the listening ear still carried the broken rhythm through the pause. The Abbate himself seemed to fall into a dream; his fingers fell again lightly on the keys, and the bells went on, leaving off in the middle of a phrase. Then rose from the bass the ring of the Angelus, or rather, it seemed like the vague emotion of one who, as he passes, hears, in the ruins of some wayside cloister, the ghosts of old monks humming their drowsy melodies, as the sun goes down rapidly, and the purple shadows of Italy steal over the land, out of the orange west! We sat motionless. . . . Liszt's fingers seemed quite independent, chance ministers of his soul. The dream was broken by a pause; then came back the little swaying passage, of bells, tossing high up in the air, the half-bar of silence, the broken rhythm - and the Angelus was rung.
During his lifetime Liszt was known mostly as a performer. His father and the main women in his life (i.e. Marie d'Agoult and Carolyne sayn Wittgenstein) wanted him to become a great composer but his works enjoyed very little popularity during his lifetime. Chopin once said, "He may one day beomce a deputy or even a king . . . but his compositions will be buried in souvenir albums." (Parenyi p.61)
Liszt read voraciously and as was typical of a Romantic composer he attempted to reflect the feelings that one form of art portrayed into another, altogether different form. For example he would ,when inspired by a piece of literature, attempt to portray a similar message or story with music. His efforts in this direction were called symphonic poems and were given names such as Dante and Faust. He was also perhaps the first composer to extensively research folk music and expand it into more sophisticated and for lack of a better term, art music. For his endeavors in this arena, Liszt produced no less than nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies. Admittedly the quality of his scholarship has been called in question by some modern critics. Nonetheless , at least in the intention of this act, he anticipated the work of at least two great modern masters, Bartok and Stravinsky, who wrote volumes of music based on and around folk melodies from their homeland For all his efforts, Liszt's compositions were often the recipients of vicious criticism during his lifetime. Once when Pruckner (a master student of Liszt) attempted the E flat concerto in Vienna it was proclaimed to be the "vulgarest concerto ever written."(Parenyi p. 319) It's interesting to note that Bartok said of the same piece that it was "the first perfect realization of the cyclic sonata form." This is typical of Liszt criticism ;however, it is in his lifetime that he received the brunt of the assault and after his death that he received most of the credit. Much of his work he never even attempted to publish, especially the late piano works which hint so strongly at not only at impressionism, but beyond into modernism as well.
Liszt began composing at a fairly young age. His first sketches of the transcendental etudes were begun when he was only fourteen. These sketches consisted primarily of melodic content ,(the harmonic content was added more than a decade later) and were originally intended to be two complete passes at all Major and minor keys. In the end he only completed twelve of the forty-eight but it is said that during his lifetime he was the only pianist who could play them, and that even today they are amongst the most technically difficult pieces of all piano literature and are only by a relatively small number of concert pianists.
Liszt was fascinated by the new compositional possibilities arising in the Romantic era, particularly in the arena of harmonic development, which he considered to be the direction music was heading. Wagner, admittedly a first class genius within the universe of harmony, conceded once in private comment to a friend that, "since my acquaintance with Liszts's compositions, I have become quite another being harmonically from what I was before . . ." (Parenyi p.343)
The so-called Tristan chord , the most famous in nineteenth-century music, occurred almost note for note in Liszt's song Ich Mochte Hingehen, composed ten years earlier, which is conceivably coincidence. If so, it is unimportant: the whole opera is so infused with a Lisztian presence that Wagner's latest and best biographer flatly calls it "an unrestrained Lisztian symphonic poem with vocal parts." (Parenyi p.384)
Liszt also had an open mind when it came to the global structure of a piece. Take for instance the monolithic Sonata in B minor. It is one gigantic movement based on four relatively simple themes, which after exposition are extended and developed in an almost serialistic fashion (then undreamed of!) , all to be reassembled for a sublime and elegant ending. This as many of Liszt's other compositions met with a poor if not ghastly reception. Brahms is said to have fallen asleep while Liszt himself played it for him. Nevertheless, Liszt's contributions to the advancement of musical structure cannot be denied. He once said of Rubenstein ," I don't wand to preach to [Rubenstein]- he may sow his wild oats and fish deeper in the Mendelssohn waters, and even swim away if he likes. But sooner or later I am certain he will give up the apparent and the formalistic for the organically real. . . "(Perenyi p.318) I believe he succeeded profoundly at composing organically real pieces.
The laboratory for Liszt's music of the future was Weimar. There he produced the debut of several of Wagner's operas including Lohengrin and Tanhauser and on two separate occasions he devoted a week solely to the music of Berlioz at the annual Weimar music festival. Unheard of for a living composer and especially for one who was as revolutionary and controversial as Berlioz was. All this new music, not mention his own symphonic poems, did Liszt bring to the public's attention.
Liszt was a complex and often rather enigmatic personality. If you bring his name up in conversation I'm sure you'll hear all the clichés, such as he was a womanizer or he was an incredible pianist, perhaps the greatest of all time, etc... and like many clichés, true but so what?
He loved the good life and he loved the church. This teeter-tottering between godliness and worldliness was no doubt cause of much frustration and pain in his life. But in the end it was just too easy to be worldly and more than a few times did he succumb to temptation. I suppose one could say that this dualistic aspect of his life could be characterized as 'he loved the good life and when life wasn't good he loved the church.' He loved children except, apparently, his own. (It's interesting to note ;however, that they all adored him There were three of them, all by Marie d'Agoult . Their names were Blandine, Cosima and Daniel respectively. Only Cosima survived, who as we all know dumped Hans von Bulow to marry Wagner. The other two died in adolescence and early adulthood.) I'm sure he loved his children, though how much we'll never know. Nonetheless, he certainly had a poor way of showing it! It is said that he put up with virtually incessant trouble from little Tausig ,a demon-like prodigy pianist with a temperament to match, while making virtually no effort see his own children.
Liszt was definitely fond of the woman-folk. Though it is said that as late as age eighteen he was still completely ignorant of the "s;Birds and the Bees. Though, for all the women he *had* ,and they are apparently without number , I don't think he did much of the chasing, if any. These woman always ran him down and virtually trapped him. Liszt's two longest relationships with Marie d'Aguolt and Carolyne sayn Wittgenstein respectively lasted about twelve years each. But neither of them would likely have existed at all if they hadn't rather tenaciously pursued him. Each also tried to tame him. The latter far more successfully than the former. Probably because of her religiousness.
Liszt was not only one of the foremost composers for the “music of the future” , he was also probably the foremost promoter of new music. Espicially for that of Wagner and Berlioz, whose dislike, if not outright hatred, for one another put Liszt in a position not unlike that of a person who gets mixed up in the middle of a domestic dispute. He too, caught it from both sides. But as was typical of Liszt, he dealt with the situation in a polite and gentlemanly manor. Even before the Weimar period, Liszt was helping fellow artists. He often played the work of Schumann , which apparently often met with ill-success.
Liszt was able to overlook shortcomings in his fellow human beings. Particularly Wagner, who was not only a gargantuan genius but a terrible monster as well. Of him Liszt said:
I have proclaimed without reserve my high admiration for Wagner's genius. . . while always distinguishing between . . . the theoretician, the poet and the musician. Nowhere have I said or written that I adhered to any troublesome theory whatever . . . Wagner is the [foremost] poet and dramatic composer in Germany today - enough reason for me to pay him homage. The rest will settle itself or be forgotten . . .
"In the long run, he may have been right. In the short, the music of the future wrecked itself on the rock of Wagner's theories, and it might have been better to pay closer attention to them for that reason alone. (Liszt after all couldn't be expected to know that Buchenwald would be founded on them too.)(Parenyi p341)
After all is said and done, Liszt was "only human" and as such he was prone to making mistakes just as the rest of us are. It would be my hope that when people think of Liszt that they do not think of his shortcomings as a person , or even his great pianistic gifts while he was alive, but rather consider the greatness of his compositions for their intrinsic artistic value and for what they boldly foreshadowed to be the future of music.
1. Parenyi, Eleanor. Liszt The Artist as Romantic Hero. Canada: Little, Brown and Company Limited, 1974.
2. Seroff , Victor . Franz Liszt an Illustrated Biography. N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1966
Last Updated on March 5, 2002