Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Born: 22 October 1811, Doborján, Sopron County, Hungary
(now Raiding, Burgenland, Austria)
Died: 31 July 1886, Bayreuth, Germany

Teacher, conductor, and virtuoso pianist, Franz Liszt was the most celebrated concert musician of the 19th century. A writer, philanthropist, and committed Hungarian patriot, he was also a principal figure in the era’s Romantic movement.

He was born to Anna (née Lager) and Adam List on 22 October 1811, in the village of Doborján in Sopron County (known in German as Raiding, which is now in Burgenland, Austria), in the German-speaking area of the old Kingdom of Hungary, then an integral part of the Austrian Empire. Liszt’s father changed the spelling of his name to facilitate its pronunciation by Hungarians, though he himself never had more than a rudimentary knowledge of the language.  Though employed as an administrator on the Esterházy estates, he was an accomplished amateur musician, so he was delighted to notice that his young son showed all the signs of being a musical prodigy.  Under his father’s tutelage, young Franz’s extraordinary pianistic talents were increasingly on display and earned him a financial award from several noble benefactors, which enabled him to study in Vienna with Czerny and Salieri in 1822 and 1823. His ambitious father wanted Franz to continue his studies at the Conservatoire in Paris. He resigned his position and with their minimal savings the family moved to the French capital in December 1823, only to discover the Conservatoire did not admit foreigners. At the age of 12 young Liszt thus began his career as a child prodigy, supporting his parents by giving concerts in private palaces and in public in Paris as well as the French provinces, England and Switzerland.  The unexpected death of his father in 1827 and a disappointed love affair sent the 17-year old Liszt into a mental crisis that led to his retirement from public performance.  But the July 1830 revolution in Paris and his association with fellow composers such as Berlioz and Chopin rekindled his poetic and romantic passions.  In 1833 he found a new love with the six-years-older and married Countess Marie d’Agoult, who bore him three children and with whom he eloped first to Switzerland and then to Italy. Liszt chronicled these years (1835-1839) in a series of piano works, the Années de pèlerinage.

By this time Liszt was already widely regarded as the greatest pianist the world had ever seen, and by 1840 he returned to the concert stage, startling and delighting audiences with his recitals. From 1840 to 1847 he toured virtually every corner of Europe, and was received with all the hysteria of a celebrity. “Lisztomania” was the term then coined for the phenomenon. Women fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves, which they ripped to shreds as souvenirs. This atmosphere was fuelled in great part by the artist's mesmeric personality and stage presence. Many witnesses later testified that Liszt's playing raised the mood of audiences to a level of mystical ecstasy. At a concert in Kiev in 1847 he met the 28-year old Polish princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, who had recently left her husband and who soon became his mistress. Later that year Carolyne persuaded Liszt to give up his virtuoso career and concentrate on composition.  Accordingly Liszt took up a long-standing invitation by the Grand Duchess of Weimar to settle there as Kapellmeister Extraordinary. It was during these years in Weimar (1847-1861) that he composed a large number of his best-known works: his 12 symphonic poems, two piano concertos, the Sonata in B minor, the 15 Hungarian Rhapsodies, the Transcedental Études and two major works for organ.

In the hope of securing an annulment for Carolyne so that they could marry, the two moved to Rome in 1861.  The annulment was never granted and Liszt’s hope of marriage was never fulfilled.  Adding to his sadness were the death of his son and one of his daughters, while his surviving child, Cosima, committed open adultery with the composer Richard Wagner. Thereafter his relationship with Carolyne became platonic, and he announced that he would retreat to a solitary life. He took up residence in a monastery near Rome and received the minor orders of the Catholic Church, after which he was often called the Abbé Liszt. His hope of becoming a musical force in the Catholic Church’s musical life there, however, fell on stony ground and in 1869 he returned to Weimar to give master classes in piano playing.

Throughout his life, Hungary, his homeland, inspired him.  Hungarian patriotism in the 19th century was not confined to ethnic Hungarians (Magyars), who formed only slightly more than half of the population of the Kingdom.  So, despite his German origin and mother tongue and his adopted French culture, he never ceased to declare himself a Hungarian. After 1870 he did attempt to learn Hungarian, but his knowledge of the language remained very poor. From 1869 he visited Hungary every year for some months (establishing a music academy in Budapest) and spent most summers in Germany and winters in Italy.  Thus, till his death, he lived what he called a "vie trifurquée" or tripartite existence, dividing his time between Rome, Weimar and Budapest. In 1881 Liszt fell down the stairs and was left immobilized for eight weeks, and never fully recovered.  He died in Bayreuth, Germany, on 31 July 1886, at the age of 74, the cause of death thought to be a case of pneumonia, which he likely contracted during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by his daughter, Cosima. He was buried on 3 August 1886, in the municipal cemetery of Bayreuth, leaving a lasting influence on generations of musicians to come.

Liszt was renowned far and wide for his exceedingly complex piano compositions, considered by many amongst the most challenging ever written. His persona was equally commanding, on and off the stage. A darkly charismatic and cynical disposition, intensified by the magnitude of his talent, cast him as a larger than life figure. There were even those who speculated that Liszt’s abilities were the product of a pact with the Devil, whispers of which were underscored by the dark and otherworldly notes of his Dante Sonata and Mephisto Waltz — the latter painting a musical picture of that very same unholy creature.