How are you?
This week's lecture is “Franz
Liszt”, the 14th topic of “Classical Music”, which is a summary of the contents of “99.
Classical Music: 14. Franz Liszt” introduced on August
19th, 2017.
Franz Liszt was a
Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger and organist of
the Romantic era, born on 22 October 1811 and died on 31 July 1886.
Liszt was born in Raiding, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire, the son of Anna Liszt and Adam Liszt. His father, who played the piano, violin, cello and guitar, served Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and was personally acquainted with Haydn, Hummel, and Beethoven.
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| Nikolaus II, Prince Esterházy |
He began listening attentively to his father's
piano playing at the age of six and was exposed to music through attending mass
as well as traveling Romani bands that toured the Hungarian countryside. His
father began teaching him the piano when he was seven, and Liszt began
composing in an elementary manner when he was eight. In 1820, at the age of
nine, he appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg (present-day Bratislava),
after which wealthy patrons offered to finance his musical education in Vienna.
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| One of Franz Liszt's pianos, Budapest |
There, Liszt received
piano lessons from Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and Hummel, when he was a
young man, and composition lessons from Ferdinando Paer and Antonio Salieri,
who was then the music director of the Viennese court. Liszt's public debut
concert in Vienna on December 1, 1822 was a huge success.
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| Carl Czerny |
On July 2, 1881, Liszt fell down the stairs of a hotel in Weimar, Germany. His friends and colleagues noticed that Liszt had swollen feet and legs when he had arrived in Weimar the previous month, but he was still healthy and active by then.
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| Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano, Josef Danhauser (1840) |
However, after the accident, he was left immobilized for eight weeks and never fully recovered from the accident. A number of ailments such as dropsy, asthma, insomnia, a cataract in the left eye, and heart disease manifested, and he died of pneumonia at the age of 74.
It has been suggested that the pneumonia that
caused his death may have been infected during the Bayreuth Festival hosted by
his daughter Cosima, as well as medical malpractice as part of his cause of
death. He was buried in the Bayreuth Municipal Cemetery on August 3, 1886.
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| Grave of Franz Liszt, Bayreuth |
His old friend,
composer Camille Saint-Saëns, whom Liszt once called "the greatest
organist in the world", dedicated his third symphony, "The Organ
Symphony," to Liszt, which had premiered in London only a few weeks before
his death.
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| Camille Saint-Saëns |
Liszt gained a great
reputation in Europe as a pianist who demonstrated remarkable virtuosity in the
early 19th century. He was a friend, music promoter and benefactor to many
composers of his time, including Frédéric Chopin, Charles-Valentin Alkan,
Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Camille
Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg, Ole Bull, Joachim Raff, Mikhail Glinka, and
Alexander Borodin.
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| Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music, Budapest |
A prolific composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representative musicians of the New German School. He left behind an extensive and diverse body of work that influenced his forward-looking contemporary musicians and predicted 20th-century ideas and trends.
Among Liszt's musical contributions are the symphonic poem that
developed thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form,
and radical innovations in harmony.
Thank you.
