7. Music of Franz Liszt (1811–1886)

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) was born in Doborján, Hungary (now Raiding, Austria). His father, employed as a steward for a wealthy family, was an amateur musician who recognized his son’s talent. A group of Hungarian noblemen sponsored him with a stipend that enabled young Liszt to pursue his musical interest in Paris. There, he befriended Mendelssohn, Hugo, Chopin, Delacroix, George Sand, and Berlioz; these friends influenced him to become part of the French Romanticism movement.

In 1831, Liszt attended a performance in Paris by virtuoso violinist Paganini, who was touring. Paganini’s style and success helped make Liszt aware of the demand for solo artists who performed with showmanship. The ever growing mass public audience desired gifted virtuoso solo performers at the time. Liszt, one of the best pianists of his time, became a great showman who knew how to energize an audience. Up until Liszt, the standard practice of performing piano solos was with the solo artist’s back to the audience. This limited—and actually blocked—the audience from viewing the artist’s hands, facial expression, and musical nuance. Liszt changed the entire presentation by turning the piano sideways so the audience could view his facial expressions and the manner in which his fingers interacted with the keys, from playing loudly and thunderously to gracefully light and legato. Liszt possessed great charisma and performance appeal; indeed, he had a following of young ladies that idolized his performances. During his career of music stardom, Liszt never married and was considered one of the most eligible bachelors of the time. But he did have several “relationships” with different women, one of whom was the novelist Countess Marie d’Agoult who wrote under the pen name of Daniel Stern. She and Liszt travelled to Switzerland for a few years and they had three children; one of the daughters, Cosima, ultimately married Richard Wagner.

While at the height of his performance career, Liszt retreated from his solo pianist career to devote all his energy to composition. He moved to Weimer in 1848 and assumed the post of court musician for the Grand Duke until 1861. There, he produced his greatest orchestral works. His position in Weimer included the responsibility as director to the Grand Duke’s opera house. In this position, Liszt could influence the public’s taste in music and construct musical expectations for future compositions. And he used his influential position to program what Wagner called “Music of the Future.” Liszt and Wagner both advocated and promoted highly dramatic music in Weimer, with Liszt conducting the first performances of Wagner’s Lohengrin, Berlioz’s Benevenuto Cellini, and many other contemporary compositions.

While in Weimer, Liszt began a relationship with a woman who had a tremendous influence on his life and music. The wife of a nobleman in the court of the Tsar, Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittenstein met and fell in love with Liszt on his final performance tour of Russia. Later she left her husband and moved to Weimer to be with Liszt. She assisted Liszt in writing literary works, among which included a fabricated biography by Liszt on the Life of Chopin and a book on “Gypsy,” which is considered eccentric and inaccurate.

While Liszt had an eventful romantic life, he remained a Roman Catholic, and he eventually sought solitude in the Catholic Church. His association with the church led to the writing of his major religious works. He also joined the Oratory of the Madonna del Rosario and studied the preliminary stage for priesthood, taking his minor orders and becoming known as the Abbé Liszt. He dressed as a priest and composed masses, oratorios, and religious music for the church.

Still active at the age of seventy-five, he earned respect from England as a composer and was awarded an honor in person by Queen Victoria. Returning from this celebration, he met Claude Debussy in Paris then journeyed to visit his widowed daughter Cosima in Bayreuth and attended a Wagnerian Festival. He died during that festival, and even on his death bed, dying of pneumonia, Liszt named one of the “Music of the Future” masterpieces: Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde.

Liszt’s primary goal in music composition was pure expression through the idiom of tone. His freedom of expression necessitated his creation of the symphonic poem, sometimes called a tone poem—a one-movement program piece written for orchestra that portrays images of a place, story, novel, landscape or non-musical source or image. This form utilizes transformations of a few themes through the entire work for continuity. The themes are varied by adjusting the rhythm, harmony, dynamics, tempos, instrumental registers, instrumentation in the orchestra, timbre, and melodic outline, or shape. By making these slight-to-major adjustments, Liszt found it possible to convey the extremes of emotion—from love to hate, war to peace, triumph to defeat—within a thematic piece. His thirteen symphonic poems greatly influenced the 19th century, an influence that continues through today. Liszt’s most famous piece for orchestra is the three-portrait work Symphony after Goethe’s Faust (the portraits include Faust, Gretchen, and Mephistopheles). A similar work, his Symphony of Dante’s Divine Comedy, has three movements: Inferno, Purgatory, and Vision of Paradise. His most famous of the symphonic poems is Les Preludes (The Preludes), written in 1854.

His best known works include nineteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, his piano concertos, the Mephisto Waltzes, the Faust Symphony, and the Liebesträume.

Focus Composition: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2

More listening opportunities and information about a selection of Liszt’s works can be found here.

We shift now from smaller compositions for small forces to larger-scale compositions written for orchestra.