Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt

Author: Oliver Hilmes

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2016-06-21

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 0300219466

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Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811–1886) was an anomaly. A virtuoso pianist and electrifying showman, he toured extensively throughout the European continent, bringing sold-out audiences to states of ecstasy while courting scandal with his frequent womanizing. Drawing on new, highly revealing documentary sources, including a veritable treasure trove of previously unexamined material on Liszt’s Weimar years, best-selling author Oliver Hilmes shines a spotlight on the extraordinary life and career of this singularly dazzling musical phenomenon. Whereas previous biographies have focused primarily on the composer’s musical contributions, Hilmes showcases Liszt the man in all his many shades and personal reinventions: child prodigy, Romantic eccentric, fervent Catholic, actor, lothario, celebrity, businessman, genius, and extravagant show-off. The author immerses the reader in the intrigues of the nineteenth-century European glitterati (including Liszt’s powerful patrons, the monstrous Wagner clan) while exploring the true, complex face of the artist and the soul of his music. No other Liszt biography in English is as colorful, witty, and compulsively readable, or reveals as much about the true nature of this extraordinary, outrageous talent.

Franz Liszt and His World
Franz Liszt and His World

Author: Christopher H. Gibbs

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-08-29

Total Pages: 608

ISBN-13: 1400828619

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No nineteenth-century composer had more diverse ties to his contemporary world than Franz Liszt (1811-1886). At various points in his life he made his home in Vienna, Paris, Weimar, Rome, and Budapest. In his roles as keyboard virtuoso, conductor, master teacher, and abbé, he reinvented the concert experience, advanced a progressive agenda for symphonic and dramatic music, rethought the possibilities of church music and the oratorio, and transmitted the foundations of modern pianism. The essays brought together in Franz Liszt and His World advance our understanding of the composer with fresh perspectives and an emphasis on historical contexts. Rainer Kleinertz examines Wagner's enthusiasm for Liszt's symphonic poem Orpheus; Christopher Gibbs discusses Liszt's pathbreaking Viennese concerts of 1838; Dana Gooley assesses Liszt against the backdrop of antivirtuosity polemics; Ryan Minor investigates two cantatas written in honor of Beethoven; Anna Celenza offers new insights about Liszt's experience of Italy; Susan Youens shows how Liszt's songs engage with the modernity of Heinrich Heine's poems; James Deaville looks at how publishers sustained Liszt's popularity; and Leon Botstein explores Liszt's role in the transformation of nineteenth-century preoccupations regarding religion, the nation, and art. Franz Liszt and His World also includes key biographical and critical documents from Liszt's lifetime, which open new windows on how Liszt was viewed by his contemporaries and how he wished to be viewed by posterity. Introductions to and commentaries on these documents are provided by Peter Bloom, José Bowen, James Deaville, Allan Keiler, Rainer Kleinertz, Ralph Locke, Rena Charnin Mueller, and Benjamin Walton.

Living with Liszt
Living with Liszt

Author: Carl Lachmund

Publisher: Pendragon Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 9780945193562

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Carl V. Lachmund (1857-1928) was an American pupil of Liszt; he studied with the Hungarian master in Weimar between the years 1882-1884. During that time he kept a diary which eventually ran to some 700 pages. This document gives one of the mo st exhaustive accounts of Liszt's keyboard instruction extant. Some time after World War I, and in response toa demand from a number of musicians with an interest in the matter, Lachmund decided to turn his diary into a book about his daily life with Liszt. In order to gather additional background material about a period now long past, he wrote to more than 200 musicians in America and Europe who had had some personal contact with the composer, and invited them to share their personal reminiscences. The book never appeared and his papers came to rest in the New York Public Library, with whose cooperation this book is now being published.The Liszt scholar Alan Walker has undertaken the task of introducing, editing, and annotating the Lachmund papers. He calls the diary an irreplaceable source of first-hand material which throws fresh light on the way Liszt taught the piano. Liszt also emerges from these pages as a great and noble human being. This book will interest all teachers, performers, and students of the period. It represents a major contribution to nineteenth-century studies.

Reflections on Liszt
Reflections on Liszt

Author: Alan Walker

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2011-07-07

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1501717022

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In a series of lively essays that tell us much not only about the phenomenon that was Franz Liszt but also about the musical and cultural life of nineteenth-century Europe, Alan Walker muses on aspects of Liszt's life and work that he was unable to explore in his acclaimed three-volume biography of the great composer and pianist. Topics include Liszt's contributions to the Lied, the lifelong impact of his encounter with Beethoven, his influence on students who became famous in their own right, his accomplishments in transcribing and editing the works of other composers, and his innovative piano technique. One chapter is devoted to the Sonata in B Minor, perhaps Liszt's single most celebrated composition. Walker draws heavily on Liszt's astonishingly large personal correspondence with other composers, critics, pianists, and prominent public figures. All the essays reveal Walker's broad and deep knowledge of Liszt and Romantic music generally and, in some cases, his impatience with contemporary performance practice.

A Book of Liszts
A Book of Liszts

Author: John Spurling

Publisher: Seagull World Literature

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781906497941

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The extraordinary career of Franz Liszt (1811-86) as a composer, conductor, and virtuoso pianist--whose incomparable skill and personal charisma dazzled audiences all over Europe, from London and Paris to Berlin, Moscow, and even Constantinople--made him the nineteenth-century equivalent of a modern international pop star. In the spirit of Liszt's own innovative compositions and sparkling piano transcriptions of other composers' work, John Spurling here takes up the ambitious task of writing a fictionalized biography of Liszt's life. Liszt himself once said, "My biography is more to be invented than written after the fact," and Spurling's fifteen self-contained chapters--themselves virtuoso performances in a variety of styles from a variety of viewpoints--capture precisely this notion of innovation and creativity. Spurling tells of Liszt's mesmeric effect on audiences, his notorious love affairs with remarkable women, and his fraught friendship with Richard Wagner, who deeply offended Liszt by seducing and eventually marrying his daughter Cosima. Inspired by Spurling's own fascination with Liszt's music, A Book of Liszts is a highly original, imaginative, and multifaceted portrait of a humorous, romantic, and passionate genius whose work and life is still not as well known as it deserves to be.

The Music of Liszt
The Music of Liszt

Author: Humphrey Searle

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2013-12-30

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0486786404

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The most authoritative English-language study of Liszt's oeuvre, this survey by a noted musicologist examines the works in chronological order. Subjects include romantic pieces, symphonic poems, songs, symphonies, and other compositions.

Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt

Author: Thomas Tapper

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2020-03-16

Total Pages: 53

ISBN-13:

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"Franz Liszt: The Story of a Boy Who Became a Great Pianist and Teacher" by Thomas Tapper Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer, pianist and teacher of the Romantic period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be one of the most prolific and influential composers of his era and remains one of the most popular composers in modern concert piano repertoire.This book does this genius justice by bringing his story to the masses.

Portrait of Liszt
Portrait of Liszt

Author: Adrian Williams

Publisher: Oxford [England] : Clarendon Press

Published: 1990

Total Pages: 792

ISBN-13:

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Franz Liszt has been described as "one of the most wonderful human beings that have ever lived, and one of the greatest and most original artists of the nineteenth century." Born in Hungary in 1811, at the very moment when the Great Comet blazed most brillantly in the heavens, he rapidly achieved fame as a phenomenally gifted pianist, and in the course of his long life, which ended in 1886, he travelled extensively through Europe. So extraordinary was the enthusiasm--indeed, adulation--with which his magical playing and fascinating personality were received, that it promped Heinrich Heine to coin the term "Lisztomania." Williams presents extracts from the diaries, letters, and reminiscences of Liszt's contemporaries that describe his bewitching playing and magnetic personality, along with newspaper reviews and passages from Liszt's own letters and writings. What emerges is not only a uniquely comprehensive and extremely readable look at one of the most prodigiously gifted of all musicians, but also an absorbing picture of the rich musical tapestry and cultural life of nineteenth century Europe.