The Death of Franz Liszt

The Death of Franz Liszt

Author: Lina Schmalhausen

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9780801440762

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Lina Schmalhausen, his student, caregiver, and close companion, recorded in her diary a graphic description of her teacher's illness and death. Alan Walker here presents this never-before-published account of Liszt's demise in the summer of 1886.".


Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Author: Oliver Hilmes

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2016-06-21

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 0300219466

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.


Liszt and Virtuosity

Liszt and Virtuosity

Author: Robert Doran

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 1580469396

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A new and wide-ranging collection of essays by leading international scholars, exploring the concept and practices of virtuosity in Franz Liszt and his contemporaries.


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

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.


Tchaikovsky's Last Days

Tchaikovsky's Last Days

Author: Alexander Poznansky

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1996-10-31

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0191657611

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Tchaikovsky's death in October 1893 in St Petersburg, shortly after the première of his sixth symphony, the `Pathétique', is one of the most thoroughly documented deaths of a prominent cultural figure in modern times. He was treated by no fewer than four physicians and surrounded by a group of relatives and friends. The official account of his death was that he died from cholera, possibly by drinking infected water, but almost since the day of his death there have been rumours that it was not accidental. It is alleged by some that Tchaikovsky either committed suicide or was murdered in order to avoid the scandal and disgrace of being unmasked as a homosexual. Alexander Poznansky is the first Western scholar to have gained access to the Tchaikovsky archives in Klin, Russia. He provides much hitherto unknown documentary material - memoirs, diary entries, letters, and newspaper reports - and adds his own commentary on the status of homosexuality in nineteenth-century Russia and on the various conspiracy theories that have been advanced to account for Tchaikovsky's death. His conclusion is that there is no factual evidence to support the notion that Tchaikovsky's death was caused by anything other than cholera.


Chopin's Funeral

Chopin's Funeral

Author: Benita Eisler

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0307425258

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Frédéric Chopin’s reputation as one of the Great Romantics endures, but as Benita Eisler reveals in her elegant and elegiac biography, the man was more complicated than his iconic image. A classicist, conservative, and dandy who relished his conquest of Parisian society, the Polish émigré was for a while blessed with genius, acclaim, and the love of Europe’s most infamous woman writer, George Sand. But by the age of 39, the man whose brilliant compositions had thrilled audiences in the most fashionable salons lay dying of consumption, penniless and abandoned by his lover. In the fall of 1849, his lavish funeral was attended by thousands—but not by George Sand. In this intimate portrait of an embattled man, Eisler tells the story of a turbulent love affair, of pain and loss redeemed by art, and of worlds—both private and public—convulsed by momentous change.


The Music of Liszt

The Music of Liszt

Author: Humphrey Searle

Publisher: Courier Corporation

Published: 2013-12-30

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0486786404

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.


Living with Liszt

Living with Liszt

Author: Carl Lachmund

Publisher: Pendragon Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 9780945193562

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.