Franz Liszt

        Liszt was Hungarian, although he never spoke the language, his family having been assimilated Germans.   He was greatly influenced by the gypsy music of his homeland, even playing recitals as a young man in native costume.   He was, of course, one of the greatest piano virtuosos who ever lived, and his music for the piano is central...

            “What else is our life but a series of preludes to that unknown song, the first and solemn note of which is sounded by death?”  So goes the putative source of the title of the first of Liszt’s thirteen tone poems.   It is from Alphonse de Lamartine’s “Nouvelles méditations poétiques,” and alludes to life as but a...

            Liszt was in the forefront of composers who were committed to striking out in completely new directions during the nineteenth century, and who largely abandoned traditional forms, such as the symphony.  Liszt’s solution was his origination of what he called a “symphonic poem,” a single-movement composition of symphonic...

           In the pantheon of musical greats it would be difficult, indeed, to think of anyone whose reputation as man, performer, and composer has varied more with both scholars and the public.  He was clearly one of the most influential musicians of the nineteenth century, both as composer and as one whose virtuosity as pianist was—and...