Great Masters - Liszt-His Life and Music

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Liszt—His Life and Music
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Course Guidebook
Professor Robert Greenberg

San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Professor Robert Greenberg, the Music Historian-in-Residence

with San Francisco Performances, is the composer of
more than 45 works for a variety of instrumental and vocal
ensembles. A former instructor with the San Francisco
Conservatory of Music, Professor Greenberg is an authority
on a range of composers and classical music genres. His
masterful compositions have won three Nicola de Lorenzo
Composition Prizes and a Koussevitzky commission from the
Library of Congress.
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Robert Greenberg, Ph.D.
Chairman, Department of Music History and Literature
San Francisco Conservatory of Music
Robert Greenberg has composed more than 40 works for a wide variety
of instrumental and vocal ensembles. Recent performances of
Greenberg’s work have taken place in New York, San Francisco, Los
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where his Child’s Play for string quartet was performed at the
Concertgebouw of Amsterdam.
Professor Greenberg holds degrees from Princeton University and the
University of California at Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. in music
composition in 1984. His principal teachers were Edward Cone, Claudio
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Professor Greenberg’s awards include three Nicola De Lorenzo prizes in
composition, three Meet the Composer grants, and commissions from the
Koussevitzky Foundation of the Library of Congress, the Alexander
String Quartet, XTET, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players,
and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.
He is currently on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of
Music, where he served as Chair of the Department of Music History and
Literature and Director of Curriculum of the Adult Extension Division for
thirteen years.
Professor Greenberg is resident music historian for National Public
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©2002 The Teaching Company. i

board member of COMPOSER, INC. His music is published by Fallen
Leaf Press and CPP/Belwin and is recorded on the Innova Label.
ii ©2002 The Teaching Company.

Table of Contents
Great Masters: Liszt⎯His Life and Music
Professor Biography .................................................................................... i

Course Scope ............................................................................................... 1
Lecture One Le Concert, C’est Moi⎯
The Concert Is Me ............................................. 4
Lecture Two A Born Pianist.................................................. 12
Lecture Three Revelation ........................................................ 23
Lecture Four Transcendence ................................................. 33
Lecture Five Weimar............................................................. 41
Lecture Six The Music at Weimar....................................... 52
Lecture Seven Rome ................................................................ 62
Lecture Eight A Life Well Lived............................................ 73
Timeline ..................................................................................................... 84
Glossary ..................................................................................................... 86
Biographical Notes.................................................................................... 88
Bibliography .............................................................................................. 90
©2002 The Teaching Company. iii

iv ©2002 The Teaching Company.
Great Masters: Liszt⎯His Life and Music
Scope:
Franz Liszt was an outrageous showman and a performer of musical
“firsts.” He was the first pianist to play a solo recital, the first to perform the
entire keyboard repertoire, and the first to perform programs entirely from
memory. He was also the first to fully exploit the new technology of the
piano, demanding of it the same breadth and depth of expression as are
heard in an orchestra. Franz Liszt was a “modernist” in music and the
embodiment of the Romantic era’s conception of the performer as hero, the
artist as god.
Liszt was born into a musical family in 1811. His father, Adam, recognized
his musical gifts when Franz was about five and gave him his first lessons
on the piano. The family moved to Vienna when Franz was eleven to
continue his musical education. His teachers there were amazed by his
natural talent and allowed him to give his first performance, also when he
was eleven. With that performance, Franz’s success as a pianist was
assured, and the family, in need of the money Franz could bring in,
embarked on a tour of Europe. The tour took the Liszt family from Munich
to Augsburg, Stuttgart, and Strasburg. In each city, nobles, stunned by the
prodigy’s abilities, offered letters of introduction to the next stop on the
tour. Finally, the Liszt family landed in Paris, where Franz performed
almost non-stop. The aristocrats of the city loved Franz, and he absorbed
their language, culture, and sophistication. During these years, Liszt wrote
his Etudes en douze exercices, which he would rewrite as the Grand Etudes
in 1838 and as the Transcendental Etudes in 1851. These pieces would
become a progressive musical diary of Liszt’s development both as a pianist
and composer.
In 1827, Franz and his father were visiting Boulogne when Adam fell ill
with typhoid fever and died. Franz fled back to Paris, rejecting the life of
the performer that his father had made for him and establishing himself as a
piano teacher for the children of the aristocracy. He also went a bit wild in
Paris as a young man and fell in love with one of his students. When her
father ended the relationship, Liszt suffered a nervous breakdown and
succumbed to religious mania. He stopped practicing the piano and did not
write any music. For three years, he was depressed, chronically ill, and
completely apathetic. Finally, the July Revolution of 1830 in Paris blasted
Liszt out of his lethargy and reignited his creative energies.
©2002 The Teaching Company. 1

After the revolution, Liszt became a popular figure at Parisian salons and
met Nicolo Paganini and Hector Berlioz, two men who would help shape
his vision of himself as a composer and pianist. After hearing Paganini
play, Liszt set for himself the goal of achieving the level of virtuosity on the
piano that Paganini had achieved on the violin. His friendship with Berlioz
reinforced Liszt’s interest in program music and originality of expression.
At about this same time, Liszt met Countess Marie d’Agoult, with whom he
would have three illegitimate children. In 1838, Liszt went back on the
concert circuit to raise money for flood relief in Hungary and, later, in
1839, to raise money for a Beethoven memorial. These tours were
fantastically successful. Liszt had developed a completely new pianistic
technique and a number of new compositions, including the Transcendental
Etudes, with which to show off that technique. Audiences went wild at
Liszt’s showmanship.
In 1847, Liszt met Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, who would
become his soulmate and mistress. He retired as a performing pianist and
moved, with Carolyne, to Weimar to serve as conductor of its orchestra.
From Weimar, he again watched revolution sweep Europe and wrote his
Funerailles as a tribute to martyred Hungarian revolutionaries. Liszt also
took up composing for the orchestra in Weimar, ultimately turning out his
“symphonic poems” and Faust and Dante symphonies. These works were
highly idiosyncratic, on the cutting edge of the “music of the future” that
Liszt and many of his contemporaries advocated. After living in Weimar for
almost ten years, Liszt was pushed out by forces in opposition to his
cultural influence there. At this time, he and Carolyne thought that they
might finally be able to marry, but on the eve of the ceremony in Rome,
they received word that the Pope would not allow her first marriage to be
annulled. Carolyne was devastated and Liszt was paralyzed. He stayed in
Rome and turned for solace to the Church.
In 1864, after the deaths of two of his children, Daniel and Blandine, and
what he saw as the betrayal of his daughter Cosima in her affair with
Richard Wagner, Liszt decided to take the vows of priesthood. For the
outside world, the announcement was unbelievable. Even after he entered
the so-called “minor orders,” however, Liszt was still attractive to women.
He slept with one of his piano students, a strange young woman named
Olga Zielinski. She later threatened to kill Liszt and succeeded in
blackening his reputation in a series of thinly disguised “autobiographical”
novels. Liszt’s final years were filled with music, traveling, honors, and a
2 ©2002 The Teaching Company.

few disappointments. He divided his living arrangements among Rome;
Weimar, where he taught extensively; and Budapest, where he was honored
as a national hero. He died of a heart attack on July 31, 1886, in Bayreuth,
having traveled there to attend a Wagner festival at his daughter’s request.
His legacy to us is his Romantic vision of the piano as an orchestra unto
itself and the legitimacy of the artist’s individual expression and feeling.
Note: Material from Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811–1847 by Alan
Walker is reproduced by permission of the author and Harold Ober
Associates Incorporated. Copyright 1983 by Alan Walker. Originally
published by Alfred A. Knopf (New York); in print from Cornell
University Press.

Lecture One
Le Concert, C’est Moi⎯The Concert Is Me
Scope: Franz Liszt was an outrageous showman and a performer of

musical “firsts.” He was the first to play a solo recital, the first to
perform the entire keyboard repertoire, and the first to perform
programs entirely from memory. He traveled thousands of miles
on tour and played before audiences of more than 3,000 people.
He was a legend before he turned thirty, the embodiment of the
Romantic era’s vision of the artist as god. To understand Liszt, we
must first learn a little of the history of the piano, the instrument he
uniquely exploited.
Until the late eighteenth century, the standard keyboard instrument
was the harpsichord, which had an extremely light touch, limited
resonance, and limited ability to sustain notes. The pianoforte,
invented in the early eighteenth century, began to address these
deficiencies, offering a “dynamic” mechanism that allowed the
pianist to add dynamic coloration to the music. By the early 1800s,
the piano was bigger and more resonant than the earlier ones but
still had rather thin strings and a wooden harp. Beethoven would
demand of this instrument the same ability to sustain, the same
variety of attack, and the same range of dynamics that he heard in
an orchestra. His arrival on the scene in Vienna in 1792 essentially
marked the beginning of the history of the Romantic piano.
Outline
I. Franz Liszt was the model for every performing concert pianist since
the 1840s. (Musical selection: Liszt, Transcendental Etude No. 8,
“Wilde Jagd” [“Wild Chase”] [1851].) Everything he did was a first.
A. In 1839, he invented the solo recital as we know it today, partially
because he considered himself a god of the piano and was
unwilling to share the stage with anyone else.
B. Liszt was also the first pianist to place the piano keyboard at a
right angle to the front edge of the stage so that the piano’s open
lid would project its sound directly to the audience.

C. Liszt was the first pianist to perform the entire keyboard repertoire
as it then existed, from the music of Johann Sebastian Bach to that
of his friend Frederic Chopin.
D. Liszt was the first performer to play entire programs from
memory. In ten weeks spanning late 1841 and early 1842, he gave
twenty-one solo recitals in Berlin, playing over eighty different
works, most of them from memory.
E. In both Milan and St. Petersburg, Liszt played before audiences of
more than 3,000 people⎯the first pianist ever to perform before
such huge crowds.
1. Indeed, Liszt’s fame as a pianist and performer was mainly the
result of the incredible concert tours of Europe and Asia
Minor he made during the years 1838–1847.
2. Liszt traveled thousands of miles and performed in hundreds
of cities and towns, from St. Petersburg to Gibraltar, Istanbul
to Lisbon. In many of these cities, such as Paris, London, and
Berlin, Liszt would have given tens, perhaps hundreds, of
“recitals.”
3. He would have traveled countless miles to reach these locales
over rutted and filthy roads in mail carriages, a few miles a
day, day after day.
4. Much of the small fortune Liszt made during these years of
concertizing, he simply gave away to charity and what he
considered to be humanitarian causes.
F. Other professional musicians had mixed feelings toward the
“Great One.” Generally, they were awed by Liszt the pianist but
rather less impressed by Liszt the composer and appalled by Liszt
the showman.
1. The famed conductor Hermann Levi, a friend of both
Johannes Brahms and Richard Wagner, said that Liszt was “A
talented humbug” (Schonberg, 180).
2. Felix Mendelssohn, a prissy man of extraordinary talent and
refinement, hated Liszt’s music and was disgusted by his ego
and stage persona but was awed by his piano playing.
3. Clara Schumann, one of the great pianists of the day, likewise
had feelings so mixed about Liszt that to read her comments
about him today would seem almost to indicate a split
personality.

4. The effect Liszt had on women was also extraordinary. We’ll
talk more about this in later lectures, because Liszt’s
relationships with women truly shaped much of his adult life.
G. Liszt was a phenomenon, a cult, a legend before he turned thirty
years old, the embodiment of the nineteenth-century Romantic
era’s vision of the performer as hero, the artist as god.
1. He lived his life in the public eye as no performing musician
and composer ever had up to that point.
2. Liszt lived and worked during the Industrial Revolution. He
was the product of the middle-class–inspired meritocracy of
the nineteenth century, a man of genius and, thus, a member
of the “new aristocracy,” one based on talent and ability as
opposed to birthright.
3. Liszt was a complex man of excess in a complex time of
excess. No person, no performer, no composer better
personifies the grand excess that was the Romantic era than
Franz Liszt.
II. To understand Liszt and the sensation he created, we first have to learn
about the piano, the preeminent instrument and instrumental
technology of the nineteenth century.
A. The standard portable keyboard instrument from the sixteenth
century through the late eighteenth century was the harpsichord.
As its name implies, the “harpsichord” is, in essence, a relatively
simple mechanical harp.
1. The harp is placed horizontally, and the strings are plucked
not by fingers but by quill picks, or plectra, which are
activated when the user pushes down a lever, or key. Pushing
a harpsichord key doesn’t require much force.
2. In general, harpsichords have thin strings and fairly small
sounding boards (resonating boxes) and, therefore, a rather
limited amount of resonance.
3. Once a depressed key is released, the vibrating string is
immediately damped, meaning that a harpsichord cannot
sustain a pitch unless a player continues to hold down the key.
4. Harpsichords are not dynamically sensitive, meaning that no
matter how hard you push down the key, the pick (or
plectrum) will pluck the string with the same level of

intensity. Music cannot be played progressively louder or
softer on a harpsichord.
5. In sum, harpsichords have an extremely light touch and a
bright and brittle sound, little resonance, and a limited ability
to sustain.
6. They are perfectly suited for the complex, often multi-
melodied music of the Baroque era.
7. We’ll listen to an example from Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685–1750), the greatest harpsichordist and harpsichord
composer of his time. (Musical selection: Johann Sebastian
Bach, Partita in D Major, BWV 828, Gigue.)
B. The piano, or properly, the pianoforte, was invented in the first
years of the eighteenth century, according to a contemporary
writer’s words: “To obviate the bad habit of the harpsichord,
which could not express coloring at all” (Schonberg, Pianists).
1. The Florentine harpsichord builder Bartolomeo Christofori
created the first working drawings for what we today would
call a piano sometime between 1705 and 1709.
2. Christofori, keeper of the DiMedici family’s musical
instrument collection, designed an instrument in which felt
covered “hammers” actually struck strings rather than
plucking them.
3. The lever system⎯the mechanism⎯in his design was
“dynamic,” meaning that the harder you pushed down the
lever, the harder the hammer would strike the string.
Christofori’s instrument was capable of playing louder and
softer, of adding dynamic “coloration” to a piece of music.
4. Dampers were also constructed in such a way as to allow a
string to continue to vibrate⎯to “sound”⎯even if the key
itself had been released.
5. Christofori called his “new” instrument a Gravicembalo col
pian e forte, “Big harpsichord with soft and loud.”
C. The technology for this pianoforte was new and had some kinks to
be worked out; as an instrument, it would not immediately replace
the harpsichord in the minds, ears, and hearts of the musical
public.
D. Among the first pianos to be built in Germany were those
constructed in Dresden by the famous organ builder Gottfried

Silberman around 1730. In 1736, Johann Sebastian Bach visited
Dresden, tried the pianos out, and found their tone “pleasant,” the
treble “weak,” and the action “much too stiff.”
III. In the 1770s, the next generation of pianos began to replace the
harpsichord as the keyboard instrument of choice for composers and
performers.
A. Wolfgang Mozart, born in 1756, had been trained as a
harpsichordist. He did not start playing the piano with absolute
regularity until around 1774, when he was already eighteen years
old.
B. The pianos Mozart would have played had many characteristics in
common with the harpsichord.
1. They had wood-framed harps, which could not support much
string; therefore, strings were thin and there were fewer of
them than in a modern piano.
2. These early pianos had, like harpsichords, very light action, a
very light touch.
C. In other words, in 1774, around the time Mozart switched from
harpsichord to piano, piano construction and technique⎯as
something separate from harpsichord construction and
technique⎯were still in their relative childhood.
D. Mozart took a great interest in the developing technology of the
piano. For example, in 1777, at the age of twenty-one, Mozart
stopped in Augsburg, Germany, to try out some new pianos built
by Johann Andreas Stein, which met with Mozart’s great approval.
E. Mozart’s piano technique⎯his “way” of playing the still relatively
new and lightweight pianoforte⎯and that of his generation of
piano players was based on the way he grew up playing the
harpsichord.
1. Mozart sat at the center of the keyboard, upright but not stiff.
2. He kept his body still and, apparently, kept his face relatively
immobile, as well.
3. At the piano, Mozart favored a light wrist, arms down, fingers
always in close contact with the keys (a technique that would
work quite nicely with a light-actioned harpsichord or early
piano but would cause physical problems on a big, heavier-
actioned modern piano).

4. Indeed, the Viennese pianos of Mozart’s time were noted for
their light sound and exceedingly sensitive touch; Mozart’s
delicate and fluent harpsichord-derived playing technique
fitted them well.
5. We’ll listen to a bit of a Mozart piano sonata played on an
instrument built by the Viennese piano builder Johann Schantz
in 1790. (Musical selection: Mozart, Piano Sonata in D Major
K. 576, movement 1 [1789].)
6. In listening to the music, be aware of the “hunting horn”-
inspired opening theme and the delicate, fluent, essentially
two-part/two-voice nature of the writing, typical of Mozart’s
most brilliant keyboard music. We do not hear any big chords;
long, ringing, sustained pitches; or thunderous crescendi.
Mozart worked within the limits imposed by the instrument.
7. In listening to the instrument, be aware that to our ears, it
sounds about halfway between a harpsichord and a modern
piano. Its sustaining power and resonance are limited.
F. In Mozart’s own words, tempo and melody on a properly played
piano should “flow like oil,” indicating well the pianistic ideal of
the time: a smooth, light, and controlled sound.
IV. One wonders how Mozart would have reacted to the piano music and
the piano playing of the mature Ludwig van Beethoven. (Musical
selection: Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 29 in Bb Major, Op. 106,
Hammerklavier, movement 1 [1818].)
A. The piano available to Beethoven in 1819 was much different than
what Mozart had available in 1789⎯bigger and more resonant but
still with rather thin strings and a wooden harp.
B. Remember, however, that Beethoven was clinically deaf by 1819
and that the instruments he grew up playing were much more like
the ones Mozart played. What’s different between Beethoven’s
and Mozart’s piano music is Beethoven’s concept of the piano, his
belief that the piano should be capable of heroic utterance, of
organ-like sustain and resonance, and orchestral power.
C. Beethoven’s arrival in Vienna in November of 1792, just a few
weeks shy of his twenty-second birthday, essentially marks the
beginning of the history of the Romantic piano.
1. Beethoven biographer Maynard Solomon writes: “From all
accounts, Beethoven was a remarkable pianist, whose historic

importance is that he bridged the Classic and [Romantic]
styles of performance.”
2. Carl Czerny described Beethoven’s improvisation: “His
improvisation was most brilliant and striking⎯in whatever
company he might chance to be he knew how to achieve such
an effect upon every listener, that frequently not an eye
remained dry, while many would break out in loud sobs”
(Landon).
3. These listeners were the Habsburg aristocracy, and Beethoven
became their hero. They vied with one another to have him in
their homes, to lavish him with gifts and money; their status
rose and fell as he would bestow his favor or not on potential
patrons.
4. Beethoven drew his seed capital from an aristocratic class that
gladly supported him, despite the fact that he acted
disrespectfully and produced music that they often didn’t like
and didn’t understand. They supported him because by doing
so, the passion and truth in his music elevated their own social
status by association and, we hope, their worldview.
5. Beethoven, though just fourteen years younger than Mozart,
was of that first generation of keyboard players to actually
grow up playing the piano!
6. He took for granted those aspects of the piano⎯dynamic
capability, variety of attack and articulation, the ability to
sustain⎯that Mozart and his generation saw as novelties.
7. Because Beethoven took those aspects of the piano for
granted, he played, heard, and composed music for the piano
that was different from the start.
8. In 1791, a critic named Carl Ludwig Junker heard the twenty-
year-old Beethoven play the piano and made the following
observations: “His style of treating the instrument is so
different from that usually heard that it gives one the idea that
he has attained that height of excellence on which he now
stands by a path of his own discovery” (Schonberg,
Lives, 93).
9. In a word, Beethoven’s approach to the piano was orchestral.
He wanted from the piano the same power, the same ability to
sustain, the same variety of attack (articulation), the same

range of dynamics (very soft to very loud)⎯ultimately, the
same expressive range that he heard in an orchestra.
D. In his quest for more power and resonance, Beethoven begged the
Viennese piano manufacturers to give him a sturdier instrument
than the light-actioned piano of his day.
1. The Viennese were accustomed to the smooth, controlled
pianistic style of Mozart and Hummel. Beethoven’s hands-up,
piano-smashing, orchestral playing style was a stunning, if
controversial, revelation.
2. Beethoven’s grandiose view of the piano as his own personal
instrument and voice came to embody his own heroic self-
image. This grandiose view of the piano was also incredibly
influential on the next generation of composers.
3. After Beethoven, music could not go back to the lyric,
restrained style of Classicism, and musicians and listeners
could not go back to the Classical view of the piano as “just
another instrument.”

Lecture Two
A Born Pianist
Scope: Along with the expressive model of Beethoven, the developing

technology of the piano was the other essential factor in forming
the nineteenth-century heroic vision of the instrument. In addition
to the larger pianos made in Beethoven’s lifetime came the
invention of the metal-harped piano at around the time of his
death. This innovation created, for all intents and purposes, the
“modern” piano, the true instrument of the Romantic era. Liszt
would exploit the new piano as no other pianist⎯not even
Chopin⎯had exploited it, conceiving of the instrument as an
orchestra unto itself.
Franz Liszt was surrounded by music from infancy and began to
reveal his musical gifts at about age five. His family moved to
Vienna when Liszt was eleven to continue his musical education.
He stunned his teachers with his natural musical talent and, when
he gave his first performance at age eleven, astonished reviewers
and his audience. After that performance, the Liszt family
embarked on a tour, depending on Franz as the breadwinner. The
family ultimately arrived in Paris, where Franz absorbed the
culture and language and was adored, in return, by the Parisians.
He performed almost non-stop and wrote a number of works,
including the Etudes en douze exercice. Liszt would rewrite these
pieces more than once, and they would become a musical
commentary on his development as both a composer and as a
pianist. When Liszt was fifteen, his father died, sending Franz into
depression and apathy for three years. He was finally blasted out
of his lethargy by the July Revolution of 1830.
Outline
I. The technology of the piano made great strides during Beethoven’s
performing lifetime, the thirty years between 1785 and 1815. By the
early 1800s, pianos came much closer to Beethoven’s “ideal” than the
smaller instruments of his early years.
A. We must remember, however, that these larger pianos were still
made with wooden harps, meaning that the number and thickness

of the strings they could accommodate without splintering was still
limited.
B. Along with the expressive model supplied by Beethoven, the
developing technology of the piano was the other essential factor
in forging the new heroic vision of the instrument that came to
characterize the nineteenth-century piano, pianist, and piano
repertoire. During Beethoven’s own lifetime, larger and larger
pianos helped him to conceive of grander and grander pianistic
statements.
C. The change in piano design that would truly make the piano the
equal to the orchestra did not occur until the time around
Beethoven’s death. This change was the invention of the metal-
harped piano.
D. Some key names and dates in the advancing technology of the
piano are as follows:
1. 1800: John Isaac Hawkins of Philadelphia puts metal braces
around the wooden harps and sounding board of his pianos,
allowing him to use thicker strings in greater numbers.
2. 1821: The Broadwood Company of London attaches steel bars
lengthwise to the harps of its pianos.
3. 1821: Sebastian Erard of Paris creates what will become the
definitive action, or mechanism, for the piano.
4. 1825: Alphaeus Babcock of Boston forges the first cast-iron
harp frame for his pianos.
E. By 1828–1830, Erard’s action was joined with forged metal harps
to create, for all intents and purposes, what we now consider the
“almost-modern piano.” (Truly “modern” pianos, by today’s
standards, came into being in the 1860s and 1870s, with the
Steinway Piano Company playing the leading role.) Piano
developments from the late 1820s were too late for Beethoven
(who died in 1827), but just in time for the Romantic/Expressive
revolution he had so largely helped to inspire!
F. The modern metal-harped piano became, truly, the instrument of
the Romantic era, the instrument of the nineteenth century.
II. As we see in this Chopin prelude, music from the nineteenth century
was essentially “about” two distinct things. (Musical selection:
Frederic Chopin, Prelude in A Major, No. 7 [1836–1839.])

A. First, it’s about a mood; in this piece, a “whiff of emotion,” as
Joseph Kerman puts it, a mood of exquisite melancholy and
extraordinary nuance.
B. Second, this prelude, like almost everything else Chopin wrote, is
also about the modern piano⎯its evenness of tone, its ability to
project line, its resonance, and unique sonority.
C. Frederic Chopin was born in Warsaw, on March 1, 1810, making
him a year and a half older than Liszt.
1. His unique pianistic and compositional gifts were discovered
early; as a child, he was the pride of the Warsaw
Conservatory.
2. For reasons both artistic and political, Chopin moved to Paris
in 1831. His move coincided exactly with the creation of the
“modern” piano and the ascendancy of two Paris-based piano
manufacturers, Erhard and Pleyel.
3. Chopin’s affair with the diminutive feminist Aurore Dudevant
(Georges Sand) took place between 1836 and 1847; he died
on October 17, 1849, at age thirty-nine.
4. Chopin was a small, foppish man who was extremely
conservative in his aesthetic tastes. He abhorred the Romantic
movement that was sweeping Europe in both painting and
music.
D. Chopin’s music pushed the new piano technology far beyond
anything anyone had theretofore imagined possible. His piano
music is “about” the new piano. His music helped to define the
sonorous capabilities of the new instrument, and he was the first
composer whose music is genuinely, uniquely pianistic. (Musical
selection: Chopin, Etude No. 4 in C# Minor, Op. 10 [1829–1832].)
E. The young Franz Liszt met Frederic Chopin, heard Chopin’s
music, and heard Chopin play in the salons of Paris during the
early 1830s.
1. For Liszt, the experience was a revelation: Chopin’s music
taught him that the piano was capable of a level of poetry,
intimacy, exquisite quiet, and lyricism that he had never
imagined before.
2. We have evidence that Chopin was likewise impressed with
Liszt; Chopin’s Twelve Etudes Op. 10, of which we just heard
No. 4, were published in 1833 and dedicated to Franz Liszt.

F. Chopin and Chopin’s music mark the last step in the development
of the piano before the colossus of Franz Liszt.
III. Despite rumors to the contrary, which were promoted by the man
himself later in his life, Liszt was not born of the Hungarian nobility.
A. His ancestors were German-speaking migrant farm workers who
came to Hungary from lower Austria in the mid-1700s, looking for
work.
B. In Hungary, some members of the Liszt family clawed their way
out of poverty, received an education, and played important roles
in their communities. Among these family members was Franz’s
father, Adam Liszt.
1. Adam Liszt was born in 1776. He was a talented pianist and
‘cellist, who as a teenager, played ‘cello in the Esterhaza
summer orchestra under the direction of Joseph Haydn.
2. Intelligent and fiercely ambitious, Adam ultimately became an
administrator and bookkeeper for the Esterhazy family.
3. Between 1805 and 1809, Adam Liszt lived and worked at the
Esterhazy family headquarters at Eisenstadt. He played ‘cello
in the court orchestra, studied piano with Johann Hummel,
and worked with the musicians who came to Eisenstadt to
perform, including Luigi Cherubini and Ludwig van
Beethoven.
4. Adam was crushed, then, and fell into a deep depression when
he was summarily transferred to the village of Raiding to
become the Intendant of Sheep Flocks for the House of
Esterhazy.
C. Franz Liszt’s mother was Anna Lager. Adam met her in 1810,
when he was thirty-four years old and she was twenty-two.
1. Anna grew up in Austria. The deaths of her parents when she
was only nine years old forced her to move to Vienna, where
she worked as a chambermaid for eleven years.
2. She was, by every account, a cheerful, thrifty, honest, loving
person who was adored by her only child and worshipped by
her three grandchildren⎯Franz Liszt’s own
children⎯Blandine, Cosima, and Daniel, whom she raised.
D. Anna and Adam were married on January 11, 1811. Franz was
born ten months later, on October 22, 1811.

E. Liszt’s mother was Austrian and his father was of Austrian
heritage. The Liszt family spoke German at home, which was not
unusual because German was the politically correct language of
Hungary as a part of the Austrian Empire. Having said all this, we
must remember that the Hungarian-born Franz Liszt was a
passionate Hungarian patriot.
IV. Liszt, nicknamed “Franzi,” was surrounded by music from the earliest
age.
A. Adam organized chamber music evenings for himself and other
amateur musicians in the surrounding villages or played
occasionally with one of his visiting old friends from Eisenstadt.
B. Franz’s extraordinary musical gifts became apparent when he was
five. Adam Liszt recorded in his diary: “He [Franz] heard me play
Ries’s Concerto in C# Minor… In the evening, coming in from a
short walk in the garden, he sang the…concerto. We made him
sing it again. He did not know what he was singing. That was the
first indication of his genius” (Walker I, 59).
C. Franz begged for piano lessons from his father and they were
granted. Adam Liszt was as qualified and sympathetic a music
teacher as any child could hope for.
1. Adam knew how to play the piano, he knew the repertoire as
it existed at the time, and he encouraged his son to sight-read
and improvise, skills at which Franz soon became quite adept.
2. Adam was loving enough to let his boy’s genius develop at its
own pace and wise enough to recognize when Franz’s
precocity had outstripped his ability to teach him anything
more.
D. Liszt felt two other powerful influences in his life at an early age:
the Catholic Church and the gypsies.
1. Liszt was, from the beginning of his life to the end, a deeply
spiritual person. He was fascinated by the music, mysticism,
and rituals of the Catholic Church, in which he was steeped
from the youngest age. Liszt’s religious beliefs would
profoundly affect his life and music.
2. The other powerful influence was Liszt’s love of gypsy music
and culture, which flourished in Hungary simply because
gypsies were not persecuted in Hungary as they were
elsewhere in Europe. The gypsies often camped outside

Raiding, and the young Liszt would visit their caravans and
witness their exotic singing and dancing, ancient and
improvisational arts that thrilled him.
V. Vienna, the capital of the musical world, lay about fifty miles
northwest of Raiding, about five hours away by coach. In mid-August
of 1819, Adam Liszt and his soon-to-be eight-year-old son went to
explore Vienna.
A. Adam was looking for a proper piano teacher for Franzi and a job
for himself.
1. He had an appointment with Carl Czerny, a former student of
Beethoven’s and one of the most shrewd and savvy piano
teachers of the day.
2. Czerny was impressed with Franz’s natural talent and agreed
to be his teacher when the family returned to Vienna in a year.
B. The Liszt family arrived in Vienna to stay about nineteen months
later, in early spring of 1822. The move was a gamble. Adam had
to resign from service with the Esterhazy family, and Anna Liszt’s
dowry of 1,200 gulden⎯saved since her marriage⎯was used
toward living expenses and Franz’s education in Vienna.
C. Carl Czerny immediately accepted the now ten-year-old Liszt as
his student, and Antonio Salieri was hired on as music theory
teacher. Czerny later wrote, “Never before had I had so eager,
talented, or industrious a student. After only a year I could let him
perform publicly, and he aroused a degree of enthusiasm in Vienna
that few artists have equaled” (Walker I, 71).
D. Czerny made Liszt work hard, practicing scales; performing
technical, endurance, and precision exercises; and developing
proper fingering, and Liszt eagerly absorbed it all.
E. Czerny, who gave twelve lessons a day from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM,
taught Liszt for free, giving him lessons every evening after
having finished his day’s work. Liszt became a de facto member of
the Czerny family and was grateful to Czerny for the rest of his
life.
F. Antonio Salieri, himself stunned by the young Liszt’s talent, also
taught him for free, giving him at first three, then five, lessons a
week. As with Czerny, Liszt never forgot Salieri’s kindness and
generosity.

VI. The earliest surviving composition of Liszt’s is a variation on a waltz
composed by the music publisher Anton Diabelli. Diabelli invited a
number of Viennese musicians to supply one such variation each, and
this was Liszt’s contribution to the set.
A. We listen to Diabelli’s quaint theme, followed by the eleven-year-
old Liszt’s stormy and virtuosic variation, a piece that Liszt would
have certainly worked on with the help of Salieri. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Variation on a Theme by Diabelli, [1822].)
B. Liszt first performed before the Viennese public on December 1,
1822. He played the Hummel Concerto in A Minor and a “free
fantasy,” meaning an improvisation. He was eleven years old.
1. Reviewers were astonished. One wrote: “The performance of
this boy, for his age, borders on the incredible, and one is
tempted to doubt any physical impossibility when one hears
the young giant, with unabated force, thunder out Hummel’s
composition, so difficult and fatiguing, especially the last
movement.”
2. Let’s sample the opening of that last “difficult and fatiguing”
movement. (Musical selection: Johann Hummel, Concerto for
Piano and Orchestra in A Minor, Op. 85, movement 3 [1817.])
C. With the extraordinary accomplishment of Liszt’s first public
Viennese concert, his success as a pianist was assured, and not a
minute too soon. Adam Liszt had failed to find a job in Vienna,
and the family had spent Anna’s dowry. By the time Liszt gave the
concert in December 1822, the family was financially drained.
D. Over Czerny’s objections and after only fourteen months in
Vienna, Adam, Anna, and twelve-year-old Franz left for a concert
tour that would begin in Paris. Liszt would not see Czerny again
for fourteen years; aside from his father, Czerny was the only
piano teacher he would ever have.
1. We might see child exploitation and endangerment in this
working experience, and similar charges followed Adam and
Anna Liszt for years. However, Franz was never intimidated
or abused⎯physically or emotionally⎯by his father, as
Beethoven was.
2. Despite the fact that Franz did, indeed, become the family
breadwinner as a child, there is no evidence that his parents

were not, at all times, loving, protective, and sensitive to their
child’s needs and the difficulties of the situation.
3. Franz Liszt remained a loving son and was grateful to his
parents to his dying day. The family was also eternally
grateful to Czerny.
VII. The model the Liszt family had in mind for the “tour” was that of the
Mozart family, whose “grand tour” had taken place some sixty years
before. Of course, comparisons were inevitably made between young
Franz and young Wolfgang. In both cases, their skills as performers,
sight-readers, and improvisers bordered on the unbelievable.
A. Travel at the time was difficult; the quality of pianos available to
Liszt was uneven; and the “concert circuit” as we think of it did
not exist.
1. One had to show up in a city or town, hire a room, get a piano,
take out some ads, and hope an audience would show up at the
appointed time and place.
2. Nevertheless, Adam Liszt, a competent musician and an
excellent bookkeeper and administrator, discovered in himself
a genius for concert production, promotion, and public
relations. He would pass this talent onto his son.
B. The tour started in Munich and, from there, moved on to
Augsburg, Stuttgart, and Strasburg. In each city, stunned and
amazed nobles provided letters of introduction for the next stop on
the tour. When the Liszt family arrived in Paris on December 11,
1823, they had managed to bank 921 florins profit from the trip
across Germany.
C. On arriving in Paris, by sheer coincidence, the Liszt family
checked into the Hotel d’Angleterre, directly across the street from
the home, showroom, and workshop of the piano manufacturer
Sebastian Erard.
1. Liszt wandered across the street into the showroom, sat down
at one of the pianos, and literally stopped everyone in their
tracks.
2. The Liszt and Erard families almost instantly became great
friends; for the rest of his life, Liszt would call the Erards his
“adoptive family.”
3. The two families also became business partners. The Erards
opened doors across Paris for Liszt, and in return, Liszt played

Erard pianos exclusively for the next few years. These pianos
were at the cutting edge of the “new” piano technology.
D. It is not an overstatement to say that Paris “formed” Franz Liszt.
The city fostered his cosmopolitan flair, sophistication, and
aristocratic bearing. He absorbed the French culture and language
and became comfortable with adulation from difficult audiences.
In return, the Parisians adored “Le Petit Litz,” as he was called.
E. While in Paris, Liszt performed almost non-stop. Concert tours to
England took place at frequent intervals, as did trips throughout
France. Liszt also began to study composition and turned out a
number of works, including an opera entitled Don Sanche, or the
Chateau of Love, by the time he was fourteen.
F. Of the music Liszt wrote during these years, by far the most
important work was a set of studies, or études, for piano, the so-
called Études en douze exercices, or Studies in Twelve Exercises.
1. Liszt had begun writing these pieces in 1824, when he was
thirteen years old; they were published two years later.
2. What makes these pieces so important is that they would
become a sort of running commentary on Liszt’s development
as a pianist and keyboard composer. He rewrote these same
etudes into the Grand Etudes of 1838 and, again, into the
Transcendental Etudes of 1851. They became a progressive
musical diary.
3. One of the most striking of these early etudes is No. 10 in F
Minor, a sparkling and brilliant study that spans virtually the
entire keyboard in its first eight measures. (Musical selection:
Liszt,Étude en douze exercices, No. 10 in F Minor, [1826].)
G. By the time Liszt was fifteen, it was clear that his potential as a
composer was fully as great as his ability as a performer.
1. Although much of Liszt’s early music has been lost, enough
of it has survived to confirm that his natural abilities as a
composer⎯his innate understanding of harmony, melodic
structure, and in particular, the capabilities of the piano and
the human voice⎯were extraordinary.
2. That his compositional abilities were not truly developed until
a much later age was the result of events in August 1827.
VIII. Sometime in mid-August of 1827, after three years of almost non-
stop concertizing, Adam decided to take Franz to Boulogne for a rest.

A. Almost immediately after they arrived, Adam fell ill with typhoid
fever. Franz wrote his mother, who was in Austria, begging her to
return to France. By the time Anna received the letter, Adam was
dead. He died with his son at his side, on August 28, 1827, at age
fifty.
B. Adam Liszt was buried the next day. The fifteen-year-old Franz
was not present. He had already fled back to Paris, bereft, shocked,
and angry as only a teenager can be. Liszt and his mother took an
apartment in the Montmartre district, and he established himself as
a piano teacher for the sons and daughters of the aristocracy.
1. Why was Franz so angry and why didn’t he go on
performing? In 1837, ten years later, Liszt answered both
questions, saying that after his father’s death, he felt that his
art was reduced “to the level of a more or less profitable
handicap” and that he could no longer stomach being “treated
like a performing dog.”
2. Liszt’s adolescent rejection of the life his father had made for
him is clear, and without his father’s guiding hand, he went a
bit wild. He stayed out late, began to smoke and drink, and
fell in love.
3. The object of his affections was one of his aristocratic
students, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the beautiful seventeen-
year-old daughter of Count Pierre de Saint-Cricq, the French
Minister of Commerce.
4. When the Count discovered what was going on between Liszt
and his daughter, he terminated her lessons. Caroline,
heartbroken, was quickly married off to someone else.
5. Liszt was doubly devastated⎯he had lost his father first, now
Caroline. At sixteen, he suffered a nervous breakdown and
succumbed to religious mania.
C. Liszt stopped practicing the piano and did not write any music
between 1827 and 1829. He spent most of his time in church,
confessing daily, “repenting” for his perceived sins.
D. He was also chronically ill, morose, and almost completely
apathetic. He was a depressed teenager, emotionally on his own,
and despite his parents’ best efforts, a prodigy with difficulty in
coping with life.
IX. Liszt was blasted out of his lethargy by events in July 1830.

A. When Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated and permanently
exiled in 1815, the victorious allies reinstalled the Bourbon family
to rule in France.
B. Louis XVIII became king of France in 1814. He died in 1824 and
was succeeded by one of his brothers, who was crowned as
Charles X.
C. Charles X was a reactionary who wanted to reinstate the absolute
power of the monarchy, a monarchy that ruled by “divine right.”
D. In March 1830, the Chamber of Deputies delivered what amounted
to a no-confidence vote in the king; Charles responded by
suspending the Chamber of Deputies and, in effect, the
Constitution of France. This strategy might have worked a hundred
years before, but it backfired in 1830.
E. On July 27, barricades were raised in the streets of Paris and
royalist troops fired on them, igniting an all-out battle.
1. On the next day, a group of students climbed to the top of
Notre Dame and unfurled the tricolor, the symbol of the
Revolution.
2. Workers, artists, and artisans joined the students, and after
three days of fighting, Charles X abdicated and fled to
England.
F. Liszt, hearing the gunfire, rushed outside and was eyewitness to
the hand-to-hand fighting that took place in Montmartre. He joined
the crowds and was swept up entirely in the spirit of the moment.
G. According to Alan Walker: “With the cannon of the ‘Three
Glorious Days’ booming in his ears, Liszt’s creative energies were
[once again] released” (Walker, 144).

Lecture Three
Revelation
Scope: Writers, musicians, artists, and intellectuals flocked to Paris after

the July Revolution of 1830. The gathering place for these people
was the Parisian salon, and Liszt was one of the stellar attractions.
In 1832, Liszt attended a concert given by Nicolo Paganini, the
legendary Italian violinist. Liszt set for himself the goal of
achieving on the piano the level of virtuosity that Paganini had
achieved on the violin. Also at this time, Liszt met Hector Berlioz,
an early innovator in program music. Liszt and Berlioz became
great friends, and Liszt would assist Berlioz musically and
financially for many years.
In 1833, Liszt met and fell in love with the beautiful, married, and
neurotic Countess Marie d’Agoult. She and Liszt ran away to
Switzerland together in 1835, when she was pregnant with their
first child. A little more than a year later, they returned to Paris,
where their circle of friends included Frederic Chopin and Georges
Sand, Honoré Balzac and Victor Hugo, and Hector Berlioz. In
1837, Liszt and Marie returned to Switzerland, then traveled to
Italy, where their second child was born. A devastating flood in
Hungary prompted Liszt to go to Vienna and give a series of
benefit concerts. The experience reminded him of what his life had
been like before Marie and opened the door for him to break out of
the trap that he felt his domestic life had become.
Outline
I. After the July Revolution of 1830, Paris was the center of intellectual
and artistic life of Europe.
A. Writers, musicians, painters, intellectuals, and social reformers
were drawn to Paris, including Victor Hugo, Honore Balzac, and
Georges Sand; the painter Eugene Delacroix; and such composers
as Stephen Hiller, Hector Berlioz, Charles Alkan, Giacomo
Meyerbeer, and Friedrich Kalkbrenner.

B. After the sack of Warsaw by the Russians in 1831, Polish artists
and intellectuals likewise flooded Paris, including Frederic Chopin
and the Polish national poet Adam Mickiewicz.
C. These people gathered in the Parisian salons, which were
sponsored by wealthy families, and Liszt knew them all.
D. In fact, Liszt, twenty years old, slightly above average in height,
blonde, thin, and with extraordinary bearing, was a popular figure
at the salons and something of a ladies’ man.
E. The most important person Liszt would encounter in Paris in the
early 1830s was the violinist Nicolo Paganini.
II. Nicolo Paganini was born in Genoa, Italy, on October 27, 1782. He
was to the violin what Liszt was to the piano, an absolute natural, a
prodigy of supernatural ability.
A. By the age of thirty, in about 1812, he was mesmerizing audiences
across Italy. In 1820, at the age of thirty-eight, Paganini’s Caprices
(twenty-four in all) for solo violin were published, which other
violinists pronounced “unplayable.”
B. Up until 1828, Paganini played only in Italy. Word of this
incredible violin virtuoso filtered into northern Europe, but
Paganini’s reputation was not made until he finally traveled out of
Italy and gave fourteen concerts in Vienna between March 29 and
July 24.
C. The cynical Viennese audiences went wild for Paganini. The
Emperor created an honorary position for him, naming Paganini
“Chamber Virtuoso of the Court.” The city of Vienna awarded him
the coveted Medal of St. Salvatore. Paganini became an instant
legend; some even believed that he was in league with Satan.
D. Paganini created and solved his own technical problems.
Everywhere, his works were regarded as unplayable, until
Paganini played them. If a string broke, he could play equally well
on three; if another broke, he could play on two. In fact, his
specialty was to play an entire piece on one string alone, with
which he would bring the house down.
E. We can understand how the dark rumors about Paganini circulated
when we consider his spectral appearance. He was pale and
dressed in black, his body was slowly wasting away from syphilis,

and his teeth were falling out, causing his mouth to disappear into
his chin.
F. Paganini also associated with mobsters and gambled all night long
in smoke-filled rooms. He’d leave these “dens of iniquity,”
squinting in the morning sunlight, and head straight to the concert
hall in the same wrinkled, stale-smelling evening suit he’d worn all
night.
G. No one, however, had ever heard diabolical music like Paganini’s.
Listen, in particular, to the very high notes on the E string in the
following piece, a study in legato and staccato. (Musical selection:
Paganini, Caprice No. 5 in A Minor [ca. 1820].)
III. In April 1832, a cholera epidemic was raging through Paris, and
Paganini gave a benefit concert at the Opera House for the victims.
A. For Liszt, not quite twenty-one years old, hearing Paganini at this
concert, witnessing his virtuosity and showmanship and their
combined effects on the audience, was a blinding revelation.
1. He perceived in Paganini someone who not only played the
violin better than anyone else, but someone who played the
violin as well as it could possibly be played.
2. Liszt was also aware of the fact that for all the fine piano
players performing in Paris, the “Paganini of the piano” had
yet to appear. Liszt decided to take that role for himself.
B. Liszt embarked on a strict practice regime and set about writing
music for the piano that used some of the techniques he was
creating and practicing four or five hours a day.
C. To that end, he turned to Paganini’s own music for violin. One of
the first pieces he wrote under the thrall of Paganini was the Grand
Bravura/Virtuosic Fantasy on La Clochette.
1. The centerpiece of this impossibly difficult piece is a series of
variations based on the third movement of Paganini’s Violin
Concerto in B Minor, Op. 7.
2. Paganini’s concerto movement is based on an Italian folksong
named La Campanella, (The Bell). First, let’s listen to this
folksong. (Musical selection [at the piano]: La Campanella.)
3. Now, we’ll hear a bit of the third movement of Paganini’s
Violin Concerto No. 2 in B Minor. (Musical selection:

Paganini, Violin Concerto No. 2 in B Minor, movement 3
[1826].)
4. Finally, let’s listen to Liszt’s version, the variations section
from his Grande Fantasie de Bravoure sur La Clochette (da
Paganini), S420. (Musical selection: Liszt, Grande Fantasie
de Bravoure sur La Clochette, variations [1832].)
5. Almost no one plays this piece today, partially because of its
technical difficulties. In addition, Liszt wrote another, more
playable and more popular version of La Campanella, in
1838. It is one of the Six Grand Etudes after Paganini⎯
seminal works in the history of the piano.
IV. The three living composers who did the most to help shape Liszt’s new
vision of himself as a composer and a pianist were Nicolo Paganini,
Frederic Chopin, and Hector Berlioz. Liszt actually met Berlioz first
when Liszt was nineteen and Berlioz, twenty-seven.
A. The two young men met on December 4, 1830, during a stressful
time in Berlioz’s life. His Symphonie fantastique, an extraordinary,
audacious piece, was to be premiered the following day.
B. Berlioz believed that the future of music was tied to combining it
with the explicit storytelling power of literature, the end result
being what we today call program music.
1. The Symphonie fantastique was, thus, an experimental
artwork, a piece that combined the multi-movement
instrumental symphony of Beethoven with the explicit
storytelling and psychological penetration of Shakespeare and
the dramatic impact of opera.
2. Berlioz was a late bloomer with a spotty musical education;
technically, the Symphonie fantastique is not the most
polished work in the repertoire, but it is one of the most
original.
3. The work is a perfect example of what can happen when
someone of genius is not limited by knowing “the right way to
do things” and, instead, allows himself flights of fancy that a
better educated artist would not.
C. When Liszt and Berlioz met, they hit it off immediately. Liszt
attended the premiere of the Symphonie and was overwhelmed by
its power and originality. Berlioz and Liszt became great friends.

1. The two had much in common, including interests in poetry,
drama, and painting and a deep love for Beethoven at a time
when Beethoven, who had died just two years before they
met, was viewed with suspicion by the average European
concert-goer.
2. Both Liszt and Berlioz disliked academicians, which comes as
no surprise. Neither of them ever learned to do anything the
“right” way; they did things their own way, and in doing so,
they became the enemies of the pedagogues and the heroes of
a Romantic generation that valued individuality and
originality above all else.
D. Berlioz was poor and would remain in debt his entire life. Liszt did
what he could to help his friend out, including undertaking the
monumental task of arranging the otherwise unpublished
Symphonie fantastique for piano.
1. Liszt paid for the publication of the piano transcription
himself and played it often to help popularize the symphony.
2. The piano transcription of the Symphonie fantastique caused
quite a stir. The most famous and memorable part of the
Symphonie is the famous “March to the Scaffold (Guillotine)”
of the fourth movement. (Musical selection: Berlioz,
Symphonie fantastique, “Scaffold March,” movement 4
[1830].)
3. Listeners who heard Liszt perform his transcription of this
movement wrote that his playing surpassed the effect of
hearing the piece played by the full orchestra. (Musical
selection: Berlioz/Liszt, Symphonie fantastique, “Scaffold
March,” movement 4 [1833].)
V. Liszt was twenty-one years old when he made this transcription and the
same age when he met Countess Marie d’Agoult.
A. The countess was twenty-eight when she met Liszt, an elegant,
beautiful blonde and mother of two. She was also neglected and
bored, married to a man fifteen years her senior.
B. Marie was immediately taken with Liszt but would cause him
untold misery.
1. For all her money and privilege, Marie came from an
extremely dysfunctional family, characterized by early death,
depression, mental illness, violence, and suicide.

2. Marie herself was neurotic and considered cold and heartless
by many of the people around her.
3. Her safety valve was her pen. She was always jotting down
observations, memorabilia, and random thoughts.
4. She and her husband, Count Charles d’Agoult, had two
children, only one of whom, Claire, lived. For her part, Marie
claimed that she had not enjoyed a single happy hour since her
wedding day.
C. Marie and Liszt met in the summer of 1833 and declared their love
for each other by January 1834. By March 1835, Marie was
pregnant with Liszt’s child, the first of three the couple would
have. The child was born in December 1835 and named Blandine.
D. Two months into the pregnancy, Liszt and Marie planned their
escape. They would leave Paris secretly and head for Switzerland.
The two settled in Geneva.
E. Liszt continued to practice and took a job teaching piano at the
newly founded Geneva Conservatory. During this time, Liszt also
began composing a series of works that would become the first
volume, the so-called “Swiss” volume, of his three-volume set of
pieces called Années de pèlerinage, or The Years of Pilgrimage.
F. Marie now believed herself to be the muse of a genius, and she
would both inspire that genius and chronicle his life.
G. In October 1836, Liszt and Marie returned to Paris, prepared to
weather a storm of criticism and controversy that never
materialized.
1. These were, for Franz and Marie, their best days. They were
friends with Frederic Chopin and Georges Sand; they dined
and played cards with Balzac, Heinrich Heine, and Victor
Hugo; they went to clubs with Hector Berlioz.
2. All these amazing people were young and wild and in the
bloom of their lives; a contemporary periodical called Vert
Vert referred to their gatherings as “Evenings with the Gods.”
VI. The other great event of these years for Liszt was the famous pianistic
confrontation with Sigismond/Sigmund Thalberg.
A. Thalberg was born on January 8, 1812, making him only three
months younger than Liszt. He was a piano prodigy, though not on
the order of Liszt, who trained in Vienna.

1. At the age of sixteen, he began composing the fantasies and
opera arrangements for piano (his so-called “operatic
paraphrases”) that were the foundation of his repertoire.
2. Thalberg grew out of the Classic tradition of pianism; he
played in a poetic, refined, and aristocratic manner; and, as
opposed to Liszt, he sat rather still at the keyboard and
managed to produce his extraordinary technical effects while
seeming to remain motionless, which drove audiences wild.
3. Thalberg’s specialty was something called the “three-handed
effect”: he would play a melody in the middle of the keyboard
with the thumbs of both hands while providing a glistening,
harp-like accompaniment with his free fingers. (Musical
selection: Thalberg, Fantasia on God Save the Queen, Op. 27
[ca. 1830].)
B. Thalberg arrived in Paris in 1835 and immediately became the
darling of those critics and fans who did not like Liszt’s keyboard
histrionics. Liszt had just moved to Switzerland, but by the time he
returned to Paris, in the fall of 1836, Thalberg had established
himself as the “other” leading pianist in the city.
C. On arriving back in Paris, Liszt was asked to write a review of
Thalberg’s music for the prestigious Revue Musicale. Marie,
wanting to establish herself as a “writer,” convinced Liszt to let
her write the review in his name. Marie wrote a devastatingly
brutal review in which she, as Liszt, dismissed Thalberg’s music
as worthless.
D. When the article became public on January 8, 1837, a war of
words erupted between those in the Thalberg camp and those in
the Liszt camp. Just about everyone in Paris took part in the
debate.
1. Such a controversy may seem silly to us, but we must view it
in perspective.
2. In Parisian society, music was a crystallization of how society
saw itself. The differences between Liszt and Thalberg⎯
progressive versus Classic, extravagance versus control,
heroic versus human⎯were an indication of how the
Parisians, and by extension, the entire European world, saw
themselves and their future.

E. Liszt finally heard Thalberg play in February 1837. He wrote, “I
have just heard Thalberg: really, it is absolute humbug.” When it
was suggested to Thalberg that he and Liszt bury the hatchet by
giving a dual concert, Thalberg replied, “I do not like to be
accompanied.”
F. Each pianist then proceeded to give concerts in larger and larger
venues; Liszt finally rented the Paris Opera House and played
before 3,000 people⎯the first pianist ever to perform before such
a huge audience. From this point, it was just a matter of time
before Liszt and Thalberg met in open pianistic battle.
G. That battle occurred on March 31, 1837. The Princess Cristina
Belgiojoso-Trivulzio invited both Liszt and Thalberg to play in her
home, along with a number of other artists, ostensibly “in aid for
Italian refugees.”
1. Thalberg went first; he played his Fantasia on Themes from
Rossini’s Moses, Op 33. (Musical selection: Thalberg,
Fantasia on Themes from Rossini’s Moses, Op. 33, conclusion
[ca. 1833].)
2. Liszt followed with his Grand Fantasy on Pacini’s La Niobe.
(Musical selection: Liszt, Divertissement on the Cavatina “I
tuoi frequenti palpiti,” from Pacini’s La Niobe, conclusion.)
3. What was the outcome of the duel? According to one critic,
both pianists played passionately and both were declared
victors. According to the hostess of the evening, however, in a
phrase that is still quoted today: “Thalberg is the first pianist
of the world⎯and Liszt is the only pianist of the world.”
4. As a postscript, Thalberg experienced success in performing
for many years. The Liszt-Thalberg duel was still being
discussed in the press ten years after it had taken place.
Thalberg’s compositions have not survived in the repertoire,
but he served as a challenger who pushed Liszt to a level of
greatness that he might not otherwise have achieved.
5. Liszt was cognizant of all this. In his later years, he performed
Thalberg’s music in concert. In 1866, he wrote Thalberg and
addressed him as “illustrious friend,” and when Thalberg died
in 1871, Liszt wrote a touching letter of consolation to his
widow.

VII. Liszt and Marie returned to Switzerland, then traveled to northern
Italy, where their second child, Cosima, was born on December 24,
1837.
A. In March 1838, Liszt and Marie moved on to Venice, which he
loved, but she hated. Marie was going into one of her periodic
depressions. In Venice, Liszt came face to face with the
consequences of Marie’s incipient mental illness. Marie was also
aware that she was having a troubling effect on his life.
B. At the same time that Liszt and Marie arrived in Venice, terrible
spring floods devastated western Hungary. Liszt, who had not
been in Hungary for fifteen years, was galvanized by the news of
the floods.
1. Leaving Marie in Venice, he traveled to Vienna to gave a
series of eight benefit concerts for the victims of the flooding,
raising the largest single private donation Hungary received
for flood relief.
2. The music Liszt played at these concerts ran the entire gamut
of the keyboard repertoire, from Beethoven, Schubert, Handel,
and Scarlatti to Weber, Chopin, Moscheles, and his own
compositions. During those concerts, he played more than
forty different pieces, all of them from memory.
3. The Viennese audiences, who had not heard Liszt in fifteen
years, were stunned; they’d never heard such breadth of
repertoire played so well and so thoughtfully by anyone. For
his part, Liszt was reminded what it felt like to be a star, to
play before adoring audiences night after night, and to be
unencumbered.
C. Liszt returned to Venice and Marie roughly six weeks after he had
left, in May of 1838. Marie accused him of having “abandoned”
her and claimed that she had spent the week before his return
hovering between life and death.
D. In addition, while Liszt had been away in Vienna, Marie had taken
it upon herself to write a series of articles decrying Italian musical
taste and criticizing the management of La Scala in Milan. She
signed these articles “Franz Liszt”; Liszt returned from Vienna to
angry newspapers, hate mail, even a death threat.
E. Finally, by the fall of 1838, Marie was pregnant again. The child, a
boy, was born on May 9, 1839, in Rome. Franz and Marie handed

their son over to a wet nurse from a nearby village and didn’t see
him again for two and a half years.
F. In June of 1839, Liszt was almost twenty-eight years old. More
than eight years had passed since the premiere of Berlioz’s
Symphonie fantastique, seven years since the revelation of
Paganini’s playing, and four years since Liszt fled Paris and his
concert career to be with Marie d’Agoult.
G. Now a father of three illegitimate children, Liszt was disillusioned
with Marie and desperate to break out of the trap he felt his life
had become. All he needed to make such a break was a little push,
which would come in October 1839.

Lecture Four
Transcendence
Scope: The catalyst Liszt had been waiting for came in September 1839,
when he heard that efforts to raise money for a Beethoven
monument in Bonn had failed. He took it upon himself to raise the
money by going on tour. In the two years preceding this tour, Liszt
had been immersed in practicing and composing. He had attained a
level of technique and poetry at the piano that would soon take
Europe by storm. Among the works he composed during this
period were the Six Grand Etudes after Paganini, The
Transcendental Etudes, and most of the “Italian” volume of Years
of Pilgrimage, seminal additions to the piano repertoire. Liszt’s
approach to composition sprang from two important starting
points. First, he conceived of the piano as an orchestra unto itself,
capable of the same variety of articulation and tone colors that are
heard in an orchestra. Second, he conceived of the pianist’s hands
as a single unit of ten fingers, rather than as two hands of five
fingers each. This conception brought on the interchangeable
fingerings, interlocking hands, and crossed-hands technique in
Liszt’s music that revolutionized piano playing in the nineteenth
century.
When Liszt went back on tour, the response was amazing. His
concerts became major events, and he proved himself to be the
consummate showman. More than any musician, writer, or painter
before him, Liszt created the Romantic archetype of the artist as god.
He toured for almost eight years and, by 1847, was exhausted. At
this time, he met Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, who
would bring a degree of stability back into his life.
Outline
I. In late September of 1839, Franz Liszt, a few days shy of his twenty-
eighth birthday, received news that would change his life.
A. In Bonn, Germany, the Beethoven Memorial Committee
announced that an international effort to raise money for a
monument to Beethoven had failed miserably. Liszt was furious

over what he considered the grossest possible insult to his greatest
musical hero.
B. Liszt, who was living in Italy at the time, wrote the committee in
Bonn and offered to deliver whatever money was still needed to
complete the project, asking only that he might be permitted to
name the sculptor for the monument. The committee gladly agreed
to Liszt’s conditions.
C. This was the catalyst that Liszt had been waiting for. The only way
he could raise the 20,000 francs needed was to go on the road and
perform. Marie, of course, threw a tantrum and forbade Franz to
even think about leaving again, but his mind was made up.
D. The break with Marie was not yet permanent; that event was still
four years in the future. Certainly, however, from Liszt’s point of
view, the psychological break had begun.
E. We must not think that Liszt had been “idle” over the previous
couple of years. Despite the distractions, moving about, the births
of the children, Marie’s mood swings, he had been incredibly
productive.
1. He had been practicing and had attained a level of technique
and poetry at the piano that would soon take Europe by storm.
2. He had also been composing; by his own estimate, he had
written 400 to 500 pages of piano music. In 1838, he
completed the first versions of three seminally important sets
of piano pieces: the Six Grand Etudes after Paganini, the
Transcendental Etudes, and most of the “Italian” volume of
Years of Pilgrimage.
II. We begin our examination of Liszt’s so-called “transcendental music”
with the Six Grand Etudes after Paganini.
A. Five of these “studies” are transcriptions from Paganini’s twenty-
four Caprices for unaccompanied violin. One of them, La
Campanella, is a set of variations on the same Italian folksong that
Paganini had used in the third movement of his B Minor Violin
Concerto and that Liszt subsequently set in his Grand Bravura
Fantasy on La Clochette, back in 1832.
B. Before we start listening, we need a bit of explanation about the
various versions of the same pieces we are faced with when we
study Liszt’s piano music.

1. For example, he first published the Six Grand Etudes after
Paganini in 1840. Eleven years later, in 1851, he revised these
pieces and had the revised version published, as well.
2. For Liszt, these works were a musical diary, in which he
reveals to himself and his public his constantly evolving view
of piano technique.
C. These Etudes are, in whichever version we choose to examine
them, much more than mere “transcriptions.” In them, Liszt
reinterprets and adapts Paganini’s innovative music for the violin
to the different medium and demands of the piano keyboard. A
back-to-back comparison of a Paganini Caprice and a Liszt Etude
is instructive.
1. We listen, first, to Paganini’s Caprice No. 9 in E Major.
(Musical selection: Paganini, Caprice No. 9 in E Major, Op. 1
[1820].)
2. This caprice is a so-called “hunting” piece, in which Paganini
asks the violin to imitate, in turn, hunting horns (corni da
caccia) and flutes (listen, in particular, for the high notes on
the E string).
3. This is music of incredible textural complexity and virtuosic
difficulty; in it, Paganini treats the solo violin as an entire
orchestra.
4. In his Paganini Etudes, Liszt brings the full harmonic,
dynamic, and technical resources of the piano to bear on this
“violin” work; just as Paganini’s Caprice is idiosyncratically
“about” the violin, so Liszt’s version is idiosyncratically
“about” the piano. (Musical selection: Liszt, Six Grand
Etudes after Paganini, No. 5, The Chase [1838/1851].)
5. Liszt’s Etude is not an arrangement, a transcription, or even a
reworking of Paganini’s Caprice; it is a reinvention of it,
filtered through the lens of the piano.
6. The most famous of Liszt’s Six Grand Etudes after Paganini is
No. 3, La Campanella, based on an Italian folksong. We listen
to the beginning of that folksong. (Musical selection [at the
piano]: La Campanella melody.)
7. Nicolo Paganini used this folksong melody as the basis for the
third movement of his Violin Concerto No. 2 in B Minor of
1826. (Musical selection: Paganini, Violin Concerto No. 2 in
B Minor, movement 3 [1826].)

8. Inspired by the Paganini Violin Concerto, Liszt used this very
same theme as the basis for his Grand Fantasia de Bravoure
sur La Clochette (La Campanella da Paganini) of 1832.
(Musical selection: Liszt, Grand Fantasie de Bravoure sur La
Clochette, variations [1832].)
9. In his Paganini Etudes, Liszt went back to La Clochette/La
Campanella and fashioned an incredible series of increasingly
virtuosic variations on this otherwise rather innocent tune. As
we listen to the etude, keep in mind the points outlined below.
(Musical selection: Liszt, Six Grand Etudes after Paganini,
No. 3, La Campanella [1838/1851].)
10. The piece is, in many ways, one giant crescendo; the music
starts quietly and builds, inexorably, to a thunderous
conclusion.
11. La Campanella, (The Bell), becomes Le Campanelle, (The
Bells), as Liszt exploits, in particular, the brilliant, bell-like
sonorities of the upper end of the piano keyboard.
12. The huge leaps in both hands while playing the delicate,
intricate filigree that is the essence of this piece are
extraordinarily difficult, but Liszt was able to negotiate such
difficulties with ease.
13. Liszt used the entire keyboard as no composer before him had
used it. He cultivated timbres from different sections, or
registers, of the piano⎯the glittering upper register; the
rumbling, sometimes thunderous lower register; the singing
middle register⎯in a genuinely orchestral manner.
14. It’s as if the piano had become, in his hands, an orchestra,
with the same variety of articulation, instrumental tone colors,
and combinations of tone colors that one hears in an orchestra.
III. The Transcendental Etudes of 1838 constitute, for many, the last word
in nineteenth-century pianism and pianistic virtuosity. The chronology
of these pieces is fascinating.
A. Liszt wrote the first versions of these etudes in 1826, when he was
only fourteen years old. We listen to No. 10 in F Minor. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Étude en douze exercices, No. 10 in F Minor
[1826].)
B. Twelve years later, in 1838, Liszt went back to these juvenile
works and “updated” them. He didn’t “rewrite” them but

transformed them into entirely new etudes based on his ever-
evolving view of the piano and piano technique. In 1851, he
rewrote these etudes again; we most often hear this last version in
concert and on recordings.
C. Let’s compare the 1826 and 1851 versions of the F Minor Etude.
1. We’ll listen to just the beginning of the 1826 version, a study
in velocity and legato control. (Musical selection: Liszt,
Étude en douze exercices, No. 10 in F Minor [1826].)
2. In the 1851 version, the smooth, fast melodic profile of the
1826 version has been transformed into a prodigiously
difficult work that features alternating, interlocking chords.
(Musical selection: Liszt, Transcendental Etude No. 10 in F
Minor [1851].)
D. Liszt’s critics accused him of writing impossibly difficult music
for its own sake, but Liszt was able to play this music with
shocking ease and majesty. If these pieces are often poorly played
today, it’s not Liszt’s fault; it’s the fault of pianists who are not
good enough to play them.
E. For sheer brutal, volcanic effect, perhaps no other etude by Liszt is
more striking than the Transcendental Etude No. 8, entitled “Wild
Hunt (or Chase).”
1. This etude begins with the furious, demonic “music of the
devil’s hunt” that was so much a part of German Romanticism
from the music of Carl Maria von Weber onward. Again, a
back-to-back comparison is instructive.
2. First, we’ll hear the “devil’s hunt” music from Weber’s
(1786–1826) opera Der Freischütz, followed immediately by
the opening minute or so of Liszt’s own “Wild Hunt.” In this
piece, dogs bark, horses neigh, shrieking hunting horns belch
out huge dissonances, and a chorus of the devil’s own minions
sing:
Through mountains and valleys
Through glens and mud,
Through dew and cloud,
Storm and night!
Through marsh, swamp, and chasm,
Through fire, earth, sea, and air,
Yo ho! Whoa whoa! Whoa whoa!
Yo ho ho ho ho ho ho ho!

(Musical selection: Weber, Der Freischütz, “Wolf’s Glen”
Scene, “Devil’s Hunt” [1821].)
3. Now we hear Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No. 8, Wilde Jagd,
(Wild Hunt). (Musical selection: Liszt, Transcendental Etude
No. 8, (Wilde Jagd) [1838/1851].)
F. How can we summarize what was so different about Liszt’s
approach to the piano and pianistic technique, what made him the
pianist from whom virtually every school of nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century piano playing began?
1. In regard to his approach to the piano, remember that Liszt
conceived of the piano as an orchestra unto itself, capable of
the same variety of articulation and tone colors that one hears
in an orchestra.
2. As to what made Liszt’s approach to the piano and piano
technique so different than what had come before, I would
suggest it was his absolute insistence on complete
independence of each finger and his concept of the pianist’s
hand.
3. To achieve absolute finger independence, Liszt practiced
endurance exercises of his own invention for ten to twelve
hours a day, until he could play anything with any
combination of fingers.
4. In regard to his conception of the pianist’s hand, Liszt did not
conceive of himself as having two hands of five fingers each
but as having one single digital unit of ten fingers.
5. Liszt’s interchangeable fingerings, the interlocking hands, and
crossed-hands technique he used in his music all attest to this
concept of the single unit with ten fingers. This concept
revolutionized piano playing and piano music.
IV. When Liszt went back out on the road as a concert performer in 1839,
ostensibly to raise money for the Beethoven Monument in Bonn, it was
with an approach to the piano and a pianistic technique that no one had
ever imagined and a number of unknown and unheard compositions
with which to show that technique off.
A. Not even Paganini had caused such a stir. Liszt was the complete
virtuoso, the consummate showman. His concerts were major
events, at which ladies screamed and sometimes fainted.

B. Not everyone approved of the programs Liszt presented. Chopin,
Schumann, and Mendelssohn, for example, were disgusted by
what they saw as Liszt’s lack of substance and were appalled by
the hysterical hero worship that surrounded Liszt wherever he
went.
C. Liszt was a great showman, a knowing provocateur, and a natural
at self-promotion. We can also say, without a doubt, that Liszt’s
piano playing did indeed, on occasion, raise the mood of his
audience to a level of almost mystical ecstasy.
D. During these years on the road, Liszt performed in countless
locales, and tens of thousands of people had the opportunity to
hear him. Eyewitness accounts of Liszt the piano player are
everywhere to be found in the literature and memoirs of the
nineteenth century, and everywhere, the reports are that he
overwhelmed his listeners.
V. More than anyone before him⎯including Beethoven, Byron, and
Paganini⎯Liszt created one of the most enduring archetypes of the
Romantic era, that of the artiste “who walks with God and brings down
fire from heaven in order to kindle the hearts of humankind.”
A. In Lecture One, we discussed the fact that Liszt considered himself
superior to the aristocrats and royalty he met over the years. He
believed, as an enlightened member of the post-Industrial
Revolution middle class, that his nobility came from within, from
his god-given talent and artistic sacrifice, not from a lucky
accident of birth.
B. Liszt had any number of titles and medals, which he loved because
he believed that he had earned them. Eyewitnesses describe Liszt
going out on stage, his coat covered with medals and his
Hungarian Sword of Honor, clanking like a rusty locomotive.
1. I do not believe that Liszt was trying to elevate himself above
his audience with his decorations. Nor was he merely
engaging in showmanship, although that was part of the
reason for his display.
2. He was making a statement, showing the world that as an
artist, through his own abilities, he had garnered as many
awards and titles as any monarch possibly could.

VI. By 1847, after nearly eight years of almost continuous touring and
concertizing and at almost thirty-five years of age, Liszt was exhausted.
A. He was also having health problems. To survive the unending
round of concerts, benefits, and banquets, followed by travel, Liszt
had become increasingly dependent on tobacco and alcohol, which
of course, only made him less healthy and more susceptible to
illness.
B. Liszt’s last tour was through the Ukraine in mid-winter 1847, on
his way to Istanbul in Turkey. On an arctic night in Kiev, February
2, 1847, he gave a concert at the Great Hall of Kiev University.
C. Liszt played his last concert in the city of Elisabetgrad, in Ukraine,
in September of 1847. He was a few days shy of his thirty-sixth
birthday. No other musician had traveled so far, had performed
before so many people, had engendered such a reaction and
received such adulation from his audience as Franz Liszt.
D. Liszt retired at the top and kept his health. He had been offered a
job in 1842, which he had kept in mind in case he chose to stop
touring and settle down.
1. Liszt, a favorite at the court of Weimar, had been granted the
honorary title of “Court Kapellmeister in Extraordinary” by
his great fan Prince Carl Alexander.
2. Prince Carl had told Liszt in 1842 that the city and musical
establishment of Weimar were his for the taking whenever he
chose; that offer beckoned to Liszt in 1847.

Lecture Five
Weimar
Scope: Marie believed that Liszt had abandoned her. She moved back to
Paris, was reunited with her mother and brother, hosted a well-
known salon, and was even offered the possibility of reconciliation
with her husband. Her depression took over, however, and she
spent the rest of her life trying to blacken Liszt’s reputation.
Liszt retired as a touring concert pianist in 1847, after he met
Princess Carolyne. He decided that it was time to try his hand at
conducting and composing for the orchestra. He took over the
orchestra in Weimar and aimed to recreate the city as the hub of
European culture. From Weimar, he watched revolution sweep
through Europe and composed his Funerailles as a tribute to the
martyred revolutionaries in Hungary. At this time, Liszt was also
learning to compose for the orchestra with a Swiss composer
named Joachim Raff. The extent of Raff’s contribution to Liszt’s
early orchestral compositions is still debated. Liszt and Carolyne
lived in a spacious house in Weimar and hosted his growing circle
of important friends in the world of the arts. Among this “Music of
the Future” group was Richard Wagner, whom Liszt worked
tirelessly to assist, both personally and professionally. Johannes
Brahms was also a guest of Liszt and Carolyne but was disdainful
of the group surrounding Liszt and was reported to have fallen
asleep while Liszt played his B Minor Sonata.
Outline
I. Convinced that Liszt had “abandoned” her for his career, despite the
endless letters and money he sent her, Marie d’Agoult moved back to
Paris in November of 1839, taking a large and fashionable apartment.
A. Marie was reunited with her mother and brother. Liszt’s children
were given to his mother, Anna, to raise as her own, which she
did, lovingly and effectively.
B. Marie’s salon began to attract some of the most well known names
in politics and the arts, including Henry Bulwer-Lytton, then a
diplomat attached to the British Embassy in London. Marie may

have had an affair with Bulwer-Lytton; at the same time, her
husband offered to take her back and allowed her unrestricted
access to their surviving daughter.
C. It all proved to be too much for Marie⎯the proximity of her
husband and daughter, her social rehabilitation, her rapprochement
with her family, the affair with Bulwer-Lytton. Her depression
returned and, with it, any number of psychosomatic illnesses.
Marie’s unhappiness would find an outlet in her writing.
1. She began writing reviews in January 1842 under the pen
name “Daniel Stern.”
2. She had always fancied herself as the “muse” to a “great
man,” Franz Liszt. Instead, she became a burden. She watched
from afar as Liszt became a legend, with no help from her.
Nothing could have reinforced her own futility more or made
her angrier.
3. The situation came to a head in March 1844, when Liszt,
passing through Dresden, met the then twenty-six-year-old
Lola Montez, the famous and flamboyant “Spanish Dancer.”
Her real name was Eliza Gilbert, and she had been born in
Limerick, Ireland.
4. Marie read in the tabloids that Liszt and Lola had been seen
together and considered the public nature of whatever was
going on to be the ultimate betrayal. She broke with Liszt and
proceeded to write a book entitled Nelida.
5. Nelida was an autobiography thinly disguised as a novel. The
heroine, a young woman of aristocratic background named
Nelida, falls in love with a painter of genius, a young man of
questionable scruples and common birth. When he becomes
famous, he leaves her, then discovers, too late, that he is
nothing without Nelida’s inspiration.
6. Marie had the book published in 1846. Within a year, it had
become a bestseller. For the rest of her life, Marie did
everything she could to blacken Liszt’s reputation.
II. Liszt traveled and concertized almost continuously for eight years. By
1847, he was the most famous and recognized celebrity in Europe.
Then, as a performing pianist, he quit.
A. As a concert pianist, he’d been living and working in the fast lane
for eight years. He had made a lot of money and garnered fame,

but he was burned out: exhausted, sick much of the time, smoking
too much, and drinking too much.
1. He felt he’d done all he could do as a performing pianist; he
wanted to rest and try his hand at something new, such as
conducting and composing for instruments other than the
piano.
2. Again, he needed a catalyst to inspire his mid-life redirection.
That catalyst was Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. Along
with his mother, Princess Carolyne was to be the most
important and loving female influence in Liszt’s life.
B. Liszt abandoned his glittering concert career for the
Kapellmeister’s baton in a rather small German principality, which
shocked and surprised many of his contemporaries. He would
concertize as a pianist again, but he would never take money for it,
never perform for a living again.
C. In his mind’s eye, Liszt saw Weimar, his new home, as a place that
had once been a great literary center, the city of Schiller and
Goethe, that he could recreate as the hub of the new European
music, with himself in the vanguard.
III. At the time Liszt moved there, Weimar was a small town with a
population of only 13,154 people. As of 1848, however, the year Liszt
relocated there, Weimar was connected by rail to Leipzig, Berlin,
Dusseldorf, and Cologne.
A. In hindsight, Weimar was probably not the ideal place for Liszt to
settle. In many ways, the city was a memorial to its past and, as
Liszt would find out, not necessarily the best atmosphere for his
progressive artistic impulses.
B. Liszt was also, without a doubt, too flashy for Weimar, where he
almost instantly aroused the envy and enmity of the locals, who
subjected him to constant and malicious gossip and intrigue.
C. The fact that Liszt and Carolyne were practicing Catholics living
in a predominantly Protestant city and the fact that they lived
together, unmarried, for twelve years did not help the situation.
Liszt and Carolyne wanted to be married, but the Catholic Church
and the royal families to whom Carolyne was related did not want
her first marriage to be annulled.

D. For the twelve years that they cohabited there, Carolyne was
treated with a degree of rudeness and hostility by the people of
Weimar that must have been genuinely painful. Through it all, she
remained at Liszt’s side.
IV. When Liszt met Princess Carolyne in February 1847, she had been
separated from her husband for three years.
A. Worth mentioning is the fact that she was a rather plain-looking
woman, because Liszt was accustomed to having the most
gorgeous and desirable women in Europe throw themselves at his
feet.
1. To his great credit, Liszt looked past Carolyne’s plain exterior
and saw a woman of extraordinary intelligence and wit,
kindness, and capacity for love.
2. For her part, Carolyne said that their meeting was love at first
sight; she claimed that when she first saw him, she felt she had
known Liszt her entire life and that their first encounter in
Kiev was more a “reunion” than a meeting.
B. Carolyne invited Liszt to visit her at her estate, ostensibly to attend
the tenth birthday party of her daughter, Marie. Liszt spent ten
days with Carolyne and Marie. They were back together again in
July in Odessa, then at Carolyne’s estate in September, where Liszt
celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday in October. Vows of love were
exchanged, and the two would rarely be apart for the next thirteen
years.
C. Liszt arrived in Weimar in February of 1848; Carolyne came
several weeks later. She had spent the previous months divesting
herself of her estates, liquefying her assets, and essentially
smuggling her money and her daughter out of Russia. The couple
was reunited in Weimar just in time to see Europe go up in flames.
V. Weimar may not have been the best place for Liszt to settle down for
the long term, but it was a safe place to be when revolution once again
broke out in Paris, on February 22, 1848.
A. Within forty-eight hours of the outbreak, the so-called “Citizen
King” of France, Louis-Philippe, abdicated and fled to England.
1. Less than three weeks later, on March 13, the workers of
Vienna, inspired by the French, took to the streets against the

Royal Guardsmen of the Habsburg Empire. The fighting was
vicious, and the mob prevailed.
2. To the amazement of the rest of Europe, the oppressive Prince
Clemens von Metternich, head of the Habsburg government
since 1809, resigned, put on a disguise, and also fled to
England.
B. With Metternich’s departure, the Vienna-based Habsburg Empire,
the single most populous European state after Russia, fell apart.
The empire had been a multinational police state of about a dozen
different nationalities and language groups.
1. Revolutions and revolutionary movements broke out in Berlin,
Milan, Tuscany, Naples, Prague, Budapest, Venice, and
Sardinia, to name a few locations. The times were thrilling,
dangerous, exhilarating, and terrible.
2. Although the aims of the revolutionaries were grand, every
one of these movements failed. The old governments had been
stunned but not broken. The revolutionaries were people of
ideas but were almost completely lacking in the financial and
military resources necessary to sustain their movements.
3. One after another, the promises made by stunned governments
were revoked and the revolutions were crushed. The most
spectacular of these revolutionary movements was the attempt
of the Hungarian nation to break free of the Austrians.
4. The leader of the Hungarians, Lajos Kossuth, became a
legend, and indeed, the Hungarian revolution would have
succeeded had not Russia intervened on Austria’s behalf.
5. Finally victorious in October of 1849, the Austrians instituted
a brutal reign of terror and retribution across Hungary.
Kossuth managed to escape and spent the rest of his life
touring and speaking on behalf of the Hungarian cause.
C. Self-avowed Hungarian patriot Franz Liszt observed these events
in silence from the safety of Weimar. Of course, he could have
accomplished nothing in Hungary “in her hour of need,” but he
was strongly criticized by many for his pacifism.
D. Liszt did, however, write an extraordinary piece of music, the
elegy Funerailles, inspired by the martyrs for the Hungarian cause.
According to Alan Walker, the piece “is not simply the expression
of a personal sorrow but a symbol of the universal suffering felt by

mankind when great ideals perish and the heroes who espoused
them (of whatever nationality) are no more” (Walker II, 71).
1. As we listen to four excerpts from Funerailles, remember that
it is program music, meant to evoke specific descriptive
imagery: bells, trumpet fanfares, a funeral march, and so forth.
2. The piece begins with an angry evocation of tolling funeral
bells, which builds to a veritably deafening cry of the heart.
(Musical selection: Liszt, Funerailles, opening [1849].)
3. The bell-like opening reaches its climax in a trumpet-like
fanfare. The military connotations here are impossible to
ignore: The bells ring for soldiers and for patriots. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Funerailles, trumpet-like fanfare.)
4. The funeral train proceeds. (Musical selection: Liszt,
Funerailles, funeral march.)
5. Finally, the march reaches a climax as majestic descending
octaves in the pianist’s left hand defiantly thunder forth. The
music is meant to remind us of the glory of the cause and the
heroism of the martyred Hungarian patriots. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Funerailles, closing octaves.)
VI. Liszt and Carolyne moved into a spacious and attractive house, called
the Altenburg, on a hill with a commanding view of the city of
Weimar; it still stands today. The house was filled with pianos.
A. In addition to a Boisselot grand piano in Liszt’s composing studio
and an Erard grand in the living room, the “music room” contained
two Viennese grands, a spinet that had once belonged to Mozart,
and a gigantic “piano-organ,” a bizarre combination of the two
instruments in the same huge case. Liszt’s proudest possession was
Beethoven’s own English-made Broadwood piano.
B. The house was also the repository for all the gifts and souvenirs
Liszt had accumulated over his years of travel, as well as his
extensive library and his various collections. Ultimately, the
Altenburg became a virtual Liszt museum, with Princess Carolyne
as its proud curator.
C. The daily schedule at the Altenburg was straightforward.
1. Liszt got up early and would compose until around noon.
Lunchtime would see the arrival of his inner circle. After
lunch, there was brandy, games, conversation, perhaps lessons
to give.

2. Evenings saw a constant progression of musical soirees and
late-night dinners, considered magical, privileged occasions
by those who attended. Truly, the Altenburg, and Weimar by
association, became a cultural jewel, the heart of German
Romanticism.
D. One of Liszt’s first jobs on settling into Weimar was to improve
the deplorable state of the court orchestra.
1. The task was daunting. Liszt was not given the financial
resources he’d been promised and apparently had to fight for
every penny of funding he could get his hands on.
2. Liszt was able to throw his considerable artistic weight
around, ultimately increasing both the size and quality of the
Weimar orchestra to a point that it rivaled the best of Europe.
3. Perhaps his greatest “coup” was hiring the great young violin
virtuoso Joseph Joachim as concertmaster in 1850. Though
Joachim stayed on for only two years, the skills and cachet he
brought to the orchestra were of inestimable value.
VII. One of the main reasons that Liszt wanted to settle down in Weimar
was not to improve the quality of the court orchestra but to expand his
compositional horizons. For someone of Liszt’s heroic, larger-than-life
expressive palette, that goal meant writing for the orchestra.
A. Despite the fact that Liszt was the greatest pianist of his age,
perhaps the greatest of all time, when he arrived in Weimar in
1848, he knew almost nothing about any other instruments and
next to nothing about that huge and miraculous instrument called
an orchestra.
B. In January of 1850, a Swiss-born composer named Joachim Raff
arrived to stay at the Altenburg. Raff was to become Liszt’s
orchestral mentor and alter ego; indeed, he was, for a time, Liszt’s
orchestrator, and therein lies not a small bit of controversy about
Liszt’s early orchestral compositions.
C. In thinking about composing for orchestra, we must conceive of
the orchestra as a single large instrument with four “basic” sounds,
or palettes of sound⎯strings, winds, brass, percussion⎯and an
infinite variety of combinations of those sounds.
1. Composing for orchestra is much more than just “arranging”
the music for a large ensemble and “assigning” certain melody
lines and accompanimental parts to certain instruments.

2. The art of orchestration is learned over years of listening to
orchestras and studying orchestral scores; of composing for
orchestra; and, in rehearsal and performance, hearing what
you did right and wrong; of talking to players; and studying
the various instruments themselves.
3. In the world of commercial music, professional arrangers have
the job of arranging a piano score for orchestra. There is a
great difference, however, in terms of both execution and
content, between arranging something for orchestra and
conceiving it from the beginning for orchestra.
D. Liszt knew the piano, and he composed for that instrument in a
way that no one ever had before him, but if anything, the degree to
which he had immersed himself in the piano made it that much
harder for him to disengage from the keyboard and think in terms
of other instruments.
E. Liszt brought Raff to Weimar so that he might learn how to
compose for orchestra.
1. Liszt would give piano sketches to Raff, Raff would
orchestrate them, and Liszt would rehearse the orchestration,
then make changes as he saw fit.
2. For Liszt, these were practical lessons in orchestration. For
Raff, they were artistic collaborations. Princess Carolyne saw
the problem long before Liszt did.
3. Joachim Raff left Weimar in 1853, disillusioned and
convinced that his “great contribution” to Liszt and Liszt’s
music was unappreciated and unrecognized.
4. Although the debate about Raff’s “contribution” to Liszt’s
early orchestral music still rages to this day, the bottom line is
that Liszt, conductor of the Weimar Court Orchestra and
certifiable musical genius, would still have become an
orchestrator of the first rank with or without Raff’s help.
VIII. As an example of one of Liszt’s first orchestral works, we turn briefly
to Totentanz, a strange and wonderful piece that is half symphonic
poem and half piano concerto. (For an in-depth examination of
Totentanz, I direct your attention to the Teaching Company series
Masterworks.)
A. Liszt subtitled Totentanz “Paraphrase on the Dies irae,” the
Catholic prayer for the dead. The piece is, in reality, a huge theme

and variations, with the theme being the Dies irae, the famous
plainchant, the words of which describe the Day of Judgment.
B. The piece was likely inspired by a set of fifty-four woodcuts
entitled Der Todtentanz (The Dance of Death) by the Renaissance
artist Hans Holbein.
1. These woodcuts depict a skeletal grim reaper harvesting
humankind.
2. More often than not, the role of the piano in Liszt’s Totentanz
is to portray the grim reaper, his skeletal form described well
by harsh and brittle tremolos on the piano.
C. We listen to the opening of Totentanz, a work initially completed
in 1849 with Raff’s assistance, but revised by Liszt in 1853 and
again in 1859. (Musical selection: Liszt, Totentanz, Theme [1849,
revised 1853–1859].)
IX. The important musicians and writers, poets and painters that became
part of Liszt’s “Imperial Court” in Weimar included the composers
Joachim Raff and Peter Cornelius; performers Joseph Joachim, Hans
von Bülow, and Carl Tausig; and writers Friedrich Hebbel and Hans
Christian Andersen.
A. These artists fancied themselves a “gathering of eagles” and
thought of themselves as living at the cutting edge of art, the music
of the future. They were also, collectively, a political entity, and
the essays, articles, theories, and ideals espoused by members of
the Liszt circle were influential across Europe and beyond.
B. Of the many Lisztian disciples, one must be singled out and
discussed at some length, because without Liszt’s encouragement,
support, and money, his spectacular career might never have
gotten off the ground.
C. Richard Wagner first came to Liszt’s attention when Liszt attended
a performance of Wagner’s opera Rienzi, in Dresden, on February
29, 1844. Liszt was bowled over by what he heard and vowed to
stage a Wagner opera in Weimar at the first opportunity.
1. Just a few months after Liszt’s move to Weimar, on February
16, 1849, he conducted a performance of Tannhäuser.
2. Wagner later wrote that on hearing Liszt’s conducting of
Tannhäuser, he recognized his “second self”; Wagner
believed that Liszt felt when he performed the music what
Wagner had meant to say when he wrote it.

D. Three months after the performance of Tannhäuser in Weimar, in
May 1849, Liszt hid Wagner from the authorities (at no small risk
to himself) after the failed Dresden Insurrection.
1. Wagner had played an active role in the Insurrection and was
wanted for high treason.
2. A few days later, Liszt single-handedly managed to spirit
Wagner out of Germany and into “exile” in Switzerland.
Wagner was not able to return to Germany for eleven years.
E. Alan walker writes:
The pioneer work that Liszt did in Wagner’s behalf during this
long [exile] is impossible to overestimate. Liszt was the only
conductor in Germany who would have anything to do with
Wagner’s compositions … He [Liszt] made matchless piano
transcriptions of Wagner’s scores, sent money and useful artistic
contacts his way, visited him several times in exile, and even
tried to procure a pardon for him… Quite simply, Liszt
recognized in Wagner the greatest musical master of the age,
and he took it to be his primary mission to convert others to the
same point of view (Walker II, 118–119).
F. Richard Wagner was not the only composer that Liszt
championed. He also revived the career of his old friend Hector
Berlioz at a time when Berlioz had fallen into near obscurity. Liszt
performed and celebrated Berlioz’s music at every opportunity and
devoted a number of weeklong festivals to his work.
X. One composer who did not want Liszt’s help and patronage was the
twenty-year-old Johannes Brahms, who came to the Altenburg in June
of 1853.
A. Brahms, then a virtual unknown, had been touring Germany with
the Hungarian violinist Eduard Rimenyi. With a letter of
introduction from Liszt’s former concertmaster, Joseph Joachim,
Brahms and Rimenyi were invited to attend a musical session in
the presence of the “Great One” and his court.
B. Among the eyewitnesses to what happened was Liszt’s American
student William Mason. Mason saw a stack of Brahms’s still-
unpublished manuscripts lying on a table as he entered Liszt’s
music room, including the handwritten manuscript of Brahms’s
Scherzo in Eb Minor, which according to Mason, was nearly
illegible.

C. When Brahms could not be persuaded to play, Liszt picked up the
illegible scherzo and began to play it masterfully, keeping up a
running commentary as he did so.
D. Brahms was amazed and delighted but is reported to have fallen
asleep when Liszt played his own B Minor Sonata later in the
evening. Brahms never bothered denying the story, but his
antipathy toward Liszt and what Brahms considered Liszt’s
“sycophantic toadies” was clear from the start.

Lecture Six
The Music at Weimar
Scope: Although Liszt was conducting and learning to compose for the
orchestra in Weimar, his heart still belonged to the piano. During
this time, he rewrote his Transcendental Etudes and the Six Etudes
after Paganini and composed one of the greatest keyboard works
of the nineteenth century, the B Minor Sonata for piano. The piece
is not a “sonata” in the usual sense, but a sonata-form movement,
which features multiple contrasting themes. Critical response to
this piece, and other of Liszt’s avant-garde music from this period,
was brutal.
Liszt became one of the first purposefully “modern” composers,
seeking new compositional techniques and expressive content. His
vision of the “music of the future” is exemplified in his
symphonies and “symphonic poems.” These orchestral
compositions were controversial when they were first played and
remain so today. In them, Liszt tried to capture the emotions and
impressions he felt as he read certain works of literature.
Ultimately, the pieces are almost completely idiosyncratic works,
in which large-scale form is entirely dependent on expressive
content. Liszt’s orchestral masterwork of these years is the Faust
Symphony, in which he uses extraordinarily modern themes to
depict the story of Faust’s struggle for his soul. With the
completion of this piece in 1857, Liszt became, undeniably, the
patriarch of the new music.
Outline
I. Despite the fact that Liszt was conducting and learning to compose for
orchestra in Weimar, the piano was still his essential instrument.
A. For example, in 1851, he rewrote once more and created what
today are considered the definitive versions of his Transcendental
Etudes and the Six Etudes after Paganini.
B. The crowning glory of these years was the composition of his B
Minor Sonata for Piano, considered by any number of respectable

authorities to be one of the greatest keyboard works of the
nineteenth century.
C. Liszt inscribed the B Minor as having been completed on February
2, 1853. We do not know when he began the piece, but the
composing probably took three or four months. We do know that
no other single work by Liszt has been analyzed more or subjected
to more criticism, both positive and negative, than his B Minor
Piano Sonata.
D. We begin with the title of the piece. It seems more than a little odd
that Liszt, who was so devoted to program music, called this, his
greatest and most ambitious work for the piano, by the utterly
generic, ultimately inscrutable title of “sonata.”
1. Although Liszt’s B Minor Sonata contains four large sections,
which we would expect from a “Classically” proportioned
“piano sonata,” we can’t really call them movements because
the music never stops. Liszt’s sonata is a single, continuous
movement of music, running about thirty minutes long.
2. Why, then, did Liszt call the piece a “sonata”? Because its
four large-scale sections (its “movements”) together make up
a single, huge sonata form from the beginning to the end.
E. Since the mid- to late eighteenth century, the word sonata has had
two mutually exclusive meanings, one of which has to do with
instrumental genre and the other, with musical form or structure.
1. Regarding instrumental genre, a sonata is a multi-movement
composition for solo piano or solo piano plus one other
instrument. For example, Beethoven’s “violin sonatas” are
multi-movement works for violin and piano; the piano is
understood to be present if the work is entitled “sonata.”
2. Regarding musical form, “sonata form,” sometimes referred to
as “sonata-allegro form,” is a formal procedure, a way of
structuring the music within a single movement. The basic
assumption of sonata form is that a movement will feature
multiple contrasting themes. The conflict created by the
thematic contrast and the development of the themes forms the
dramatic thrust and crux of a sonata-form movement.
3. Within a single sonata-form movement are four large sections
of music, each with a specific role to play in the large-scale
scheme of the movement. The “role” of the first section is to
separately introduce the themes⎯the characters of the musical

play. This first section is called the exposition, because the
themes are “exposed,” or heard, for the first time.
4. The second large section of a sonata-form movement is called
the development, because it is here that the themes are
“developed”: fragmented, juxtaposed, and so forth.
5. The third large section of a sonata-form movement is the
recapitulation, in which the themes return, typically in their
original order, and the fourth large section, the coda, brings
the movement to its conclusion.
6. The four continuous sections of Liszt’s B Minor Sonata
(which some writers have erroneously referred to as
“movements”), labeled Allegro, Andante, Fugato, and
Allegro/Prestissimo, are not separate movements but function
as the large sections of a sonata-form movement: exposition,
development, recapitulation, and coda. Liszt might have more
accurately (but much less poetically) named his piece the B
Minor Sonata Form.
F. During the introduction to the first section, Liszt lays out the ideas
that will constitute the thematic grist of the entire piece. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Sonata in B Minor, Introduction [1853].)
G. We do not have time to identify each of the thematic ideas we just
heard, but we can say that Liszt’s Beethoven-derived technique of
thematic transformation is no better demonstrated in any of his
works than it is here.
1. The first theme of Liszt’s huge sonata form, heard in the
exposition, is a rocking and roiling passage of great passion
and pathos. (Musical selection: Liszt, Sonata in B Minor,
theme 1.)
2. The second theme, which makes its appearance about three
and a half minutes into the movement, is magnificent and
grandiose; it reveals the piano as orchestra! (Musical
selection: Liszt, Sonata in B Minor, theme 2.)
3. The development section of Liszt’s B Minor Sonata, in which
previously heard material is developed and transformed,
consists of two large sections: the Andante and the Fugato.
(Musical selection: Liszt, Sonata in B Minor, Andante
opening.)

4. We hear the beginning of the second half of the development
section, the Fugato, in the following selection. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Sonata in B Minor, Fugato opening.)
5. The recapitulation and coda are contained in the fourth (and
last) large section of the movement. The recapitulation begins
about twenty-two and a half minutes into the movement; the
roiling opening theme returns, if possible, even more
explosively than in the exposition. (Musical selection: Liszt,
Sonata in B Minor, recapitulation opening, theme 1.)
6. Then, we reach the coda: one of the longest and most difficult
passages in the repertoire. We listen to the first minute and a
half. (Musical selection: Liszt, Sonata in B Minor, coda .)
H. Fatigue alone has left many pianists in agony at this point, but the
key to the B Minor Sonata is not merely “getting through the tough
spots”; the key is to project the large-scale form of the sonata.
1. Sheer athleticism isn’t enough; extraordinary musical
intelligence is also required.
2. As has been pointed out, the B Minor Sonata requires not only
a master of tactics⎯the ability to negotiate the measure-to-
measure difficulties of the piece⎯but a master of strategy, as
well.
I. The critics were brutal when the work was publicly premiered in
Berlin by Hans von Bülow on January 22, 1857. Eduard Hanslick,
the conservative Viennese critic, heard “a concoction of utterly
disparate elements” and felt “an irresistible desire to laugh”
(Taylor, 141).
J. Whatever the piece may or may not be “about”⎯various pundits
have described Liszt’s B Minor Sonata as a musical version of
Goethe’s Faust, of Liszt’s own life, and so on⎯Liszt’s Sonata in
B Minor is, perhaps, his great masterwork and one of the handful
of most important instrumental works of the nineteenth century.
K. Liszt’s increasingly avant-garde music met with hostility from
critics and orchestras. Liszt seems to have handled the critical
controversy over his music with philosophical ease and a sense of
humor.
L. As he had once been the prototype for the modern touring
virtuoso, so Liszt now became one of the first purposefully

“modern” composers. In a century that had discovered the past,
Liszt was equally concerned with the future.
1. We know that Liszt celebrated the music of the “past”; his
performances of the keyboard music of Bach and Beethoven
were, for example, hailed as the greatest of his time.
2. However, he also profoundly believed that the creative artist
should not be seduced by the past, not assume that what was
“old” was better than what was “new.” Composers had the
responsibility to find compositional techniques and expressive
content that might build on tradition without becoming mired
in tradition.
M. Liszt and his circle of composers, writers, and politicos called
themselves the “Music of the Future” group, a name that rankled
those who were not part of the “club.”
II. In no set of works was Liszt’s vision of “the music of the future” better
displayed than in his symphonies and so-called “symphonic poems.”
A. These orchestral compositions, including Tasso, Les Préludes,
Orpheus, Prometheus, Mazeppa, Hamlet, the Faust Symphony,
and the Dante Symphony, were extremely controversial when they
were first produced in the 1850s and remain almost as
controversial today.
B. Liszt wrote these orchestral works at an astonishing rate. The
Faust and Dante Symphonies and the twelve symphonic poems
were Liszt’s great contribution to nineteenth-century program
music.
1. The designation “symphonic poem” is Liszt’s own; a
symphonic poem was a one-movement work in which form
and structure were determined entirely by the literary story
being told by the music, the whole being held together by
constant thematic transformation and metamorphosis.
2. Most of these Lisztian program works deal with heroic
characters, such as Prometheus, Mazeppa, Tasso, Orpheus,
and Hamlet, who are confronted with and must overcome
extraordinary adversity. Liszt supplied his audiences with
brief literary prefaces to each of these works.
3. Liszt’s self-identification with these characters is clear, as is
the model of individual heroism that was so much a part of the
Romantic era’s expressive focus.

C. Liszt admitted that these pieces were “freely composed,” that is,
stream-of-consciousness works based as much on the emotions
and impressions these stories stirred in Liszt’s own heart as on the
absolute literary substance of the story itself.
D. These pieces go far beyond the structural liberties and intricacies
of the B Minor Sonata; despite its peculiarities, at least that piece
can be understood against the preexisting template of “sonata
form.” Structurally and formally, the symphonic poems are almost
completely idiosyncratic, self-referential works, in which large-
scale form is entirely dependent on expressive content.
1. This individuality is as problematic for audiences today as it
was 150 years ago. We cannot follow the paths of Liszt’s
imagination and we do not know the story that is supposedly
being told in some pictorial or emotional or impressionistic
sense; how, then, do we know what’s going on? What holds
such music together?
2. Supposedly, Liszt’s use of thematic transformation and
metamorphosis holds it all together. As an example, we turn
briefly to Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major, a work
initially completed in 1849 (with much of the orchestration
done by Raff) and revised and rewritten by Liszt four times,
the final and definitive version dating from 1861. We listen,
initially, to three widely spaced moments in the concerto.
3. First, we hear the gentle, lyric opening of the concerto, in the
winds. (Musical selection: Liszt, Piano Concerto No. 2 in A
Major, opening [1849, revised 1861].)
4. Now we hear the stirring march theme of the finale, music
marked: “Marziale un poco meno allegro,” (“Martial/warlike,
a little less fast”). (Musical selection: Liszt, Piano Concerto
No. 2 in A Major, opening Marziale.)
5. Last, we hear this glorious music, marked “Appassionato”
(“Impassioned”) near the end of the concerto. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Piano Concerto No. 2 in A Major, Finale,
“Appassionato.”)
6. If we listen to the beginnings of each of these three sections
back-to-back, we should hear that all these themes are
transformations of the same tune.
7. Liszt counted on this sort of musical coherence to hold his
stream-of-consciousness orchestral program music together.

Unfortunately, Liszt’s themes are often so metamorphosed
that we simply don’t recognize them in their various
permutations. Even when we do recognize the themes, it is
often still not quite enough to hold together the various
episodes of a given piece.
E. Liszt’s symphonic poems are genuinely avant garde, experimental
artworks. Despite their originality, harmonic inventiveness, and
truly superb orchestration, they are problematic works, incredibly
influential but often sprawling and, on occasion, almost
nonsensical.
III. The orchestral masterwork of the Weimar years is the Faust
Symphony.
A. Hector Berlioz introduced Liszt to Goethe’s Faust in 1830, in a
French translation by Gerard de Nerval.
1. The Faust legend began in the early 1500s and has its basis in
a real person named Johann Faustus. Herr Faustus was a
magician, an astrologer, and a fraud, who wandered across
Germany casting horoscopes and amazing the locals with
magic tricks.
2. He was awarded a degree by Heidelberg University in 1509
and became known as “Doctor Faustus.” Apparently, the
doctor used to brag that he had supernatural powers that were
given to him by his companion, the devil.
3. He died in 1540; soon after, the story began to circulate that
he had indeed sold his soul to Mephistopheles; that for
twenty-four years, all his wishes and desires were granted at
the ultimate cost of his soul.
B. Eventually, a cottage industry of Faustian literature sprang up to
address the themes in this story: good verses evil, temptation
verses self-control, piety verses impiety. The most famous of these
early versions of the story is Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor
Faustus of 1601.
C. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epic version of the Faust legend
was different than any that came before it.
1. Goethe’s version begins in Heaven, where Mephistopheles
asks God’s permission to corrupt Faust’s soul. God is so
confident that Faust is incorruptible that he gives
Mephistopheles permission to proceed.

2. In Goethe’s version, Faust is a thinker and philosopher who is
disillusioned with the limits of knowledge. Although he tastes
all the pleasures the devil can deliver, he remains dissatisfied.
3. Finally, Faust meets, seduces, and destroys the beautiful and
innocent Gretchen. Filled with remorse and redeemed by the
love Gretchen gave him, Faust uses the power of
Mephistopheles to do good in the world. At the moment of
death, he is borne away by angels, redeemed and forgiven.
4. The story is of a man who thirsts for the ultimate at any price;
a man of intellect and passion who is redeemed by love; a
struggle over one man by the forces of good and evil; a
recognition of both the duality and frailty of humankind and
the ultimate power of forgiveness. Liszt identified almost
completely with Faust.
D. Liszt thought about Faust for a long time. In 1849, he conducted
excerpts from Robert Schumann’s Scenes from Faust, and in 1852,
he was in the audience as Berlioz conducted his own Damnation of
Faust in Weimar. Finally, in only two months, between August
and October of 1854, Liszt composed his Faust Symphony, the
first of his orchestral works that he orchestrated entirely by
himself.
E. Liszt’s Faust Symphony consists of three movements: Movement
1 is entitled “Faust”; movement 2, “Gretchen”; movement 3,
“Mephistopheles.” Obviously, we cannot analyze this long and
complex work in detail, but we will sample the principal themes of
each movement and discuss what they represent programmatically.
F. In movement 1, “Faust,” the character of Faust is represented by
four principal themes, and the symphony begins with the first of
these four themes.
1. This first theme⎯played in orchestral unison, without any
accompaniment, by muted violas and ‘cellos⎯represents
Faust’s moral and spiritual dilemma: He is a man who has lost
faith with himself and his God.
2. Liszt projects this moral and spiritual crisis with a melody
built out of a series of descending augmented triads. This
melody suspends any feeling of key center and creates a sense
of harmonic rootlessness, lacking, as it does, any feeling of

harmonic stability. (Musical selection: Liszt, Faust
Symphony, movement 1 opening, Faust theme 1.)
3. The theme is a remarkable one of extraordinary modernity; it
demonstrates well Goethe’s description of Faust’s mind
groping for understanding “Like the worm that writhes in the
dust.”
4. Faust’s second theme follows immediately; it is a melancholy
passage in the winds that will later come to be associated with
Faust’s love for Gretchen. (Musical selection: Liszt, Faust
Symphony, movement 1, Faust theme 2, opening.)
5. Faust’s third theme is a violent and stormy one; marked
“Allegro agitato ed appassionato,” it is meant to represent
Faust’s passionate, impetuous, almost self-destructive
personality. Note the appearance of the first theme, played
boldly by the brass, about halfway through this one-minute
excerpt. (Musical selection: Liszt, Faust Symphony,
movement 1, Passion theme.)
6. The fourth of Faust’s themes is the so-called “Heroic Theme,”
meant to represent the goodness and power to do the right
thing that Faust carries deep within his tortured soul. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Faust Symphony, movement 1, Heroic
theme.)
7. During the course of this almost thirty-minute–long first
movement, these four themes become the major players in a
huge sonata-form movement. The unending transformations
and juxtapositionings of these themes are meant to describe
the progressive workings of Faust’s mind and the complex
and tortured states of his soul.
G. The second movement of Liszt’s Faust Symphony, “Gretchen,” is
completely different.
1. In this sweet, lyric, gentle movement, Liszt treats the orchestra
like a giant chamber group, in which we hear a kaleidoscopic
number of combinations of solo instruments.
2. At the outset of the movement, Gretchen’s main theme is
introduced in a duet for oboe and viola. (Musical selection:
Liszt, Faust Symphony, movement 2, “Gretchen,” opening.)
This sweet, innocuous theme will be transformed into the
Redemption theme during the Chorus Mysticus at the close of
the last movement!

3. One part of this movement is especially whimsical⎯Liszt’s
musical portrayal of the famous scene in which Gretchen pulls
the petals off the flower saying, “Er liebt mich; er liebt mich
nicht” (“He loves me; he loves me not”). (Musical selection:
Liszt, Faust Symphony, movement 2, “Gretchen,” opening.)
H. The third and last movement of the Faust Symphony is one of the
cleverest pieces of music Liszt ever wrote.
1. Taking his cue from Goethe, who wrote of Mephistopheles,
“he cannot create, he can only destroy,” Liszt composed no
new themes for this “Mephistopheles” movement.
2. Instead, the themes from the “Faust” movement return, but
they are distorted and ultimately destroyed, infected, as they
are, by the evil that is Mephistopheles.
3. After a mincing, almost cartoonish introduction, Mephisto’s
principal theme appears, a parody of Faust’s Passion theme.
4. The last of Faust’s themes to fall to the unrelenting mocking
of the devil is the once-magnificent Heroic Theme, now
rendered into a dazzling but common dance. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Faust Symphony, movement 3,
“Mephistopheles,” Heroic theme parody.)
5. Eventually, Gretchen’s Theme returns as it was heard in the
second movement; she is immune from the evil parodies of
Mephistopheles. A terrible musical struggle ensues as Faust,
made aware of his folly by the appearance of Gretchen’s
theme, fights for his soul.
I. Originally, the Faust Symphony ended quietly, with Gretchen’s
music bearing Faust’s soul upward to heaven. In 1857, three years
after first completing the symphony, Liszt added a setting of
Goethe’s Chorus Mysticus (“Mystical Chorus”) for tenor solo and
male chorus as an epilogue.
IV. With the publication of his first group of symphonic poems in 1856
and the completion of the Faust Symphony in 1857 and through his
conducting and teaching and the pamphlets and essays of his “court,”
Liszt had become the patriarch of the new music.

Lecture Seven
Rome
Scope: By the 1850s, Liszt had became the focal point of a debate
concerning program music versus absolute music and expression
versus structure. Twenty years earlier, Liszt and his fellow young
Romantic musicians had been united in their artistic aims: to create
a new music based on individual expression. As these musicians
grew older, many of them became more conservative, but Liszt
never lost his revolutionary spirit. Of course, Liszt faced criticism
for his “modernist” music, and we must sometimes ask whether his
critics were correct. Ultimately, the answer is no. Liszt produced a
great deal of music and didn’t edit his output, but much of this
music is compelling and passionate; his B Minor Sonata, the
Transcendental Etudes and other pieces are genuine masterworks.
Starting in 1853, Liszt’s relationship with his children began to
change, as did their relationship with their mother, Marie
d’Agoult. In 1854, when he discovered that his daughters were
visiting their mother, Liszt decided to move them to Germany.
There, Cosima Liszt fell in love with Liszt’s student Hans von
Bülow, and the two were married in 1857. Blandine moved back
to Paris and was married to a brilliant young lawyer. In 1859,
Liszt’s son, Daniel, a young man of great promise, died of
tuberculosis, which devastated the family. Also in 1859, Liszt
resigned as Weimar Court Conductor, pushed out by forces in
opposition to his continued stay in Weimar. The good news of this
period was that Liszt and Carolyne believed that her first marriage
might finally be annulled and they might finally be able to marry.
On the eve of the ceremony, however, they received word that the
Pope would not allow the marriage to take place. Carolyne was
shattered and would never recover. Liszt, paralyzed for a time and
further broken hearted by the death of Blandine, ultimately turned
to the Catholic Church to find solace.
Outline
I. “New wine in new bottles” is how Liszt described both the content and
structure of his symphonic poems and the Faust and Dante

Symphonies. “Bad swill in chamber pots” is how his critics described
them.
A. Liszt became the focal point of the great nineteenth-century
musical debate: program music versus absolute music, expression
over structure (that is, should form follow content or content
follow form?), heart over head.
1. Again, such a debate might seem silly to us today, but it was
very serious in the mid-nineteenth century. As we discussed
earlier, matters of music and musical expression defined and
epitomized the essence of the nineteenth century similar to the
way that technology and mass media define our time.
2. Composers, musicians, critics, members of the audience,
teachers, philosophers, and intellectuals all took sides in these
cultural debates.
B. In the 1830s, the days of early Romanticism, the major players,
including Mendelssohn, Schumann, Liszt, Berlioz, and Chopin,
were all friends, seemingly united in their artistic aims. Central to
those aims was their desire to create a new music based on
individual expression and feeling, a music that looked to the model
of Beethoven and their own world, dominated, as it was, by the
Industrial Revolution and the middle class.
C. As these men grew older, they became more conservative and
joined the same establishment that they once set out to destroy.
1. Mendelssohn, for example, discovered Handel and Bach and
became the conductor and music director of the most
conservative orchestra in the most conservative musical city in
Germany.
2. Schumann began composing chamber and orchestral works
that owed much more to tradition than to his earlier piano
music.
D. Liszt, however, in the words of Alan Walker, “never lost his
revolutionary fervor,” even as he grew older. Liszt was a true
modernist. His essential philosophies, that music and poetry were
one and that nothing must hinder the musical-poetic expressive
impulse, became the root beliefs of “modernist” composers for the
next fifty years: Wagner, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schönberg, and
Alban Berg.

E. We must ask, of course, were Liszt’s critics right? Was he, as they
claimed, a phenomenally good pianist of extraordinary ego who
believed that he was also a composer? Was Liszt so supremely
confident of his gifts and his vision that he deceived himself into
believing that his hackneyed attempts at compositional originality
were anything more than an inability to do things the “right” way?
F. No, Liszt’s critics were not right. The Transcendental Etudes, the
B Minor Sonata, the Faust Symphony are masterworks of the first
order. Why, then, does “Liszt the composer” experience this
unrelenting criticism, even to this very day?
1. First, for every great piece Liszt released to the world at large,
he wrote ten pieces that were not great. Liszt turned out a
phenomenal amount of music, and it would seem that he
rarely had a first idea that he did not like.
2. This way of thinking was part and parcel of Liszt’s artistic
doctrine: All poetry and music must be completely and utterly
legitimate if they spring from genuine and honest feeling.
3. Unfortunately, the only composers who could consistently
pull off that kind of writing might be Johann Sebastian Bach
and Wolfgang Mozart. Others should exercise some editorial
restraint and exhibit some self-criticism.
4. What is the result of this unedited output? Liszt wrote some of
the most compelling, passionate, and glorious music ever
composed. He also wrote a number of pieces that were not
very good at all.
5. We have had 150 years to filter Liszt’s music, but his
contemporaries were hit with the entire Liszt opus seemingly
all at once.
6. Liszt was also a victim of his own success. Many members of
the musical community were nauseated by the “Lisztomania”
that swept across Europe during his years on the road; by the
tawdry music he performed for screaming, swooning
audiences; by the clanking medals on his chest and the
extravagant life he led.
7. For many of his colleagues, it seemed that Liszt had betrayed
his genius, that he had lowered the great and fine art of music
to the level of a traveling circus.
8. To his credit, Liszt did not take the criticism of his
performances and lifestyle lying down, nor did he allow it to

shatter his dignity and restraint. His behavior toward his
detractors was magnanimous and evenhanded.
9. He had no qualms, however, about writing in his own defense
if necessary. Liszt described critics as “men who would
destroy every living endeavor given the chance; incompetents
motivated by envy.” His words might be extreme, but we must
remember the poisonous, often libelous words these
individuals so casually heaped on Liszt and his music.
10. A prime example of Liszt’s hostile irony toward critics is a
letter he wrote to the pianist Alfred Jaell on March 31, 1857.
Jaell had asked permission to perform Liszt’s recently
completed Piano Concerto No. 1 in Eb Major. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Piano Concerto No. 1 in Eb Major,
movement 1, opening [1849; revised 1856].) Liszt replied that
Jaell must not have heard that “Liszt has never been and never
will be capable of writing four bars…” (La Revue Musicale,
no. 4, 1904).
11. Ultimately, the legitimate question that Liszt asked regarding
critics was “from where does a critic derive his or her
authority?”
II. At this point in his life, Liszt’s relationship with his children, Blandine,
Cosima, and Daniel, fathered with Marie d’Agoult, began to change.
A. Although he never denied his paternity and he paid all the
expenses for his children’s upbringing and education, Liszt was an
almost totally absentee father.
1. Between 1844 and 1853, a period of nine years, he did not see
his children at all. He wrote them with fair regularity, and his
mother, Anna, who was raising the children in his absence,
taught them to venerate their father, but following Liszt’s
exploits in the newspapers was a poor substitute for his
presence.
2. Even worse, despite having visitation rights and despite the
fact that they lived but blocks apart from each other, Marie
d’Agoult rarely chose to see her children. The Liszt children
grew up yearning for their parents, their famous father, in
particular.
B. In October 1853, Liszt and his “entourage,” including Princess
Carolyne, Carolyne’s daughter, Maria, and Richard Wagner, swept

into Paris. Blandine was eighteen, Cosima, sixteen, and Daniel,
fourteen.
1. Liszt and his children were joyfully reunited. For eight days,
the children basked in the reflected glory of their father. They
were swept about Paris; they heard him play piano; they
briefly saw a part of the world that they had never even
imagined before.
2. And then he was gone, and the children were expected to
return to their almost monastic existence. Cosima, for one,
was furious.
3. But the ice was broken. Nine months later, Blandine and
Cosima joined Liszt for a stay in Brussels.
C. The children’s relationship with Marie d’Agoult also began to
change.
1. Marie had inherited a good deal of money from her mother
around 1850 and had used most of it to buy a palatial house on
the Champs Elysees. She named the house “La Maison Rose,”
and her salon was considered one of the most fashionable in
Paris.
2. Despite the fact that Marie and Liszt’s separation agreement
specifically forbade Marie to have any contact with the
children outside of school, Blandine and Cosima began
visiting their mother in the spring of 1854.
3. Liszt was furious; he still felt that Marie was an unfit mother,
unhinged emotionally, and that contact with her could only be
unhealthy for the children.
4. Ultimately, if the girls wanted to start seeing their mother,
Liszt was powerless to stop it. The girls were growing up, and
despite his best attempts, he could not control their access to
Marie and her salon, especially given that he lived in Weimar
and everybody else lived in Paris.
D. In July of 1855, Liszt and Princess Carolyne decided to remove his
daughters from Paris and settle them permanently in Germany.
1. Moving the children seems cruel, but it was (and is) typical of
the things that some couples do to their children after they
have broken up. Technically, Marie had no legal rights over
her children, and Liszt could do with them whatever he chose.

2. In Liszt’s and Princess Carolyne’s defense, we must also note
that Marie d’Agoult, writing as “Daniel Stern,” had never
ceased to hector and libel them at every opportunity.
3. The move was handled badly. The girls were invited to
Weimar for the summer and were thrilled. Because Liszt
didn’t have the heart to tell them what was planned for them,
they didn’t find out that they were not going back to Paris
until the last moment.
4. Weeping and distraught, they were sent to Berlin, where they
were placed in the care of Franziska von Bülow, the mother of
Liszt’s former student Hans von Bülow.
5. In Paris, Liszt’s mother, Anna, had not been consulted about
the move and was beside herself, convinced she would never
see her grandchildren again.
E. Responsibility for the girl’s musical education in Berlin fell to
Hans von Bülow, Liszt’s former “star” pupil. By October 1855,
Hans (who was twenty-five years old) and Cosima (who was
eighteen) fell in love.
1. Neither Liszt nor Marie d’Agoult was happy with the
relationship; Liszt, because he knew the hardships that
awaited von Bülow’s career and Marie, because marriage to
one of Liszt’s circle would only distance her further from
Cosima.
2. Nonetheless, Hans von Bülow and Cosima Liszt were married
in Berlin on August 18, 1857. Theirs would prove to be one of
the most disastrous marriages of all time.
F. Once she turned twenty-one, Blandine moved back to Paris with
her grandmother and was married a few months later. She had met
her husband, a young, handsome, and brilliant lawyer named
Emile Ollivier, at her mother’s salon.
G. Liszt’s son, Daniel, was sixteen years old and away at boarding
school at the time the girls were removed to Berlin. He was a
brilliant student with seemingly limitless opportunities in front of
him. In 1855, he moved to Vienna to study music and law.
1. In August 1859, Daniel, then nineteen, arrived in Berlin to
visit Cosima and Hans. He was ill with tuberculosis, and by
December, it was obvious that he would not live to see the
new year.

2. Liszt was summoned; Cosima, Hans, and Liszt took turns by
Daniel’s bedside. Cosima was with him when he died, around
10:00 in the evening on December 13, 1859.
3. Cosima had been Daniel’s constant companion since his
arrival four months earlier; now, she insisted on washing
Daniel’s body herself and dressing him in his burial shroud.
The funeral was held the following day, and Cosima
collapsed, suffering a nervous breakdown.
4. The Liszt family was shattered by Daniel’s death; they simply
never got over it. On December 16, 1859, three days after
Daniel died, Liszt summoned the strength to write his mother
a touching letter in Paris.
III. On December 15, 1858, almost a year to the day before Daniel’s death,
Liszt mounted the podium at Weimar to conduct the premiere of Peter
Cornelius’s comic opera The Barber of Bagdad, a work dedicated to
Liszt. The opera was, literally, booed off the stage.
A. Liszt understood full well that the noisy, nasty claque that had
been planted in the theater that night to disrupt the performance
was meant for himself, not the opera.
B. He had been living and working in Weimar for almost ten years,
and the forces in opposition to him believed that Liszt had
dominated the musical and theatrical life of the city for long
enough. In fact, Liszt had put Weimar back on the cultural map,
but hypocrites in the city thought that he should move on.
C. Seething with anger, Liszt submitted his letter of resignation as
Weimar Court Conductor. Still ostensibly “Kapellmeister,” chief
musician of the city, Liszt knew that his days in Weimar were
numbered. During the spring and summer of 1859, he occupied
himself with composing songs; during the fall, he was occupied
with the illness and death of his son.
D. At this time, Princess Carolyne’s daughter, Marie, was twenty-one
years old, beautiful, intelligent, and rich. She was married in
October 1859 to Prince Konstantin Hohenlohe-Schillingfurst, a
thirty-one-year-old member of one of the most powerful dynasties
in Germany.
1. Princess Carolyne thought that the marriage was a good
match. In addition, six months later, in April of 1860, it
looked as if Princess Carolyne’s marriage was going to be

annulled after twelve years. Finally, Carolyne and Liszt might
be married.
2. We might view the situation differently. The Hohenlohe-
Schillingsfurst family had just married into the Sayn-
Wittgenstein fortune, in the person of Princess Marie,
Carolyne’s daughter. Marie was the sole heir to that fortune
unless, of course, her mother remarried and had more
children.
3. It was certainly not to the advantage of the Hohenlohe-
Schillingsfurst family to see Princess Carolyne remarried. The
family used its extraordinary influence to have Carolyne’s
annulment “postponed indefinitely.”
4. Carolyne, livid with rage, decided to go to Rome and press her
case in person, to the Pope himself, if necessary. She expected
to be gone for a few weeks. Instead, she would not see Liszt
again for sixteen months, her case mired in the Vatican’s huge
bureaucracy.
E. Liszt whiled away his time in Weimar, nervously awaiting word
and, with little else to do, composing.
1. During this period, Liszt created some of his most famous
operatic transcriptions, including the three concert paraphrases
on Verdi operas: Ernani, the “Misere” from Il Trovatore, and
Rigoletto; the two Wagner transcriptions: the “Spinning
Chorus” from The Flying Dutchman and the “Pilgrims’
Chorus” from Tannhäuser; and the “Waltz” from Gounod’s
Faust.
2. Liszt also composed some of his most well known piano
works, including the Mephisto Waltz No. 1. (Musical
selection: Liszt, Mephisto Waltz No. 1 [1860].)
F. Finally, in mid-summer of 1861, incredible news arrived from
Rome. After a personal audience with Pope Pius IX and
conferences with the College of Cardinals, Carolyne had
succeeded in having her marriage annulled. She wrote and advised
Liszt to lock up the Altenburg and join her in Rome as quickly as
possible. This Liszt did, but not before writing a testament to his
twelve years in Weimar, making no effort to hide his bitterness
and disappointment.
G. On August 12, 1861, Liszt locked the doors of the Altenburg. Still
inside the house was almost everything he and Carolyne owned,

from his pianos and souvenirs of his journeys to Carolyne’s
business papers and private letters. Liszt did not actually “move
out” until the summer of 1867.
H. Now almost fifty years old, Liszt traveled to Rome to marry,
finally, the great love of his life, Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein.
1. Carolyne, genuinely paranoid after the events of the previous
thirteen years, insisted that Liszt zigzag his way across
Europe, arriving as secretly and quietly in Rome as possible.
2. She planned the wedding, which was to take place in Rome in
the Church of San Carlo al Corso, to coincide with Liszt’s
fiftieth birthday, October 22, 1861.
3. Liszt arrived at Carolyne’s apartment on Sunday, October 20.
On Monday evening, the couple attended communion at San
Carlo. The altar at which they were to be married the next
morning was already decorated with flowers and candles. At
11:00 that evening, a messenger arrived, informing them that
Pope Pius IX had withdrawn his sanction for the wedding to
take place.
4. Carolyne later told Liszt’s biographer Lina Ramann that the
Pope’s intervention was a result of “scheming intrigues.” She
was right. There is no evidence in the Vatican file that
Carolyne’s annulment had been “overturned”; this was a last-
ditch effort by the Hohenlohe-Schillingsfurst family to delay
the wedding.
5. After thirteen years of intrigues, back-stabbing, stress, and
aspersions cast on her reputation, Carolyne fell apart. By her
own confession, she had nothing left inside. She moved into a
new apartment a few steps away from her old one and lived
there as a recluse until her death, more than twenty-five years
later.
I. We don’t have any evidence that describes what Liszt was feeling
or what he went through. He may have slowly reached the
realization that his relationship with Carolyne was over.
1. We do know that he was paralyzed; though he had never had
any intention of staying in Rome, he did stay there.
2. He took an apartment not far from Carolyne’s, visited her
every day, and had a small upright piano installed there so that
he might compose.

IV. Surrounded by the beauty and majesty of the city, by its history and his
beloved Catholic Church, Liszt found peace in Rome.
A. He was, of course, a world-class celebrity; when word got out that
he was living in Rome, every aristocratic door in the city opened to
him.
1. He helped produce and promote concerts of vocal music by
Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn, and Mozart, composers rarely
heard in Rome.
2. Of course, students also came to him. On some days, Liszt
taught from mid-morning to late night and, as usual, never
took money for any of the lessons he gave. Liszt financially
supported many of his students, who otherwise would not
have been able to rent a room and a piano and still have
enough money to eat.
B. Sadly, the harmony and happiness that Rome and Roman society
offered Liszt during this difficult time of his life were short lived.
1. Eleven months after the wedding-evening fiasco, on
September 11, 1862, Liszt’s daughter Blandine, twenty-six
years old, died from a botched operation following the birth of
her first child.
2. Emile Ollivier, Blandine’s husband, was devastated. He
traveled to Rome to be with Liszt; the men grieved together
and, in doing so, cemented an important friendship.
C. Blandine’s death, so close on the heels of Daniel’s death and the
frustrated marriage and subsequent break with Princess Carolyne,
almost did Liszt in. Those who knew him in the fall of 1862 said
that he aged by the day. He went through a bout of terrible
depression, something he had not experienced since his early
teens.
D. Ultimately, Liszt turned to his faith and the Church for solace,
beginning one of the most extraordinary episodes of his life, which
would culminate in his taking four of the seven vows of
priesthood. We’ll outline these events now, then return to them in
greater detail in the final lecture of this biography.
V. In his despair, Liszt turned to an old friend, a priest named Agostino
Theiner, for advice. Father Agostino took Liszt to the monastery
Madonna del Rosario on the slopes of Monte Mario; Liszt later claimed

that the moment he caught sight of the monastery, he knew he’d found
a home.
A. Liszt moved into the monastery on June 20, 1863, and lived there
for five years, on the ground floor, in a cell measuring twelve by
fifteen feet. His furniture consisted of a bed, a bookcase, a
worktable, and a small upright piano. The window of his room
offered a panoramic view of Rome, with the dome of St. Peter’s
shining in the distance.
B. In this setting, Liszt was able to work and meditate without
interruption. He even joined the monks in their ministrations and,
on occasion, helped officiate during mass on a small harmonium.
C. We close this lecture with one of the works Liszt wrote in his cell
at the monastery, the Franciscan Legend No. 1, St. Francis of
Assisi Preaching to the Birds. Inspired, so it is said, by the
thousands of sparrows that flew in clouds above Monte Mario,
Liszt’s piece begins with the chirping and twittering of the avian
congregation. (Musical selection: Liszt, Franciscan Legend No. 1,
St. Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Birds [1863].)

Lecture Eight
A Life Well Lived
Scope: In 1864, Liszt was living happily in the monastery, but he was free
to travel as he wished and decided to go to Germany. A year
earlier, Richard Wagner and Liszt’s daughter Cosima had begun
an affair. In Munich, Liszt tried to persuade Wagner to end the
affair, but Wagner refused to listen. Liszt returned to Rome,
depressed and disillusioned, and decided that he could find peace
only by taking the vows of priesthood. This news shocked the
outside world; the public and Liszt’s family could not believe that
the sensational showman would take the holy orders. In October
1864, Hans von Bülow moved his family to Munich to take the
position of court pianist. He later claimed that he did not know
about the affair until Cosima left him four years later, but that
claim is hard to believe. In 1867, Liszt again tried to break up the
affair but succeeded only in severing his relationship with Wager
for the next five years. In 1870, von Bülow and Cosima were
divorced, and she married Wagner five weeks later.
In the summer of 1869, Liszt acquired a piano student named Olga
Zielinski, a competent pianist who exhibited bizarre behavior. We
now know that Liszt slept with Olga; she later threatened to kill
herself and Liszt. She went on to write four purportedly
“autobiographical” novels in the same vein as the writings of
Marie d’Agoult, which smeared Liszt’s reputation in his own time
and for future generations of music historians. Liszt’s last twelve
years were filled with music, traveling, honors, and a few
disappointments. He was hailed as a genius in Hungary and
divided his living arrangements among Rome, Weimar, and
Budapest. He spent much time teaching and helped to found the
Hungarian Royal Academy of Music. His health and energy began
to fail him in 1881 and he died in Bayreuth on July 31, 1886,
having traveled there at Cosima’s request to attend the Wagner
festival.

Outline
I. The year 1864 saw Liszt still happily ensconced in the monastery of the
Madonna del Rosario.
A. He was not cloistered there but regularly gave lessons and
socialized in the city. After spending three years in Rome and its
environs, Liszt decided to travel to Germany during the summer of
1864.
B. He wanted to attend some musical festivals and have the
opportunity to visit with Cosima, Hans, and his granddaughters,
Daniela and Blandine.
II. We now return to Richard Wagner, who had been living in exile in
Switzerland and writing an endless number of essays on the future of
music, the nature of theater, mythology, the Jews, and so forth.
A. Wagner was also living far beyond his means, always in debt and
begging for money from friends and associates, including Liszt.
Liszt, who recognized Wagner’s genius when almost no one else
did, tirelessly promoted and performed Wagner’s music at a time
when it was considered both musically and politically unwise to do
so.
B. Wagner’s political exile ended in 1861, but his financial problems
did not. In 1862, Wagner and his wife, Minna, separated. Theirs
was an abusive and violent relationship, and Wagner had shown
himself to be incapable of marital fidelity.
C. For Wagner in 1863, things only got worse. He was forced to take
freelance conducting jobs wherever he could find them,
composing nothing while running from his creditors.
D. When Wagner was in Berlin in November of 1863, he visited his
friend Hans von Bülow and Bülow’s wife, Liszt’s daughter,
Cosima.
1. The von Bülow marriage was not particularly happy either.
Hans was a sometimes cruel, dictatorial, and insecure man,
given to violent mood swings and crippling depressive
episodes. Cosima was so filled with despair and the sense that
she was trapped that she apparently contemplated suicide.
2. As we might guess, Richard Wagner, fifty years old, and
Cosima Liszt von Bülow, twenty-six, fell in love. For his part,

filled with despair over the future of his career, Wagner
prayed for a miracle.
E. Incredibly, his prayers were answered. In May 1864, Wagner
received a letter from the rich and probably insane eighteen-year-
old King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The king invited Wagner to come
to Munich and spend the rest of his life free from material care.
Ludwig’s money changed Wagner’s life and allowed him to build
his theater at Bayreuth, Wagner’s great shrine to himself.
F. Wagner immediately moved into a palatial home in Munich.
Cosima offered to help “get Wagner settled”; Hans von Bülow,
suspecting nothing, was happy to have his wife and two small
daughters go to Munich to help Wagner. Cosima arrived in
Munich and promptly got pregnant with Wagner’s baby.
G. This was the situation, then, that Liszt walked into when he came
to Germany in the summer of 1864. Cosima told her father what
was going on. Liszt was not pleased and decided to have it out
with Wagner, threatening that he must end the affair. Wagner,
feeling he didn’t need Liszt any more, refused to listen.
III. Liszt returned to Rome. He was nearly fifty-three years old, depressed,
and disillusioned. What was left of his family was unraveling; his
daughter was sleeping with the enemy, an enemy that had once been
his most treasured protégé.
A. Back in the peaceful and meditative confines of the monastery,
Liszt found an answer to his problems, an answer that met his
deepest needs and shocked the rest of the world: He decided to
take the vows of priesthood.
1. For the outside world, unaware of Liszt’s life in Rome and at
the monastery, the news was simply unbelievable. The public
could not fathom that Franz Liszt⎯who had lived a life of
fame, fortune, and luxury; who had met kings and queens,
emperors and empresses; the showman for whom nothing was
too sensational or outlandish⎯would take the holy orders.
2. Many believed Liszt’s announcement that he was taking the
vows to be the most colossal public relations ploy of the
century! Convinced that Liszt’s announcement was a prelude
to his going back on the concert circuit, they marveled at his
incredible sense of timing and audacity. What better way to

revive an old act than to clothe it anew, in the cassock of a
holy man?!
B. But Liszt’s announcement was no publicity stunt and no attempt to
“breathe new life into a dying career” as some accused him. Liszt
entered the road to the priesthood on November 25, 1865.
1. Up to that moment, only three people knew of his decision:
Pope Pius IX, Princess Carolyne, and Cardinal Hohenlohe,
although word of Liszt’s investiture flew across Europe.
2. In Paris, Liszt’s elderly mother (she would die the following
year) sat stunned and weeping. His son-in-law Emile Ollivier
called the move a “spiritual suicide,” and Wagner wondered
what sins Liszt had committed that could possibly have been
so bad that they could only be washed away by his joining the
priesthood.
3. We must keep Liszt’s decision in perspective. On July 30,
1865, Liszt entered the four so-called “minor orders” of the
priesthood: doorkeeper, lector, exorcist, and acolyte.
4. Although he was allowed to use the title “Abbé,” Liszt could
not hear confession or celebrate mass.
5. He did not take the vow of celibacy; he was free to withdraw
from his vows and marry if he so chose.
6. Nor did Liszt pursue extensive theological training because
doing so would have interfered with his composing time.
7. We can see why many observers were cynical about Liszt’s
“taking the vows.” Liszt was also given a sumptuous
apartment at the Vatican to be close to his friend and new
patron, the music-loving Pope Pius IX. He was free to travel
and he did so, to Hungary and Paris.
8. The triangle of Cosima, Hans von Bülow, and Richard
Wagner, however, was perhaps the single most painful
episode in Liszt’s late life.
C. Remember that Wagner, meanwhile, under the patronage of King
Ludwig II, had moved to Munich to live a life of luxury and
prepare the premiere of his opera Tristan and Isolde.
1. In October 1864, Hans von Bülow accepted the position of
court pianist in Munich, a job Wagner had arranged for von
Bülow to be offered. Wagner desperately needed von Bülow’s
help in preparing the premiere of Tristan, and he even more
desperately wanted Cosima nearby.

2. We do not know when did Hans von Bülow became aware of
the affair; von Bülow later claimed that he knew nothing
about it until Cosima walked out on him in November 1868,
four years after they had moved to Munich.
3. Von Bülow’s claim is hard to believe. It seems more likely
that he looked the other way for four years and, in the process,
became the laughingstock of the musical world.
D. Even as von Bülow was pretending not to notice what was going
on, Wagner and Cosima were having children. Their first daughter,
born on April 10, 1865, just two hours before the dress rehearsal
of Tristan and Isolde, was named Isolde. Their second child,
another daughter, named Eva, was born twenty-two months later,
on February 17, 1867. Their third child, a boy, Siegfried, was born
in June of 1869.
E. What Hans von Bülow got in return for his abject humiliation was
the opportunity to rehearse and conduct the premieres of Tristan
and Isolde and Der Meistersinger (“The Mastersinger of
Nuremberg”) and the appointment as Royal Kapellmeister of
Munich and conductor of the Munich Opera.
1. These experiences made his reputation, and he would go on to
become one of the best and most famous conductors of his
generation.
2. It is not an understatement to say that the affair of Richard
Wagner and Cosima Liszt von Bülow gave Hans his career.
F. Franz Liszt arrived in Munich on September 20, 1867. The
purpose of his visit was to see what was going on with the now-
famous ménage a trois and to do everything in his power to break
it up.
1. Wagner avoided Liszt, but Liszt finally tracked him down in
the village of Triebschen.
2. The two spoke for six hours, and although neither man ever
discussed what went on between them, Liszt broke off
relations with Wagner entirely for the next five years.
G. The whole sordid situation came to a head during the summer of
1868. Cosima left Munich, supposedly to visit her half-sister,
Claire, in Versailles. Of course, that was a lie; she headed off to be
with Wagner.

1. She wrote Hans chatty letters about Claire that she had posted
from France. Then one day, Hans von Bülow picked up his
newspaper and read that Richard Wagner and his girlfriend,
Cosima von Bülow, were vacationing together in Italy.
2. Von Bülow was devastated; five years of anger, self-
deception, self-loathing, denial, and rationalizations were
swept aside in a single moment. He resigned as Kapellmeister
in Munich.
3. Cosima gathered up her children and possessions and ran to
Wagner. The letter Cosima wrote to Liszt informing him of
her “departure” from home has been lost. We do have Liszt’s
letter of reply, which clearly shows his anger at the situation
and his sympathy for von Bülow.
4. Despite her father’s urging, Cosima did not go back to von
Bülow; she would become the staunchest of Wagnerians,
ultimately outliving Wagner by forty-seven years.
H. The divorce proceedings left Hans von Bülow, in his own words,
morally, spiritually, and artistically bankrupt. He was granted a
divorce on July 18, 1870. He paid all the legal costs himself,
despite the fact that he was the “injured party.”
I. Five weeks later, on August 25, King Ludwig’s birthday, Wagner
and Cosima were married in a Protestant ceremony in Lucerne.
Liszt, who for the rest of his life continued to love von Bülow like
a son, first heard about Cosima’s and Wagner’s wedding through
the newspapers.
IV. In the end, nowhere was Liszt more popular than in Hungary. At a time
when Hungarian nationalism was defining itself both politically and
culturally, Liszt was the most celebrated living Hungarian, and he came
to symbolize the genius, passion, and aspirations of the Hungarian
nation.
A. Liszt made one of his periodic trips to Hungary in June of 1867 to
hear the premiere of his Coronation Mass, written for the
celebrations surrounding the coronation of Franz Joseph as King
of Hungary.
B. As Liszt exited the church following the premiere, he decided to
walk back to his hotel. Thousands of people were already out in
the streets, awaiting the royal procession that was to take place

later in the day. What happened as Liszt strolled into town
demonstrates his popularity in his native country.
C. Janka Wohl, an eyewitness, reported that as Liszt began to walk
down the road, some of the spectators began to recognize him, and
his name was passed from mouth to mouth: “Soon a hundred
thousand men and women were frantically applauding him, wild
with excitement… It was not the [newly crowned] king, but it was
a king, to whom were addressed the sympathies of a grateful
nation proud of the possession of such a son.” (Musical selection:
Liszt, Christus, kingly music.)
V. At this point, we should be starting to conclude our Liszt biography,
but Liszt was, perhaps, just too famous to enjoy any “quiet” closing
years.
A. As much as the piano, women were the great pleasure (and, unlike
the piano, the bane) of Liszt’s existence. Marie d’Agoult, Lola
Montez, Princess Carolyne, his daughter Cosima⎯all were tough,
intelligent, creative, troubled, and controversial women.
B. Liszt had a knack for attracting controversial women, and the fact
that he was almost fifty-eight years old and wearing a cassock
didn’t mean that his fire had died out.
C. Sometime early in the summer of 1869, a new piano student joined
Liszt’s group in Rome. Her name was Olga Janina, and she passed
herself off as the “Cossack Countess.” Of course, she was neither a
“Cossack” nor a “Countess”; her real name wasn’t even Janina.
1. Her real name was Olga Zielinski, and she came from
Lemberg, now known as Lvov, in Ukraine. She was about
twenty-four years old and a competent pianist when she met
Liszt.
2. We are told that she dressed and cut her hair like a man; she
liked to espouse “‘advanced’ ideas on such matters as free
love, atheism, and female emancipation”; and she carried both
a dagger and a revolver (Walker III, 173). She was also
addicted to opium and laudanum.
D. Olga could play well, but Liszt had better pianists among his
students at the time. Others wondered, then, why Liszt began
promoting Olga as “his best and brightest” during the winter of
1870–1871.

1. We now know that Liszt had slept with Olga and that Olga
was emotionally blackmailing him by threatening to kill
herself if he did not put her on the stage.
2. Liszt, at his wits’ end, convinced her to go to New York in
search of a career, but she made an even worse impression
there than she had in Rome.
3. In November 1871, in New York, she apparently threatened
the life of Liszt’s friend, publisher Julius Schuberth; another
friend, Antoine Hebert, wrote to Liszt, warning him to be on
his guard.
4. From New York, her so-called “career” a shambles, Olga
cabled Liszt that she was on her way back to kill him. On
November 25, 1871, she burst into Liszt’s apartment, a gun in
one hand and a bottle of poison in the other. Olga informed
everyone present that her life’s ambition was to kill Liszt, then
commit suicide.
5. Liszt had managed to calm her down when, suddenly, Olga
swallowed the “poison” and immediately went into
convulsions. A doctor was brought in, and at that point, the
“poison” was determined not to have been poison at all.
E. The story of this potential scandal was hushed up, but the events of
the next few years could not be.
1. Olga did as Marie d’Agoult had done and wrote four
purportedly “autobiographical” novels intended to humiliate
Liszt. Much to Olga’s rage and frustration, they were panned
by the critics.
2. The books were, however, commercially successfully. The
first one went through thirteen editions, and Olga sent
complimentary copies to Liszt’s friends, including the Pope
and Carl Alexander, Grand Duke of Weimar.
3. Olga was more successful in smearing Liszt’s reputation than
she could ever have imagined. Her books were taken as truth
by three generations of Liszt biographers and music
historians. Even Ernest Newman, one of the most celebrated
English writers on music of the first half of the twentieth
century, was fooled.
F. Liszt refused to dignify Olga’s claims with a reply. He knew full
well that a public discourse on the validity of the books was
precisely what Olga wanted. Liszt contented himself with a private

letter to friends regarding what he called “the croakings” of la
Cosaque.
G. The damage done, Olga faded into obscurity. She opened a piano
studio in Geneva under the name of Olga de Cezano and
disappeared in 1887, one year after Liszt’s death.
VI. Liszt’s last twelve years, like his first sixty-three years, were filled with
music, traveling, extraordinary people, honors, jubilees, anniversaries,
and a few disappointments.
A. By the early 1870s, Liszt had begun living what he called his “vie
trifurquée,” “his life split in three.”
1. He divided his living arrangements among Rome; Weimar,
where he had made a villa and a staff of servants available to
him; and Budapest. We should also understand that Liszt
spent a good deal of time in Paris, Vienna, Brussels, and other
places, as well.
2. Despite his encroaching old age, he was a wanderer, a gypsy
at heart. Liszt captured his own philosophy wonderfully when
he said: “In life one has to decide whether to conjugate the
verb ‘to have’ or the verb ‘to be’” (Walker III, 357).
B. In each of Liszt’s three essential domiciles, he lived a different sort
of life.
1. In Weimar, he composed, socialized with old friends, and
established his famous “master classes,” sessions in which
pianists would perform and Liszt would publicly critique
them. It was considered a signal honor to be asked to play at
one of Liszt’s master classes, and the format, invented by
Liszt in Weimar, survives to the present day.
2. Much of Liszt’s time spent in Budapest was dedicated to the
Hungarian Royal Academy of Music, which opened its doors
in Budapest in 1875 with Liszt as its president. This school
was built on the shoulders and reputation of Liszt and is today
known as the “Franz Liszt Academy of Music.”
VII. Marie d’Agoult died on March 5, 1876, and Liszt wrote that he could
not bring himself “to weep any more after her passing than during her
lifetime” (La Mara, VII, 131). As opposed to his estrangement from
Marie, Liszt’s friendship with Princess Carolyne continued to the end
of his life.

A. The two trusted each other with their affairs and estates completely
and were still, for all their experiences and disappointments,
emotional soulmates.
B. Carolyne, however, became increasingly strange in her old age. No
natural light or fresh air was allowed to penetrate her apartment;
visitors had to wait in an anteroom for the cold air in their
garments to warm to room temperature. Carolyne dressed oddly
and continually smoked cigars.
C. In May of 1872, with the premiere of Liszt’s gargantuan oratorio
on the life of Christ, Christus (a piece considered by some to be
the greatest oratorio of the nineteenth century), Liszt and Wagner
began to speak to each other again.
1. Wagner and Cosima had married two years before, in 1870,
and the fifty-nine-year-old Wagner initiated contact with his
sixty-one-year-old father-in-law.
2. Their ultimate rapprochement (and Liszt’s reunion with his
daughter Cosima) took place in August 1876, when Liszt
attended the festival premiere of Wagner’s Ring cycle in
Bayreuth.
3. A banquet was held at the conclusion of the festival. Wagner
arose and, rather belatedly, thanked Liszt for his support over
the years. Wagner and Liszt embraced, and the crowd cheered.
4. Of course, in private, Liszt was rather sanguine as to the
reasons why Wagner wanted him at Bayreuth: “To [Wagner
and] Bayreuth I am not a composer, but a publicity agent”
(Walker III, 341).
VIII. Liszt’s incredible energy and health began to fail him in 1881. One
after the other, dropsy, asthma, insomnia, a cataract in the left eye, and
chronic heart disease slowed the great man.
A. On February 14, 1883, Liszt, in Budapest, received the news of
Wagner’s death the previous day. Liszt is reported to have paused
for a moment, then said quietly, “He today, I tomorrow” (Walker
III, 429).
B. Liszt died in Bayreuth on Saturday, July 31, 1886. He had traveled
there at Cosima’s request to attend the Wagner festival.
1. Liszt should never have gone; he contracted pneumonia on the
way there, received terrible medical attention, had a heart
attack, and died.

2. Because the weather was hot, the corpse began to decompose
almost immediately. An attempt to embalm the body was
bungled, and Liszt’s corpse was cut apart so badly that, we are
told, the body and face became bloated beyond recognition.
C. The opera scheduled to be performed that day, Tristan and Isolde,
went on as planned. No flags flew at half-mast. No local
newspapers carried any news of Liszt’s illness. In Wagner’s town,
Wagner was celebrated even as Liszt was buried, on August 3,
1886.
D. When Princess Carolyne was told of Liszt’s death, she appears to
have suffered a seizure, perhaps even a stroke; she took to her bed
and never left it. Princess Carolyne died seven months later, on
March 9, 1887.
E. Nearing his end, ever more immobilized by his physical
infirmities, depressed and as fearful of the devil as he was trusting
in God, Liszt had told his biographer Lina Ramann: “I carry a deep
sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound”
(Ramann II, 470). We conclude with the final minute of Liszt’s
final Hungarian Rhapsody, No. 19, one of the last works he
completed. (Musical selection: Liszt, Hungarian Rhapsody No. 19
in D Minor [1885].)

Timeline
1811 ................................................ Born in Raiding, Hungary, October 22.

1817 ................................................ Begins piano lessons with his father.
1821 ................................................ Liszt and family move to Vienna, where
he studies piano with Carl Czerny and
composition with Antonio Salieri.
1822 ................................................ Liszt’s first public concert in Vienna is
a great success; his first publication as a
composer is Variation on a Theme by
Diabelli.
1823 ................................................ The Liszt family moves to Paris, and
Liszt begins concertizing regularly.
1830 ................................................ Meets Hector Berlioz and hears the
premiere performance of Berlioz’s
Symphonie fantastique.
1831 ............................................... Hears Nicolo Paganini perform in Paris
and experiences his “epiphany.”
1832 ................................................ Grand Fantasia de Bravoure sur La
Clochette.
1834 ................................................ Meets and begins affair with Countess
Marie d’Agoult.
1835 ................................................ Liszt and Marie’s first child, Blandine,
is born in Geneva.
1838 ................................................ Six Grand Etudes after Paganini for
Piano.
1839 ................................................ Liszt resumes his career as a traveling
virtuoso; his relationship with Marie
d’Agoult goes on the rocks.
1847 ................................................ Meets Princess Carolyne Sayn-
Wittgenstein, who persuades him to
give up his concert career and focus on
composition.

1848 ................................................ Settles in Weimar, where he becomes
Kapellmeister.
1849 ................................................ Piano Concerti Nos. 1 and 2;
Funerailles; Totentanz.
1851 ................................................ Transcendental Etudes for Piano.
1853 ................................................ Sonata in B Minor for Piano.
1857 ................................................ Faust Symphony.
1859 ................................................ Daniel Liszt dies.
1860 ................................................ Mephisto Waltz, No. 1.
1861 ................................................ Moves to Rome.
1862 ................................................ Blandine Liszt dies.
1863 ................................................ Franciscan Legends for Piano.
1865 ................................................ Takes four minor orders of the Catholic
Church.
1866 ................................................ Christus.
1869–1882 ...................................... Lives his so-called “trifurcated life,”
splitting his time among Weimar,
Budapest, and Rome; teaching,
composing, and performing privately.
1886 ................................................ Dies on July 31.

Glossary
atonality: The absence of an established tonality, or identifiable key.

cadenza: Virtuoso music designed to show off a singer’s or an instrumental
soloist’s technical ability.
Classical musical style: Designation given to works of the later eighteenth
century, characterized by clear melodic lines, balanced form, and emotional
restraint. The style is brilliantly exemplified by the music of Franz Joseph
Haydn.
concerto: Musical composition for orchestra and soloist(s), typically in
three movements.
consonance: Two or more notes sounded together that do not require
resolution.
crescendo: Gradually increasing volume.
dissonance: Two or more notes sounded together that require resolution.
exposition: Opening section of a fugue or sonata-form movement in which
the main theme(s) are introduced.
movement: Independent, self-standing piece of music within a larger work.
musical form: Overall formulaic structure of a composition, such as sonata
form; also the smaller divisions of the overall structure, such as the
development section.
overture: Music that precedes an opera or play, often played as an
independent concert piece.
pedal note: Pitch sustained for a long period of time against which other
changing material is played. A pedal harmony is a sustained chord serving
the same purpose.
polyrhythm: The simultaneous use of contrasting rhythms.
polytonality: The simultaneous use of two or more different keys (major
and/or minor) or modes.
Requiem: Mass for the dead, traditionally in nine specific sections.
rhythmic asymmetry: Rhythms that do not use regular accents.

short score: Two- or three-staff score that can be played on the piano and
serves as the basis for a full orchestral score.
sonata: Piece of music typically in three or four movements, composed for
a piano (piano sonata) or a piano plus one instrument (violin sonata, for
example).
sonata form: Structural formula characterized by thematic development;
usually used for the first movement of a sonata, symphony, or concerto.
string quartet: (1) Ensemble of four stringed instruments: two violins,
viola and cello; (2) Composition for such an ensemble.
symphony: Large-scale instrumental composition for orchestra, containing
several movements. The Viennese classical symphony typically had four
movements.
voice: A range or register, commonly used to refer to the four melodic
ranges: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass.

Biographical Notes
Berlioz, Hector (1803–1869). French composer; one of the most original

and important composers of the nineteenth century. Berlioz met Liszt the
night before the premiere of the Symphonie fantastique. Liszt and Berlioz
remained great friends from that moment on, and Liszt did everything in his
considerable power to promote and perform Berlioz’s music.
Bülow, Hans von (1830–1894). Pianist and conductor. A student of
Liszt’s, von Bülow married Liszt’s daughter Cosima. He became a disciple
of Richard Wager, conducting the premieres of both Meistersinger and
Tristan und Isolde. Although he abandoned the Wagner “camp” after
Cosima left him for Wagner, von Bülow and Liszt remained lifelong
friends.
Cornelius, Peter (1824–1874). German-born composer. A disciple of Liszt
and colleague of Wagner’s.
Czerny, Carl (1791–1857). Austrian-born pianist and piano teacher,
composer, and writer on music. Czerny, who had studied with Beethoven
himself, became the most important piano teacher in Vienna. Czerny taught
Liszt for free and was acknowledged by Liszt, for the rest of his life, as the
single teacher who had ensured his success as a pianist.
D’Agoult, Marie (1805–1876). Adulteress, writer, and one of Liszt’s
lovers, who would cause him much pain. Marie abandoned her child and
husband to become, in her own mind, Liszt’s “muse,” in 1834. The mother
of Liszt’s three illegitimate children, she wrote essays, articles, reviews, and
books under the pen name “Daniel Stern.” When Liszt resumed his concert
career in 1839, and it became apparent that he did not require the manic-
depressive Marie for inspiration, she left him and wrote a series of scathing
autobiographical “novels” depicting herself as a martyr and Liszt as
ungrateful.
Liszt, Adam (1776–1827). Liszt’s father. An official in the employ of
Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy and a talented amateur ‘cellist.
Liszt, Anna Laager (1788–1866). Liszt’s mother. She became the foster
mother of her three grandchildren, the children Liszt fathered with Marie
d’Agoult: Blandine, Cosima, and Daniel.

Liszt, Blandine (1835–1862). Liszt’s eldest daughter. Her death pushed
Liszt⎯who was still grieving over the death of his son, Daniel, two and a
half years before⎯into a deep depression. Blandine’s husband, Emile
Ollivier, who would later become prime minister of France, remained one
of Liszt’s closest and dearest friends.
Liszt, Daniel (1839–1859). Liszt’s son. A young man of extraordinary
intelligence and promise, his death from tuberculosis devastated Liszt and
his family.
Raff, Joachim (1822–1882). German-born composer and teacher. Raff met
Liszt in 1845 and was later hired to help Liszt learn to orchestrate.
Controversy still surrounds the extent of Raff’s contribution to Liszt’s early
orchestral works.
Sayn-Wittgenstein, Princess Carolyne (1819–1887). The most important
person in Liszt’s adult life. A fabulously wealthy Russian landowner and
businesswoman, Princess Carolyne convinced Liszt to give up concertizing
and concentrate on composition. They moved in together in Weimar in
1848 and she became his lover, confessor, conscience, and best friend.
Despite her prolonged efforts, the Church did not allow her to divorce her
first husband and, as a result, did not allow her to marry Liszt. After 1862,
she lived out her life as a recluse in Rome.
Tausig, Karl (1841–1871). Pianist. A piano virtuoso of the highest rank, he
was one of Liszt’s favorite students and disciples.
Wagner, Cosima Liszt von Bulow (1837–1930). Liszt’s daughter. She
married Liszt’s star student, Hans von Bülow, only to leave him for Richard
Wagner, who was twenty-four years her senior. Her affair with Wagner
precipitated a break with her father, one that was smoothed over in later
years but never forgotten. After Wagner’s death, she went on to become a
tireless champion of his music for the rest of her long life.
Wagner, Richard (1813–1883). Composer. One of the great geniuses and
megalomaniacs of music history. Liszt supported Wagner, musically and
financially, at a time when few others would. Wagner’s affair with Liszt’s
married daughter, Cosima, precipitated a break between the two composers.
They were reunited in 1882, not long before Wagner’s death.

Bibliography
Agoult, Marie d’ (“Daniel Stern”). Memoires, 1833–54. Paris: 1927.

Berlioz, Hector. Memoirs, translated by David Cairns. London: A. Deutsch,
1969.
Boissier, Mme August. Liszt Pedagogue: Lecons de piano donnees par
Liszt a Mlle. Valerie Boissier en 1832. Paris: 1927.
Halle, Sir Charles. Life and Letters. London: 1896.
Heine, Heinrich. Samtliche Werke; Herausgegeben von Fritz Strich, 10
volumes. Munich: 1925.
Kellerman, Berthold. Erinnerungen, ein Kunstlerleben; Herausgegeben von
Sebastian Hausmann und Helmut Kellermann. Zurich: 1932.
La Mara, ed. Franz Liszts Briefe, 8 volumes. Leipzig: 1893–1905.
Landon, H. C. Robbins. Beethoven. New York: Macmillan, 1970.
Litzmann, Berthold. Clara Schumann: An Artist’s Life, 3 volumes. Leipzig:
1902–1908.
Mason, William. Memories of a Musical Life. New York: 1901.
Morrison, Bryce. The Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers: Liszt.
Music Sales Corporation, New York, 1989.
Moulin, Eckhart. Cosima Wagner, 2 volumes. Munich: 1929.
Newman, Ernest. The Man Liszt. London: 1934.
Ollivier, Emile. Journal, 1846–1869, 2 volumes, selected and edited by
Theodore Zeldin and Anne Troisier de Diaz. Paris: 1961.
Pleasants, Henry. The Musical World of Robert Schumann: A Selection of
Schumann’s Own Writings. London: 1965.
Raabe, Peter. Franz Liszt, 2 volumes. Stuttgart: 1931.
Ramann, Lina, ed. Franz Liszts Gesammelte Schriften. Leipzig: 1883.
Reich, Nancy. Clara Schumann: The Artist and Woman, rev. ed. Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Schonberg, Harold. The Great Pianists. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1963.
⎯⎯⎯. The Lives of the Great Composers. New York: W.W. Norton,
1970.

Slonimsky, Nicolas. Lexicon of Musical Invective, 2nd ed. Seattle and
London: University of Washington Press, 1975.
Solomon, Maynard. Beethoven. New York: Schirmer Books, 1977.
Stasov, Vladimir. Selected Essays on Music, translated by Florence Jonas.
London: 1968.
Taylor, Ronald. Franz Liszt: The Man and the Musician. New York:
Universe Books, 1986.
Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt, Volume I: The Virtuoso Years (1811–1847).
New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1983; in print from Cornell Univ. Press.
⎯⎯⎯. Franz Liszt, Volume II: The Weimar Years (1848–1861). New
York: Alfred A Knopf, 1989.
⎯⎯⎯. Franz Liszt, Volume III: The Final Years (1861–1886). Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1996.
Weiss, Piero, and Taruskin, Richard. Music in the Western World: A
History in Documents. New York: Schirmer Books, 1984.

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“Pure intellectual stimulation that can be popped into

“Passionate, erudite, living legend lecturers. Academia’s

“A serious force in American education.”

Professor Robert Greenberg

Professor Robert Greenberg, the Music Historian-in-Residence

THE GREAT COURSES ®

THE GREAT COURSES

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Professor Biography .................................................................................... i

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Scope: Franz Liszt was an outrageous showman and a performer of

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Scope: Along with the expressive model of Beethoven, the developing

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Scope: Writers, musicians, artists, and intellectuals flocked to Paris after

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