Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt was the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century and invented the solo recital. Born in Hungary in 1811, the son of a steward in the Esterházy household, he was a touring prodigy at nine, studied with Czerny and Salieri, and was reportedly kissed on the forehead by Beethoven. Hearing Paganini in 1832 changed his direction: he resolved to do for the piano what Paganini had done for the violin, and practised technique obsessively for years. The result was Lisztomania. He toured Europe from 1839 to 1847 giving hundreds of concerts, and audiences behaved in ways that had no precedent — women fought over his gloves and broken strings, and Heine coined the word for it. He performed alone, from memory, with the instrument turned so the audience saw his profile and the open lid projected the sound. Every one of those conventions is his. He gave the proceeds of much of it away, funding the Beethoven monument at Bonn, flood relief in Hungary and countless individuals. He stopped touring at thirty-five at the height of his fame and became Kapellmeister at Weimar, where he conducted the premiere of Wagner's Lohengrin, championed Berlioz and Schumann, and taught without charging fees. As a composer he invented the symphonic poem, developed thematic transformation, and pushed harmony far enough in late works like the Bagatelle sans tonalité that they approach atonality. His daughter Cosima left Hans von Bülow for Wagner. He took minor orders in 1865 and was known as the Abbé Liszt. He died at Bayreuth in 1886, attending his son-in-law's festival.

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