Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, and organist. He was also a writer, philanthropist, Hungarian nationalist, and Franciscan tertiary. Among his musical contributions were the symphonic poem, developing thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form, and radical innovations in harmony.

About Franz Liszt in brief

Summary Franz LisztFranz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor, music teacher, arranger, and organist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time. He was also a writer, philanthropist, Hungarian nationalist, and Franciscan tertiary. A prolific composer, he left behind an extensive and diverse body of work that influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated 20th-century ideas and trends. Among his musical contributions were the symphonic poem, developing thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form, and radical innovations in harmony. His first composition to be published, his Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli, appeared as Variation 24 in Part II of Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. He died in Paris, where he had lived with his mother for the last five years of his life. He left behind a wife and three children. His widow, Caroline de Saint-Cricq, had a daughter with Charles X, the daughter of Charles X’s commerce minister, Pierre de Saint Cricq. He had a son with his second wife, Anna, who died of lung cancer in 1890. He also had three children with his third wife, Maria, who later died of a heart attack, and one with his fourth wife, Eva, who had a miscarriage. His last child, Michael, was born in 1827 and died in 1838. He and his wife died in a house fire in Paris in 1881.

His son Michael was the only child composer to survive his father’s death. His wife died of cancer in 1883. His children, Michael and Anna, died in childbirth in 1891, and his son Michael died in 1904, aged 83. He never had any children of his own and was left a widower at the age of 74. He wrote his only son a book about his experiences in Vienna, which was published in 1894. He later died in Budapest, Hungary, in 1913, aged 89. He leaves behind a son, Michael LiszT Ferencz, and a daughter, Maria LisZt Ferecz, who were married for more than 50 years. He lived in Vienna until his death in 1886, when he moved to Paris to live with his wife in a small apartment in the Piedmont suburb of Montreuil. His father had been in the service of Prince Nikolaus II Esterházy and knew Haydn, Hummel, and Beethoven personally. Adam began teaching him the piano at age seven, and Franz began composing in an elementary manner in October and November 1820 at age 9. After the concerts, a group of wealthy sponsors offered to finance Franz’s musical education in Vienna. There, he received piano lessons from Carl Czerny, who in his own youth had been a student of beethoven and Hummel. He received lessons in composition from Ferdinando Paer and Antonio Salieri, who was then the music director of the Viennese court.