Taylor Swift is setting the entertainment world on fire right now, but she’s got nothing on a guy born October 22, 1811, in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary: Franz Liszt. Liszt was born into a musical family — his father played several instruments, and counted a number of famous composers among his acquaintances, including Hayden and Beethoven. Franz began showing an interest in music when he was about six, when he started listening closely to his father’s piano playing. That led to his first piano lessons at age seven.
Liszt had just a year of piano lessons behind him when he composed his first music, at age eight. And a year after that he began performing in concerts. A group of wealthy Hungarians put together a fund to pay for him and his family to travel to Vienna for Franz to study music. In Vienna he studied under the top musicians of the day, and held a “debut” concert there when he was 11.
The family decided to stay in Vienna to further Franz’ budding musical career. His next feat was having some of his compositions published alongside those from musicians who were already well known (including Beethoven). Liszt’s father died in 1827, and the family moved to Paris, where Franz supported the family by giving music lessons. He also realized that although he was well-educated in music, he didn’t know much about anything else, and began reading widely. He was already prominent enough to be able to meet many of the leading authors of the time — the same people whose books he was reading.
Then he attended a concert by Niccoló Paganini, the great violin virtuoso. He vowed to become the “Paganini of the piano,” and applied himself so completely that even among the aspiring piano maestros of Paris (there were several at the time), he stood out. He achieved even more renown for his playing, and went on an eight-year-long concert tour of Europe in the 1940s. “Lisztomania” swept the continent — it was even called “Lisztomaia;” the term was coined by the poet Heinrich Heine. People fought over souvenirs including silk handkerchieves and gloves he had worn (or was said to have worn). Adding to all of it was Liszt’s reputed stage presence and personal attractiveness. Contemporary critics mentioned that he transported the audience to “musical ecstasy.”
Another contributor to his growing legend was that he had gotten so wealthy that he donated nearly all of the earnings from his concerts to charity. Then in 1847 he met Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, a Polish princess, who convinced him to give up touring and concentrate on composing. He was only 35 when he stopped performing. He did do some conducting after that, and gave piano lessons — but by that point, to qualify as a student of the great Liszt, you had to already be a virtuoso. The rest of his time he spent writing (articles as well as music) and composing.
He and Carolyn tried to get permission to marry, but this was complicated by the fact that she was already married. They went as far as appealing to the Pope himself and the Tsar of Russia to nullify her previous marriage, but they never managed to get permission, even though Carolyn’s husband agreed to a settlement.
Liszt lost a son and daughter (both adults) to illness in quick succession around 1860, and announced he was joining a monastery to live a solitary life. He was made Abbot and an honorary canon, and in the late 1860s left the monastery and resumed his musical career. He composed, conducted, and gave master classes in the piano in Rome, Weimar, and Budapest, spending about a third of each year in each location. He’s said to have travelled more than 4,000 miles per year during the 1870s — and in those days travel wasn’t easy or comfortable, particularly for a man then in his 60s.
On the 50th anniversary of his performing career, the “Franz Liszt Foundation” was created (not by him) in Budapest to provide funding for three outstanding music students each year. He stayed active in music education and both composing and arranging into the 1880s, although he began to suffer from a variety of physical problems, including asthma, cataracts, and heart disease. He died of pneumonia when he was 74, during the Beyreuth Music Festival, which was organized by his daughter Cosima. He’s still considered the greatest pianist who ever lived, although it’s hard to be sure because he lived and played before the age of sound recording. Although tantalizingly, not that much before.
