Franz Liszt (1811-1886), considered the greatest piano virtuoso of his day, also wielded great influence in shaping the western musical canon.

He promoted some fledgling composers, such as Wagner and Berlioz, which added to their reputations; he also helped resurrect the reputations of some musicians of the past, such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Handel, Schubert and Beethoven.
In his musical works, he invented techniques and developed piano skills that nobody could even recognize, did unconventional experimentation in musical harmony and created the musical form “symphonic poem”. He was born in Hungary but he went to Vienna when he was young. There he was able to study with a few of the most popular composers of the time, such as Czerny and Salieri, and he met Beethoven and Schubert.

He was not yet twenty when he moved to Paris where he gained prominence in the social circles in no time, as much for his mastery of the piano as the gossips generated within the society circling around his numerous love affairs.

Liszt got to know several musical contemporaries that lived during the same era, such as Berlioz, Chopin, Alkan and others. One of the key events of his early years was when he experienced the concerts of the diabolical violinist Niccolo Paganini.

As 1832 came to a close, Liszt met Countess Marie d’Agoult, who was to become his lover; she was already married, so the couple eloped to Switzerland to avoid scandal. This love affair lasted for as long as twelve years and they had three children; one of these children, Liszt\’s daughter Cosima, eventually married the composer Richard Wagner.

From 1839 to 1847, Liszt enjoyed a virtuoso career unlike any seen in the history of performance. He was the first pianist to perform a program without using sheet music, the first to have a full keyboard repertoire (as it was then) from Bach to Chopin, the first to perform with the piano positioned at a right-angle to the stage, allowing the open lid to send the sound across the venue, and the first pianist to tour throughout all of Europe.

However, when he was 35, his new lover, Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, convinced him to focus on composition and he stopped doing concerts. After settling in Weimar, Liszt composed some of his most important masterpieces, including the Faust Symphony, the Symphonic Poems, and the two piano concerti. During what is called the War of the Romantics, he gave money to Wagner, his son-in-law, and the advanced school of Weimar, as opposed to the more traditional Leipzig school, which was well-known for representing composers like Johannes Brahms, Felix Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann.

In approximately 1860, Liszt moved to the city of Rome somewhat permanently, and joined a religious order to become Abbe Liszt. In this location, he composed music that was primarily of a religious nature.

Toward the end of his life, he abandoned the virtuoso piano style and adopted a bleaker and more introspective approach to his music, pointing forward into atonality.

Author Bio: To find piano sheet music by Liszt to download, or to listen to recordings of some of his most famous works, visit www.pianostreet.com/ David Warn is a pianist and writer for pianostreet.com – a piano music library for pianists, piano teachers and students.

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