Franz Liszt was a Hungarian pianist and composer who had a huge effect and was extremely creative. During the Romantic period in Europe, he was an icon. Franz Liszt started performing in music halls at the age of nine. He traveled widely over Europe as an adult and composed almost 700 pieces by the time he passed away.
Liszt was born in Raiding, Hungary, on October 22, 1811. Adam, his father, played the cello and numerous other instruments and enthusiastically taught Franz how to play the piano. Young Liszt was recognized as a child prodigy by the age of six and by the age of eight, he was creating rudimentary pieces. By nine, he was performing in concerts. Mozart’s former enemy, Antonio Salieri, immediately became a supporter of Liszt’s brilliance. He volunteered to instruct the child in composition for free after hearing him perform at a private residence. For several months, the youthful pianist performed for musicians as well as rulers. His most amazing skill was his incredible ability to create a unique piece from a tune given by a member of the crowd. At the age of 12, Liszt moved to Paris with his father to apply at the Paris Conservatory.
Love and Nature
Liszt’s father passed away in 1826. The episode was highly distressing for Liszt, who was 15 at the time. He stopped performing and began to read voraciously, diving into literature about art and religion. What he read at the time had a significant impact on his later musical compositions. When he was 22, Liszt met the Comtesse Marie d’Agoult . In “Album d’un voyageur”, inspired by love and nature, he created many impressions of the Swiss countryside that would eventually appear as the “Années de Pèlerinage”. Liszt’s piano works “Harmonies poétiques et religieuses” and a set of three “Apparitions” were first performed in 1834. Liszt’s popularity was enhanced further by the fact that he donated a large portion of the revenues from his concerts to charities and humanitarian organizations. In 1847, Liszt was in Kiev and met Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. Her impact on him was profound; she urged him to forego traveling in favor of teaching and composing.
In Memory of His Loved Ones
The couple went to Weimar, Germany, the following year when Liszt began to focus on a larger mission: the invention of new musical genres. During this period, his most renowned work was the invention of the symphonic poem, a form of an orchestral musical piece that depicts or evokes poetry, a tale, a picture, or another nonmusical source. The decade that followed was trying for Liszt. He lost his son Daniel in December 1859, and his daughter Blandine passed in September 1862. Liszt resolved to live a more solitary life and relocated to the convent Madonna del Rosario, just outside of Rome, in 1863. In his later years, Liszt’s compositions were simpler in form but more intense in harmony. His life ended on July 31, 1886, in Bayreuth, Germany.