Liszt is the only great composer of the nineteenth century who still suffers from detractors, and this despite the acknowledged debt of almost every composer who was his younger contemporary or successor. The trouble started whilst he was alive, of course, when many people simply couldn’t cope with his fame and popularity. ![]() He was never penurious; the starving artist in the garret was someone whom he helped, but someone he never was. In short, he made money, lots of it. He lost track of most of it, and gave away virtually all of it. He never owned property, nor even a coach and horses. He did own pianos, an excellent library, both musical and literary, and he enjoyed the freedom of every court in Europe. Many musicians were jealous of his success, and took Hanslick’s line that his compositions came as a kind of afterthought to engender intellectual respectability. This is tosh, of course, and yet aspects of this accusation still linger; if Liszt is played cheaply, one can still hear him accused of composing cheaply. And to add insult to injury, he was accused of posturing for taking his religion seriously (something which he had done in constancy from a boy) and the many facets of his complex character were dismissed as the masks of an actor. It is time that judgments made with this degree of crass ignorance were buried once and for all. Of course, over a composing life of more than sixty years, not every work is a masterpiece, but even the least of his works cannot help but show something of his pioneering spirit and originality. It is a pleasure to note that, finally, the variety of his works in the current repertoire is slowly but surely expanding to show his great range as an artist—a confirmation, if any were required, that the general level of his output is remarkably high. The limits for space preclude the reissue of all of the programme notes written for the Hyperion Liszt series (these may be found elsewhere on this website), but I should like to offer a general introduction to the man and his music, and then offer some observations about the undertaking of this project. Ferenc (Franz) Liszt (2. CD179: Brahms Clarinet Trio and Quintet. József Balogh, clarinet with Jeno Jandó piano, Csaba Onczay cello, and the Danubius String Quartet. Gershwin, George : Summertime (Porgy and Bess) flute, 3 saxophones, trumpet, euphonium, trombone, piano, bass 1 PDF / 1 MP3 Arranger : Bergeron, Guy. January 6, 2014. André Tchaikovsky: Piano concerto (Toccata) **** We now have piano concertos by three composers called Tchaikovsky. The first is written in B flat. Download and print sheet music for flute, including solo and ensemble works, contest pieces, individual parts, and pieces with piano accompaniment, for all levels of. Donald McInnes Representative List of Viola Repertoire. Please note that although pieces are listed in order of technical difficulty, all are presentable in a concert. October 1. 81. 1 – 3. July 1. 88. 6)—Hungarian composer, conductor, pianist and teacher—was born in Raiding (now in Austria), the son of Adam Liszt, a minor official on the Esterh. His talent manifested itself very early, and his brief formal education culminated in studies in Vienna, principally with Czerny and Reicha. In 1. 82. 2 he met Beethoven, who bestowed a blessing he counted the most important formative experience of his musical life. Download over 22,000 sheet music pieces with free piano sheet music plus full scores for violin, choir, guitar and blank sheet music at SheetMusicArchive.net. At the age of fourteen, he went with his father to Paris, and adopted French to such an extent that it remained his mother tongue for the rest of his life. He was a strikingly handsome young man, and in much demand by ladies of all ages, leading to many a legend of sexual conquest, and a fame of altogether greater proportion than the world of art music has seen before or since. But these years also saw the beginnings of Liszt’s lifelong devotion to Christianity and his interest in some of the more progressive religious philosophies of the day, especially those of Lamartine and Lammenais, whom he knew personally. He met and befriended almost every person of artistic consequence in early 1. Paris, including Paganini, Berlioz, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Alkan, Hiller, Auber, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Delacroix, Ingres, Hugo, Heine, Balzac, George Sand and Dumas p. By 1. 83. 5, when he eloped to Switzerland and thence to Italy with the Countess Marie d’Agoult, his reputation as a performer was unparalleled, but his work as a composer was relatively unknown. Yet he had already composed several important original works: the Apparitions, the single piece entitled Harmonies po. He broke away from time to time to give concerts, eventually playing solo performances, coining the term . Liszt travelled very widely, played an extraordinary mixture of music to captivate his audiences before daring to play the most serious repertoire, and embarked upon the largest body in musical history of transcriptions and fantasies on other composers’ works, generally in the spirit of proselytizing discipleship. He also worked on original instrumental and vocal compositions, and a large collection of piano pieces based on Hungarian gypsy melodies. In between, he sketched several piano concertos and raised almost all of the money required to erect a statue to Beethoven in Bonn, for the unveiling of which he composed an excellent cantata for soloists, chorus and orchestra. But Liszt knew that the constant travelling over these many years was impeding his work as a composer—it was also a serious component reason for the permanent breakdown of his relationship with Marie d’Agoult, which had finally taken place in 1. Meanwhile, he had been asked to consider becoming Kapellmeister in Weimar—a position he eventually took up in 1. Princess Carolyne zu Sayn- Wittgenstein, whom he had met in early 1. Although Liszt had written a number of works with piano or voices and orchestra, his output for orchestra alone really began in earnest in Weimar, where he had an orchestra at his constant disposal, staffed by some really fine musicians. He took many risks, and over a period of twelve years conducted much new or controversial repertoire, especially in the opera theatre. Famous premieres include Lohengrin, Alfonso und Estrella and Der Barbier von Baghdad, and famous revivals include Der fliegende Holl. During the 1. 84. Weimar he produced a series of twelve symphonic poems (Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne, Tasso, Les pr. Over these years he revised much of his earlier piano music, reissuing the works under the titles by which they have endured: the Ann. He also reworked many of his earlier songs and, by the end of his tenure in Weimar, published sixty of them. This period also saw the composition of the monumental piano sonata and the two masterful symphonies, one inspired by Goethe’s Faust, the other by Dante’s Divina Commedia. In all of these works, Liszt strove for new structures that would extend the working life of the sonata- form that dominated most large- scale instrumental music of the day. He also had visions of a new music for the church and, despite his detractors, wrote an excellent orchestral Mass—the Missa solennis for the consecration of the Basilica at Esztergom (Gran)—and two Psalms with orchestra, alongside quite a number of more modest motets, and he began the composition of his considerable corpus of organ music with the mighty fantasy and fugue Ad nos, ad salutarem undam. He also began his teaching life in earnest, and his pupils would include such first- rate musicians as Tausig, von B. Liszt became a mentor and provider to many younger musicians who found their way to Weimar and, as ever, since their friendship had begun, continued to subsidize Wagner. Liszt’s domestic life in Weimar was quite difficult: Princess Carolyne remained married to her husband in Russia, who was a great friend of Tsar Nicholas I. The tsar’s sister, the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna, was a close friend at court of the Grand Duke of Weimar, who was Liszt’s employer. Liszt was obliged to put up at a hotel whilst the Princess took the rooms provided for Liszt at the Altenburg in order to avoid scandal, but scandal there was, nonetheless. Political intrigue finally provoked resignation, and Liszt set forth to Rome, where he lodged for a time as a guest of Pope Pius IX. At the end of the Weimar period, Liszt had started work on his two great oratorios: St Elizabeth and Christus, and these, along with important pieces such as the Zwei Episoden aus Lenaus Faust, the L. He also wrote more church music, including the delicate Missa choralis (with organ) and the intriguingly nationalistic Missa coronationalis (with orchestra), more songs, organ works, shorter piano pieces and transcriptions, and prepared the definitive edition of his piano solo versions of all nine Beethoven symphonies. Attempts to marry Carolyne came to nothing, even after the death of her husband removed all obstacles, real and imagined. He took minor orders in the church, wore Franciscan robes, was properly called the Abb. Many of his late works were known only to the few, and some were denied publication, so daring were they deemed—amongst which, his unique musical treatment of the Stations of the Cross: Via Crucis. One late symphonic poem—From the Cradle to the Grave—and the second Mephisto Waltz complete his orchestral . The late piano pieces, on the other hand, have enjoyed considerable notoriety since they were effectively rediscovered in the 1. Ann. W.—Venezia and Am Grabe Richard Wagners) and the late Mephisto Waltzes, Mephisto- Polka and Bagatelle sans tonalit. Liszt died quite unexpectedly in Bayreuth on 3. July 1. 88. 6, partly due to the disgraceful way he was treated there by his daughter Cosima, from whom he had been virtually estranged for the last twenty years of his life, and whom he had gone to help with the festival inaugurated by his son- in- law Wagner. Liszt’s artistic influence on his contemporaries and successors is incalculably great: Wagner, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Smetana, Franck, Grieg, Faur. I so wish that Mr Sullivan had written such a book about Liszt. A key difference between these composers, though, is that Beethoven never lived to old age. There’s something that happens in the music of old Liszt which at the same time goes a step further and a step backwards. It doesn’t matter how many frontiers Beethoven sweeps away in his C sharp minor Quartet or the Missa solemnis, what Beethoven offers in those works is as solid as a rock; once you work out what the tenor of his thought is, there’s nothing unstable about them.
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