Liszt: Faust Symphony

Description

Franz Liszt (1811 -1886)A Faust Symphony: Three Character Pictures, Faust,Gretchen andMephistopheles, after Goethe Franz Liszt was born in 1811 at Raiding (Doborjan) near Odenburg(sopron) in a German-speaking region of Hungary. His father, Adam Liszt, was a stewardin the employment of Haydn's former patrons, the Esterh1izy Princes, and anamateur cellist who had played for Haydn and for Beethoven and enjoyedfriendship with Kapellmeister Hummel at Eisenstadt. The boy showed earlymusical talent, exhibited in a public concert at Odenburg in 1820, followed bya concert in Pressburg (the modern Slovak capital Bratislava). This second appearancebrought sufficient support from members of the Hungarian nobility to allow thefamily to move to Vienna, where Liszt took piano lessons from Czerny andcomposition lessons from the old Court Composer Antonio salieri, who had taughtBeethoven and Schubert. In 1822 the Liszts moved to Paris, where, as aforeigner, he was refused admission to the Conservatoire by Cherubini, but wasable to embark on a career as a virtuoso, displaying his gifts as a pianist andas a composer. On the death of his father in 1827 Liszt was joined againby his mother in Paris, where he began to teach the piano and to interesthimself in the newest literary trends of the day. The appearance of Paganini in Paris in 1831 suggested new possibilities of virtuosity as a pianist, laterexemplified in his Paganini Studies. A liaison with a married woman, theComtesse Marie d'Agoult, a blue-stocking on the model of their friend thenovelist George Sand (Aurore Dudevant), and the subsequent birth of threechildren, involved Liszt in years of travel, from 1839 once more as a virtuosopianist, a role in which he came to enjoy the wildest adulation of audiences. In 1844 Liszt finally broke with Marie d' Agoult, wholater, under her pen-name of Daniel Stern, took her own literary revenge on herlover. Connection with the small Grand Duchy of Weimar led in 1848 to hiswithdrawal from public concerts and his establishment there as Director ofMusic, now accompanied by a young Polish heiress, Princess Carolyne zu sayn-Wittgenstein,the estranged wife of a Russian nobleman and a woman of literary and theologicalpropensities. Liszt now turned his attention to new forms of composition,particularly to symphonic poems, in which he attempted to translate intomusical terms works of literature. Catholic marriage to Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein hadproved impossible, but application to the Vatican offered some hope, when, in1861, Liszt travelled to join her in Rome. The couple continued to liveseparately in Rome, starting a period of his life that Liszt later described asune vie trifurquee (a three-pronged life), as he divided his timebetween his comfortable monastic residence in Rome, his visits to Weimar, wherehe held court as a master of the keyboard and a prophet of the new music, andhis appearances in Hungary, where he was now hailed as a national hero.