Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) was the first and greatest piano virtuoso of the 19th century, and the consequences of that fact shaped the rest of his life. He toured Europe from 1838 to 1847, giving concerts that drew crowds more like rock concerts than classical recitals — women fainted, people fought for seats, handkerchiefs were waved in the air. The 'Lisztomania' phenomenon was real, documented, and unprecedented. He was the first composer to understand that performance was a separate art form from composition, and he changed both.

The piano was his primary instrument, but he was also the inventor of the symphonic poem — the single-movement orchestral work built around an extra-musical program or idea. Les Préludes, Tasso, and Prometheus are all symphonic poems, and the form became one of the dominant orchestral forms of the late 19th century. He developed the technique of thematic transformation — evolving a single theme through different characters and emotional states across a whole work — which influenced Wagner's leitmotifs and the symphonic development techniques of subsequent composers.

After 1847 he effectively retired from touring (he'd made enough money) and devoted himself to composition and to building the Bayreuth Festspielhaus that Wagner would need. He spent his last decades writing religious music — the Via Crucis, the Christus oratorio — and dying by inches in Bayreuth while his daughter Cosima ran Wagner's estate. He died on July 31, 1886; Wagner had died three years earlier. The Requiem he wrote for the death of a friend in 1867 is his most powerful late work.

StyleRomantic piano virtuoso in orchestral form. Thematic transformation, extended harmonies, virtuoso display. Coloristic orchestration that anticipates Debussy and the Impressionists. Showmanship as a compositional principle.

Listen: Piano Sonata in B minor, S.178. Then the Liebestraum No. 3 (the one everyone knows), then go back to the Piano Sonata — it's the one that holds up.