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An engrossing new biography of the musical revolutionary who was the world's first international megastar Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was an anomaly. A virtuoso pianist and electrifying showman, he toured extensively throughout the European continent, bringing sold-out audiences to states of ecstasy while courting scandal with his frequent womanizing. Drawing on new, highly revealing documentary sources, including a veritable treasure trove of previously unexamined material on Liszt's Weimar years, best-selling author Oliver Hilmes shines a spotlight on the extraordinary life and career of this singularly dazzling musical phenomenon. Whereas previous biographies have focused primarily on the composer's musical contributions, Hilmes showcases Liszt the man in all his many shades and personal reinventions: child prodigy, Romantic eccentric, fervent Catholic, actor, lothario, celebrity, businessman, genius, and extravagant show-off. The author immerses the reader in the intrigues of the nineteenth-century European glitterati (including Liszt's powerful patrons, the monstrous Wagner clan) while exploring the true, complex face of the artist and the soul of his music. No other Liszt biography in English is as colorful, witty, and compulsively readable, or reveals as much about the true nature of this extraordinary, outrageous talent.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

An engrossing new biography of the musical revolutionary who was the world's first international megastar Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811-1886) was an anomaly. A virtuoso pianist and electrifying showman, he toured extensively throughout the European continent, bringing sold-out audiences to states of ecstasy while courting scandal with his frequent womanizing. Drawing on new, highly revealing documentary sources, including a veritable treasure trove of previously unexamined material on Liszt's Weimar years, best-selling author Oliver Hilmes shines a spotlight on the extraordinary life and career of this singularly dazzling musical phenomenon. Whereas previous biographies have focused primarily on the composer's musical contributions, Hilmes showcases Liszt the man in all his many shades and personal reinventions: child prodigy, Romantic eccentric, fervent Catholic, actor, lothario, celebrity, businessman, genius, and extravagant show-off. The author immerses the reader in the intrigues of the nineteenth-century European glitterati (including Liszt's powerful patrons, the monstrous Wagner clan) while exploring the true, complex face of the artist and the soul of his music. No other Liszt biography in English is as colorful, witty, and compulsively readable, or reveals as much about the true nature of this extraordinary, outrageous talent.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Foreword by Nicolas Dufetel, IReMus (Institut de recherche en musicologie), CNRS//Universite Paris-Sorbonne/Bibliotheque nationale de France/Ministere de la Culture, Paris The Writings 1Tannhauser and the Contest of Song at the Wartburg (1849) 2Lohengrin, the Great Romantic Opera by Richard Wagner, and its Premiere Performance in Weimar (on the Occasion of the Herder and Goethe Festival) (1850) 3The Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner (1859) 4The Rhine's Gold. On 1 January (1855).
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt: Dramaturgical Leaves: Richard Wagner completes the second half of Liszt's writings about stage works, its composers, and music drama. In this volume, Liszt focuses on the works of his most controversial devotee and son-in-law, Richard Wagner, whose music dramas Liszt championed as conductor during his tenure in Weimar. Here, we see Liszt prove his skill and expertise as a music critic, as well. He offers a critical analysis of the aesthetic and musical principles that underlie Wagner's operas, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and The Flying Dutchman, including a thorough discussion of Wagner's Leitmotif system of composition. Additionally, his findings are substantiated with a plethora of music examples, which will satisfy those who wanted greater musical substance from his writings. He also foretells the magnitude of Wagner's influence on prosperity in his pamphlet-length essay, The Rhine's Gold. Finally, the editor and translator of this volume, Janita Hall-Swadley, provides a unique perspective on these same principles, which is based on Wagner's own mysterious diagram of "The Philosopher's Stone, " which was supposed to be included in the original 1863 edition of the composer's important writing, Opera and Drama, but never made it to publication.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Franz Liszt: Life and Works / Franz Liszt (Jeremy Siepmann, reader).

• Acknowledgments ... vii List of Illustrations ... viii List of Abbreviations ... ix Introduction ... 1
• 1 The Virtuoso Prophet ... 23
• 2 The Hungarian Patriot ... 64
• 3 The Romantic Hero and the Kulturnation ... 105
• 4 The War of the Romantics ... 148
• 5 Composing a Nation-Church Bond in Hungary ... 184
• 6 The General German Music Association ... 220 Coda ... 246 Bibliography ... 250 Index ... 269.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This biography of the musician Franz Liszt contributes to our understanding of national identity formation and its interaction with cosmopolitanism. Liszt exemplified the nineteenth-century quest for subjective definition and fulfillment. Seeking to gain agency, authority, and community, Liszt experimented with various subject positions from which to forward his goals. The stances he selected, anchored in ideas about nation, religion, and art, allowed him to retain his cosmopolitan sensibility while making specific aesthetic and creative claims. Quinn's analysis of Liszt's correspondence and musical criticism, as well as of contemporary reviews of his performances, compositions, and essays, demonstrates the lack of a nationalist exclusivity in Liszt's life was a historical phenomenon rather than a personal quirk as previous scholarship has often claimed.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Music selections: La campanella
• Au lac du Wallenstadt
• Die Forelle / Schubert ; arr. Liszt
• Après une lecture du Dante
• Transcendental étude no. 2 in a minor
• Hungarian rhapsody no. 6
• Consolation no. 3 in d flat
• Transcendental study no. 8
• Symphonie fantastique. Un bal / Berlioz ; arr. Liszt
• Prometheus
• Sonata in b minor
• From the cradle to the grave
• Ave Maria
• Unstern.

The life of Franz Liszt was as daring and spectacular as his music. Famed throughout Europe as the greatest pianist of the nineteenth century, he was one of the most original and prophetic composers who ever lived. In this account of his epic life, actors' readings combine with plentiful musical excerpts to paint a living portrait of a highly complex man.

• Part I. Essays. Liszt, Italy, and the Republic of the imagination / Anna Harwell Celenza ; Heine, Liszt, and the song of the future / Susan Youens ; The battle against instrumental virtuosity in the early nineteenth century / Dana Gooley ; Prophet and populace in Liszt's Beethoven cantatas / Ryan Minor ; "Just two words. Enormous success" Liszt's 1838 Vienna concerts / Christopher H. Gibbs ; Liszt, Wagner, and unfolding form : Orpheus and the gensis of Tristan und Isolde / Rainer Kleinertz ; Publishing paraphrases and creating collectors : Friedrich Hofmeister, Franz Liszt, and the technology of popularity / James Deaville
• Part II. Biographical documents. Liszt on the artist in society / introduced and translated by Ralph P. Locke ; The first biography: Joseph d'Ortigue on Franz Liszt at age twenty-three / introduced and edited by Benjamin Walton ; translated by Vincent Giroud ; Ludwig Rellstab's biographical sketch of Liszt / introduced and translated by Alan Keiler ; From the biographer's workshop : Lina Ramann's questionnaires to Liszt / introduced and annotated by Rena Charnin Mueller ; translated by Susan Hohl
• Part III. Criticism and reception. Fétis's review of the Transcendental etudes / introduced and translated by Peter Bloom ; Heinrich Heine on Liszt / selected and introduced by Rainer Kleinertz ; translated by Susan Gillespie ; Even his critics must concede : press accounts of Liszt at the Bonn Beethoven festival / selected, introduced and translated by José Antonio Bowen ; Defending Liszt : Felix Draeseke on the symphonic poems / introduced and edited by James Deaville ; translated by Susan Hohl
• Part IV. Reflections on Franz Liszt. A mirror to the nineteenth century : reflections of Franz Liszt / Leon Botstein.

No nineteenth-century composer had more diverse ties to his contemporary world than Franz Liszt (1811-1886). At various points in his life he made his home in Vienna, Paris, Weimar, Rome, and Budapest. In his roles as keyboard virtuoso, conductor, master teacher, and abbe, he reinvented the concert experience, advanced a progressive agenda for symphonic and dramatic music, rethought the possibilities of church music and the oratorio, and transmitted the foundations of modern pianism. The essays brought together in Franz Liszt and His World advance our understanding of the composer with fresh perspectives and an emphasis on historical contexts. Rainer Kleinertz examines Wagner's enthusiasm for Liszt's symphonic poem Orpheus; Christopher Gibbs discusses Liszt's pathbreaking Viennese concerts of 1838; Dana Gooley assesses Liszt against the backdrop of antivirtuosity polemics; Ryan Minor investigates two cantatas written in honor of Beethoven; Anna Celenza offers new insights about Liszt's experience of Italy; Susan Youens shows how Liszt's songs engage with the modernity of Heinrich Heine's poems; James Deaville looks at how publishers sustained Liszt's popularity; and Leon Botstein explores Liszt's role in the transformation of nineteenth-century preoccupations regarding religion, the nation, and art. Franz Liszt and His World also includes key biographical and critical documents from Liszt's lifetime, which open new windows on how Liszt was viewed by his contemporaries and how he wished to be viewed by posterity. Introductions to and commentaries on these documents are provided by Peter Bloom, Jose Bowen, James Deaville, Allan Keiler, Rainer Kleinertz, Ralph Locke, Rena Charnin Mueller, and Benjamin Walton.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A documentary completed in the bicentenary of the birth of Franz Liszt: the extraordinary, highly eventful life of the great Hungarian composer, with the participation of Charles Rosen, Leslie Howard, Antonio Pappano et Evgeny Kissin. "With Liszt, one no longer thinks of difficulty overcome; the instrument disappears and music reveals itself." This is how Heinrich Heine, the inventor of the word "Lisztomania, " attempted to explain the huge power of fascination of the Hungarian virtuoso in the middle of the 19th century. Well-know for being an egery in the Parisian salons during the Romantic era, Liszt also altered the general course of music history a lot. His music unquestionably influenced such diverse figures as Dvořák, Debussy, Scriabin, Schoenberg and Bartók. Stylistically speaking, his work is one of the milestones of our musical heritage, and had long-lasting impact on future generations. But the aura of the man exceeded his work. He also was a character of multiple identities, a daring traveller, a man disposed to love passions beyond reason, a devote capable of taking holy orders, who read Dante and Petrarch, admired Beethoven and Wagner ... A brief history of Franz Liszt, whose entire life could be resumed in this one formula -- the title of one of his Major pieces for solo piano: Pilgrimage years.