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A Liszt of Surprises
| Article
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10006 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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4 / 1986 |
1,991 Words |
| Author
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Tom Pniewski
Tom Pniewski is a musicologist at Hunter College in New York. |
As a piano virtuoso unparalleled in the history of music and a composer whose visionary works presaged the developments of the twentieth century, Franz Liszt cast so far-reaching a shadow that a hundred years after his death in 1886 he continues to attract the fascination of millions. Musicologist Tom Pniewski here offers a glimpse into the many-sided personality and accomplishments of this remarkable man.
In an age of brilliant and spectacular artists, Franz Liszt was one of the most brilliant and spectacular. It is this very brilliance, though, that may partially obscure him. We see him as the golden-haired youth, in impeccable English suits, deified by Ingres; as the pianist-composer-conductor who swept through Europe, first with the Countess d'Agoult, then with Princess Carolyne of Sayn-Wittgenstein; and then finally as the Abbe Liszt, in clerical robes, eyes lifted to heaven.
Liszt was all of these, and more. His life always gave people something to talk about. Moving among the glitterati of his day, he met in the salons of Paris with Chopin, in the Tuileries Gardens with Napoleon III, and in the Vatican with Pope Pius IX.
He was one of the foremost creative minds of his time. But Liszt, the man, was ultimately a kind and gentle soul, generous with his time and his money to help others, and, through most of his life, devoutly religious.
He was born in what was then Hungary, in October 1811, and from the beginning he showed a genius which prompted others to help him. His father encouraged his studies, and when the budding musician was
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