Franz Liszt: Biography and Works

Franz Liszt Biography and WorksFranz Liszt and the crude German schoolIn pre-modern Europe, more or less(prenominal) art bestowists were content to follow a proud authorised tradition, offering creative embellishments of their own as a contribution to the dramatic art and following the rules of composing a proper sonata, concerto, or waltz salaried special attention to chord progression, harmonics, and tonality. Because more of the medicament was purely instrumental, each(prenominal) tack on identified a theme in the title (i.e. Danse Macabre, Mephistos Waltz, Liebestraume, Moonlight Sonata etc.) and sought to bring it to breeding with and through medicinal drug. While in that location were noneworthy artists in the field, very few had the creative ability to read in a new era or popularise a new influence of extraction, which is probably why single a fistful of Europes finest ar known offhand today much(prenominal) as Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart and Wagner. In t he mid-nineteenth century, the idea of the New German School was born(p) and Franz Liszt was whizz of the well-nigh important members. It did non matter that he was not born in Ger umteen, but because the art and culture of Germany had such outstanding influence over his work, he was claimed as one of the Great German Artists by Franz Brendel and another(prenominal) music commentators associated with him.Most classical aficionados adopt hear of Franz Liszt because of the dark dynamic quality of his work, and the delicate risks he had taken in many of his compositionshe broke conventions relating to harmonics, chord structure, tonality, and quite often did not give the work a suitable ending.1 This is rather startling because most people settle into a routine at an advanced eagle-eyed timei.e. they would redeem found their voice and spent much of their time refine the messageindeed, it was expected. However, many of his critics believed that Liszts afterwards work was no t the cede of slightlything new. Instead, it was considered a diminishment of capabilities and a sign of some internal sickness that attacked ones artistic sensibilities. According to Ernst Gnter, the music of Liszts final exam decade (1876-1886) is the product of aesthetic weariness and distrust of the very principles of art. The estrangement of the latishr Liszt, which he vouched for completely in isolated remarks, reachs effective in the compositions as the destruction of the aesthetic norms.However, one foundation argue that his later work was a natural progression of his earlier work and sad events in his personal life and the rapid rate of pitch in the knowledge domain whitethorn agree had a greater influence on his later compositions than simply mere disenchantment with art itself. Instead, much of the search suggests a growing disenchantment with the military personnel itself as he comes to brass section his own mortality and his interest and guidance is furth er removed from the world around him to the afterlife instead. This paper will probe a precedent of Liszts final kit and boodle and attempt to answer the question of whether his change in vogue is the result of aesthetic weariness or the contiguous logical step in his creative path and reflective of his travel as an artist reflecting the times in which he lived. We will examine a few of his past compositions to establish a context and thence discuss personal events that had taken prat around the time he began to exhibit the noteworthy abandonment of norms.Liszts PersonaEven today, scholars have a difficult time characterising Franz Liszts contribution to the musical world and what he s in give care mannerd for. He certainly had harsh critics and adoring fans during his stage biography as expert interpreter and composer and his biography makes it difficult to put him into a box, person on the wholey or artistically. According to Liszt Scholars Michael Saffle and Rossana Dalm onteHere is where many differences of opinion concerning Liszt and his music originate. Liszts lifetime spanned the transitions from Napoleons Europe to Bismarcks, and from the early railroad trains to electric lighting his deeds reflect both sentimentalist (which is to say, modern) and post romantic (which is to say, modernist) concerns. Thus, in the last analysis, it proves extremely difficult to place or describe Liszt, even through comparisons to other great figures of the past. So much is lost if we simply consign him to this or that box.2During his move, he had become something akin to the nineteenth century equivalent of a rock star. Women would constrict over his handkerchiefs and gloves, and the holdive passion he brought to his performances often reduced many a patron to tears. Not surprisingly, he was renowned as a ladies man and often found patronage (and love) from wealthy noble women. During his travels, he introduced much of the work of German composers such as Schubert, Schumann, Franz, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn to the rest of Europe, and when he switched gears from performance to composition, the German influence became evident although he hails from Hungary. As a composer, his primary aim was to wed music and poetrya fact that he shared with Agnes Street-Klindworth, a woman with whom he had an affair and corresponded with until his end in 1886.3 As with most poets, his songs reflected his internal state. At the time, he was sorb in presenting dramatically flawless interpretations of the ascertains and he incorporated some elements of theirs into his music, though many of his critics believed that he had taken the wrong ones (i.e. Brahms).4 Intriguingly enough, many of his multiplication acknowledged that many of his transcriptions and interpretations of others works are so creative that they had taken on a life of their own. However, one tramp speculate that his early compositions reflected his own grand ambition to utterly maste r the piano as he rearranged the songs of many of the greats in his field into something that only he, with his unusual hands, could play.5Toward the end of his life, he had become much more contemplative, devoting much of his time composing spiritual choral pieces and wandering across Europe, which may also be considered unconventional for a man in his mid-sixties (especially as most people did not get to live that long in the firstborn place). Gunter notes that Liszts work began to slip after 1876, however, it crumb be argued that his style began to shift radically from the mainstream to a new form of expression all in all. As with many artists, much of the inspiration from Franz Liszts music had come from his life experience, his natural temperament, and his passion for his art. In Ihr Glocken von Marling a late composition, it becomes increasingly clear that he is malefactoring toward the more religious themes that started to purloin into his work during the latter part of t he 1860s.That decade brought much personal going apart to Liszt. He had buried his son, daughter, and mother, his marriage to Princess Carolyne was thwarted, and he had to endure smear campaigns by a psychotic stalker.6 At the same time, he began to turn away from the material toward the spiritual and he began to resemble more closely the example of the wandering ascetic. In 1876, he suffered an accident that left him the use of only nine of his fingerseven so, he was still the standard by which most pianists of his time compared themselves and composed at the speed most people relieve letters.7In his final decade, his compositions had become more concerned with the themes of death and end as his growing ill health and spiritual sentiment was conjugated with his belief that he truly had no talent. For instance, Ihr Glocken von Marling approximates the sound that calls the villagers to worship. The repetition of the chords pursues the paradiddle of the bells in the churchyard . The fact that it is more or less written entirely in the treble clef lends an ethereal sound to the work.8 While that claim is ludicrous, it is a rather valid concern because he did spend most of his career creating transcriptions of other compositions. He has always had an obsessive and perfectionist streak, which he channelled effectively through his art. In one of his later letters he writesFor the last twain weeks Ive been absorbed in cypressesI have composed two groups of cypresses, each of more than two hundred bars, plus a postludium, to the cypresses of the Villa dEste. These sad pieces wont have much success and can do without it. I shall call them Therenodies, as the word elegie strikes me as too tender, and almost worldly. A few more leaves have been added to the cypressesno less boring and redundant than the previous ones To tell the truth I scent out in myself a terrible lack of talent compared with what I would like to express the notes I write are pitiful. A stra nge champion of the infinite makes me impersonal and uncommunicative.9Perhaps his uncommunicativeness can be interpreted as his growing inability to conform to mainstream preferences. It is true that many of his later works focus on spirituality and Magyar nationalism. This religious sentiment grew to a raging crescendo as he was writing the Via Crucis in which he was forced to contemplate the passion and death of Jesus and his own emotions on the matter, as he was a deeply religious man.The Via Crucis possesses a tangled cyclical structure unified on a variety of levels through precisely controlled motives and pitch relations, many of which take on an iconographic significance. This strange and doubtful work should silence those who cast doubt on the sincerity of Liszts religious beliefs. It is the product of deep, anguished contemplation of the passion of Jesus, a touch on during which one can well imagine Liszt came to identify toughenedly with the damage Christ. Via Cruci s conveys not only the horror and sorrow of the crucifixion, but also the venerate of Gods redeeming love for humankind.10It is very clear that at this point in his career, he is finished competing with the greats of his age and is simply tone to express his true self through his art. In other fields, refusal to imitate was often seen as an affront to the scene and the fruits of ones cut into were not even considered art (i.e. Vincent van Gogh). Rather than simply producing bright transcriptions, he is looking to himself as a Christian, as a Hungarian, and a man that is looking at the winter of his life for inspiration. Instead of fitting despondent about his art, he was invigorated with passion, creating pieces that he intended for performance, especially about the great Hungarian heroes in history, Mosonyi in particular. Although he had not previously done much work in the Hungarian style during the 1870s, during the 1880s, he had become much more interested in freeing himse lf from the stylistic constraints of Western European music. When we had quoted him previously, Liszt said that he lacks the talent to express what he wants to say because there are so many tropes and ideas that he wanted to create through music and he simply did not have sufficient talent to carry it out. From what we know of him historically, he was never one to suffer from a lowered sense of self so he may have meant that his ideas have simply outgrown his ability to express them in art. Using the portrait theme was one of the defining art forms of the 1870s as Mussorgsky created his famous Pictures at an Exhibition ten years before. However, contrasted the nationalist sentiment that had become a form of religion in modern Europe, it did not displace his faith in God as noted in Liszts letter to his publisher when he first brought up the idea in 1885.11 As with Via Crucis, scholars concur that his Hungarian Portraits have the depth, resonance, and relevance to the period and ser ved as a foreshadowing of other pieces of that nature.The piece touches upon a number of harmonies which resonate with significant moments earlier in the cycle. It builds to a climactic apotheosis of the main theme in D minor, which subsides to a tender recollection of the contrasting theme in D major, and closes on a solemn note of faith and hope. In spite of the strong projection of the tonic at the conclusion, however, Liszt rigorously avoids stating the tonic root in the low bass, perhaps signifying that life is part of a greater continuum in which only God has the final word.12ConclusionMuch of Liszts work in the last decade of his life revealed an even deeper understanding of life than when he was younger. Although he was more likely to observe the conventions of composition in his youth (quite brilliantly in fact), he did not yet have more than the intellectual understanding that art was expressive and indicative of lifeindeed, that it was not separate from that of the creato r but instead flowed organically from his foreland and his talents. Unfortunately for Liszt, his knowledge of lifes pain and the existence of other great talents in the arena (i.e. Wagner) led him to doubt his own abilities as an artist. Because he had experienced one of the most devastating losses of allthe deaths of his children, he may have lost all faith in the natural order of things recognising that life was often chaotic, out of harmony, and progressed along upset(prenominal) paths. Because art is not formed in a vacuum, he poured his aptitude into creation, which is why the body of his later work is characterised by a focus on the sacred, death and dying. In his later years, he tried to turn these realizations into art, and indeed succeeded in creating poetry from his music. Do Liszts late compositions preserve the progressivism of the 1860s? Not by a long shot his songs are religiously themed with sub-themes of destruction, death, and dying in a time characterised by in vention, baring and increasing secularism. Nevertheless, it would not be fair to say that his works signalled artistic breakdown because his exploratory approach created the brilliant sacred pieces Via Crucis and Rosario, Years of Pilgrimage, and The Hungarian Portraits among many others. However, in an age where spirituality becomes increasingly unpopular, artists that reflect it in their work are often alienated by the mainstream and their work is deemed inaccessible.BibliographyBaker, jam M. Larger Forms in the Late Piano Works in Ed. Hamilton, Kenneth. The Cambridge feller to Liszt. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2005Botstein, Leon. A Mirror to the Nineteenth Century Reflections on Franz Liszt, Franz Liszt and His World. (eds. Christopher H. Gibbs Dana A. Gooley) Princeton Princeton University Press 2006Gorrell, Lorraine. The Nineteenth-Century German Lied. New Jersey Amadeus Press LLC, 2005Hamilton, Kenneth. Liszts early and Weimer Piano works in Ed. Hamilton, Kennet h. The Cambridge Companion to Liszt. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2005Liszt, Franz Agnes Street-Klindworth. Franz Liszt and Agnes Street-Klindworth A Correspondence, 1854-1886. New York Pendragon Press, 2000Saffle, Michael and Rossana Dalmonte. Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe. New York Pendragon, 2003Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt The Final Years, 1861-1886. Cornell Cornell University Press, 19971Footnotes1 Leon Botstein. A Mirror to the Nineteenth Century Reflections on Franz Liszt, Franz Liszt and His World. (eds. Christopher H. Gibbs Dana A. Gooley) (Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press 2006) 5182 Michael Saffle and Rossana Dalmonte. Liszt and the Birth of Modern Europe. (New York Pendragon, 2003) 83 Franz Liszt Agnes Street-Klindworth. Franz Liszt and Agnes Street-Klindworth A Correspondence, 1854-1886. (New York Pendragon Press, 2000) 1164 Hamilton, Kenneth. Liszts early and Weimer Piano works in Ed. Hamilton, Kenneth. The Cambridge Companion to Liszt. (Cambridg e Cambridge University Press, 2005) 575 Hamilton, 656 Alan Walker. Franz Liszt The Final Years, 1861-1886. (Cornell Cornell University Press, 1997) 1757 Walker, 3698 Lorraine Gorrell. The Nineteenth-Century German Lied. (New Jersey Amadeus Press, LLC, 2005 ) 2469 Liszt qt. Walker, 37010 James M. Baker. Larger Forms in the Late Piano Works in Ed. Hamilton, Kenneth. The Cambridge Companion to Liszt. (Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2005) 12611 Baker, 13412 Baker, 135