Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Liszt: the Romantic artist
- 2 Inventing Liszt's life: early biography and autobiography
- 3 Liszt and the twentieth century
- 4 Liszt's early and Weimar piano works
- 5 Liszt's late piano works: a survey
- 6 Liszt's late piano works: larger forms
- 7 Liszt's piano concerti: a lost tradition
- 8 Performing Liszt's piano music
- 9 Liszt's Lieder
- 10 Liszt's symphonic poems and symphonies
- 11 Liszt's sacred choral music
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of Liszt’s musical works
- General index
2 - Inventing Liszt's life: early biography and autobiography
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- 1 Liszt: the Romantic artist
- 2 Inventing Liszt's life: early biography and autobiography
- 3 Liszt and the twentieth century
- 4 Liszt's early and Weimar piano works
- 5 Liszt's late piano works: a survey
- 6 Liszt's late piano works: larger forms
- 7 Liszt's piano concerti: a lost tradition
- 8 Performing Liszt's piano music
- 9 Liszt's Lieder
- 10 Liszt's symphonic poems and symphonies
- 11 Liszt's sacred choral music
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index of Liszt’s musical works
- General index
Summary
In what has become a famous letter to Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, dated 13 August 1856, Liszt described himself as ‘one half gypsy, the other Franciscan’. In a sense, he was being modest. One can easily expand the hallmarks of his scintillating public persona into an array of conflicting images: the flashy virtuoso versus the profound symphonic composer, the irresistible sex god versus the ascetic Catholic priest, the Hungarian nationalist versus the European cosmopolitan. All the facets in this kaleidoscope of images seem to sit side by side in peaceful coexistence, in spite and because of their apparently contradictory nature.
In this situation it goes without saying that modern Liszt biographers have habitually bemoaned the sheer impossibility of the task of painting an authentic picture of the charismatic musician: his character simply seems to be too complex, too evasive to be captured by biographical methods. Thus Alan Walker, Liszt's most authoritative modern biographer, opens his three-volume work with a sigh:
The normal way biography is written is to allow the basic materials – letters, diaries, manuscripts – to disclose the life. And if those materials are missing, one goes out and finds them. That did not happen with Liszt. Because of the unparalleled fame, even notoriety, enjoyed by Liszt during his lifetime (eclipsing by far that of all his musical contemporaries), a complete reversal of the ‘normal’ process took place. People clamoured for literature about him. And so the biographies came first; the hard evidence turned up later.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Liszt , pp. 14 - 27Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005