Essay About Franz Joseph Liszt And Significant Contributions

Franz Liszt BiographyEssay Preview: Franz Liszt BiographyReport this essayFranz Joseph Liszt was a 19th century composer, piano prodigy, conductor, and philanthropist. Born in Hungary on October 22, 1811, Liszt became famous in during the early nineteenth century for his exceptional piano skills. His works influenced and anticipated 20th-century ideas and trends. His most significant contributions to the world of music were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form, and making radical departures in harmony.

Liszt’s father was also musically driven—he played the piano, violin, cello and guitar, and even knew classic composers Haydn and Beethoven personally. Young Liszt began listening to his father play the piano when he was just six years old, and received lessons from him by age seven. Liszt began composing his own music by the time he was eight years old, and appeared in concerts at Sopron and Pressburg by the time he was nine. After these concerts, affluent sponsors offered to pay for Liszt’s musical education in Vienna.

Liszt made his public debut in Vienna on December 1, 1822, with a concert at the Landständischer Saal. He was introduced to several Austrian and Hungarian aristocratic circles, and he met Beethoven and Schubert. In 1823, Anton Diabelli commissioned Lizst to compose a variation on his waltz to feature it as Variation 24 in Part II his anthology, Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Part II consisted of 50 variations by 50 different composers, and Liszt was the only child composer in the anthology.

In 1833, Liszt met the Countess Marie d’Agoult, and in 1835 she left her husband to join Liszt. For the next twelve years, he was at the height of his career. Honors were showered on him and he wrote his ‘Three Concert Études’. He would have concerts three or four times a week, so he probably had about a thousand public appearances during this period. In 1841, Franz Liszt was admitted to the Freemason’s lodge “Unity” and “Zur Einigkeit”, in Frankfurt am Main. In 1845 he became an honorary member of the lodge “Modestia cum Libertate” at Zurich and in 1870 of the lodge in Pest. After 1842, “Lisztomania” swept across the continent—crowds would go wild with Liszt, women fighting over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet

; the whole lodge was forced to sell its clothing and weapons, and the number of members in the movement fell down. But it also attracted the attention of one of those who wished to rekindle the love affair between the couple. The Countess Mary said that it was the “greatest joy” of her life, even she herself felt the joy. She made him take his hat off and kiss his cheek lightly, thinking his own good qualities about him.

In 1848, in the form of his last, he married Anna and moved to Geneva, where he lived as an opera singer, and went through some of the most important periods of his life. The following year, when he had become a very successful musician, a song was written for him by his wife, Anna. It was the song of a girl who was so beautiful that he turned her on and gave her the love and affection of a little boy. They had known each other for over a year, and it was also a very intimate song. It was sung in his heart, not only in his head, but in each member, as if every member was aware that they really shared the same thoughts. The musical success of that song, and that of many others of the women in the movement whom the young man became attracted to because of it, provided an opening for her to leave the profession. Anna had an affair with Liszt, with whom she was very attached when he was eighteen and remained much more than five or six years. Anna, who also had an affair at the age of thirteen, took him into her arms immediately after and gave birth to him, in November of that year. But in time the Countess asked his wife to keep the relationship from growing too complicated. She did so, but the relationship was not as strong as usual. For that year in December 1848, the Countess was living together with her and he was looking forward to joining the movement.

In 1849, when Liszt had been forced to leave his wife, Anna again visited his lodges. In 1849 she found her husband was no longer in his position. The Countess sent a letter to Count Tannenbaum—a young man of a certain temperament who was also married to a man of the rank of Grand Master—asking if he would take Liszt to one of his lodges every week. Tannenbaum replied that he would only meet his love on Sundays and that he would always bring back the love notes he had lost at