Why Listen to Liszt?

whereas the classical era of music was characterized by elegance discipline and structure the romantic era in music was a time of great diversity innovation and passion out of this era came some of the most accomplished and daring composers that ever lived chopin schubert wagner and brahms were just some in this enormous list of geniuses but where did fran's list fit into this picture he was one of the greatest innovators since beethoven and if there were one composer that understood the sheer expansiveness of romanticism it was list he was a man of extreme contrasts something that is well reflected in his music we hear moments of the most violent diabolical outbursts and some of the most heartbreaking vulnerable cries but with that we also hear the most grandiose victorious and heroic melodies when listening to list we can hear echoes of the great composers of the past but with that we also hear expansive forms and harmonies that usher in the next century of composers that is why you need to listen to fran's list [Music] franz liszt was born on october the 22nd 1811 in riding hungary his father adam list was an amateur musician and quickly realized franz's talent inside their home adam would often show his son the structured music of beethoven mozart and haydn when the young list heard them he would be ecstatic and try to improvise on their music however franz also grew up with another type of music this kind not introduced by his father this was the free-flowing sometimes vulgar gypsy music that france could hear right outside his house these contrasting styles classical and gypsy played a huge influence on liszt you often hear it in his compositions complex passionate passages interwoven with vulgar rhapsodic tunes like in his third funeral ode at the age of nine france gave his first concert as a pianist and it was astounding hungarian magnets who attended the concert saw the talent in the young list and made an investment in him by paying for the next six years of his education but adam his father would soon find out that hungary could not give liszt the knowledge and attention he needed and so he made a bold decision to move to vienna in 1821 this move would prove to be a great success vienna was the home to one of the greatest music teachers of the time karl cherny journey saw list on the one hand as a careless sickly child but he also saw great potential enlist and decided to dedicate almost every night to teaching him cherny meticulously fixed list's technical problems and created a firm foundation of technique but perhaps most importantly cherny also established a huge respect in list for the music of beethoven cherny was himself a student of beethoven and beethoven would become one of list's greatest inspirations for the rest of his life while people recognized that list was a superb pianist it was around this time that adam noticed a talent in list's ability to compose music and so he found one of the greatest composition teachers in vienna this was the 71 year old antonio salieri who is made famous by common folklore as the rival of mozart adam list saw his son's success in vienna but he wanted even more and so he took a leap of faith in moving to paris paris did bring them greater success but after three years of continuous touring both father and son were exhausted that's when tragedy hit adam became suddenly ill and passed away franz lost his mentor and his father and this event would plunge him into a period of deep sorrow franz liszt shocked by the death of his father composed a funeral march a piece that laments over his father but also over his career as a prodigy which he felt had been brutally crushed by fate with no income france reluctantly became a piano teacher his love for music started to fade soon after and it was only because of his mother that he would give music another chance these were some of the darkest moments in list's life and we can hear this dark energy in many of his compositions like this passage from his piano concerto however list's life would soon take a great turn due to three colossal events the first event exploded in july of 1830 when the french july revolution sprang into full force surprisingly this brought list out of his depression and inspired him to sketch a revolutionary symphony which wouldn't be finished until almost two decades later the second big event in his life would come some months later in the form of a fantastical symphony list heard berlioz is something fantastique in concert and this climactic diabolical and passionate symphony would forge an indissoluble bond with liszt the third big event came soon after when liszt attended a charity concert by nicolo paganini paganini's virtuosic style of playing would resonate with liszt so deeply that liz made a decision to become the paganini on the piano a virtuoso the likes of which the world had never seen [Music] in the past decade list had also picked up another interest literature he was fascinated by writers like byron and goethe and there was another writer who was just as fascinated with liszt as he was with literature marie dagul from 1835 to 1838 they traveled to switzerland and italy and they fell in love and had three children daniel blondine and kozuma but this wasn't just a love for travelling these were as liszt called them the years of pilgrimage it's here where list's passion for composing blew up with the combination of his accumulated literary knowledge the beautiful scenery of switzerland and the legendary scenes of italy liszt composed two suites of music that had a new level of innovation and complexity the first suite was based on a year in switzerland and the second suite was based on a year in italy each suite is filled with movements inspired by the buildings places works of art and even moods that he encountered on his travels what we can notice in this music is its sheer innovation and creativity liszt started to experiment with unusual dissonances and odd textures take this piece his apreun lectio de dante fantasia quasi-sonata that's movement seven from sweet two a whole piece built off of tritones and a chromatic descent from its stark lamenting introduction to its tempestuous cascade of chords taking us through scenes of the growling souls in hell all the way to its earth-shattering climax depicting victorious choruses represented with barrages of octaves he brought the piano to its absolute limits but the world was ever changing and liszt wanted to create music more innovative than anything he had ever written before it was liszt himself who said new wine demands new bottles out with the old forms in with the new in a flurry of inspiration came the faust symphony decades ago berlioz had introduced list to gerta's famous play faust this play greatly intrigued list and the foul symphony ditched the old four movement form of the classical symphony and he instead captures the psychological and physical characteristics of each of the main characters in goethe's story faust gretchen and mephistopheles each movement focuses on one of these characters liszt also extensively develops a technique that beethoven started thematic transformation the technique of using a theme and transforming it in all kinds of different ways showing off the sheer potential of a raw idea the symphony starts with this upwards arpeggio theme which is essentially a 12-tone row well before 12-tone music was even conceived of [Music] and it will return in all kinds of transformations and disguises like here or here [Music] or here [Music] many of these transformations are subtle sometimes almost unrecognizable from the original theme but it shows just how far liszt could develop and run with a single idea but this symphony could not fulfill liszt's desire for new forms list's composing output was about to enter an even higher level of innovation this was the invention of the symphonic poem since the premiere of symphony fantastique list had always tried to expand on what burley was created a symphonic poem was an orchestral work that was used to capture or evoke the poetic feelings of different paintings poems and landscapes with the symphonic poem list finally brought his old sketches of ideas to life take for example the heroid funeral symphonic poem which was inspired by the men that died fighting in the july revolution 20 years ago the piece balances symphonic elements of traditional musical development with programmatic elements or storytelling elements which seem to describe the battle musically along with a funeral march for its casualties [Music] perhaps today list's reputation lies in his virtuosic years the years of 1838-1847 his first concerts were extremely controversial the media made fun of him for his dramatic gestures and over-the-top improvisations when liszt performed his highly virtuosic transcriptions and compositions in paris it wasn't exactly well received the critics were especially hard on the growing virtuoso and they refused to publish any of his piano works it would take several months for the audience to adapt to liszt in the modern day solo recitals can fill concert halls regularly and they can be an extremely enjoyable way of listening to music but the factors that make a solo recital so enjoyable the assortment of different pieces the memorization of the music and the solo pianist posing as superstar all of these characteristics of a solo recital can be traced back to list it was liszt for example who had the piano position side on to the audience with the lid open so that they could see his hands face and instrument all in one this positioning is now conventional worldwide thanks to liszt without list who knows if the solo recital as we know it today would even exist anyway list's fame had exploded by 1842 and people were obsessed with his playing style his looks and even his dramatic gestures that the media made fun of all those years prior he played with such passion and fury that the famous german writer heinrich heiner came up with a term for all the madness that would occur when list performed listermania when list played some people would faint and others would trample each other just to get his handkerchiefs and dead cigars you could almost argue that liszt was a precursor for elvis mania or beetlemania list's composing style also developed his piano music inherited a sort of symphonic tone by the end of 1847 list had performed over a thousand concerts and toured most of europe but lists shocked the world by suddenly ending his career as a virtuoso list and his wife had separated afterwards he started a relationship with princess caroline von sane wittgenstein it was caroline who convinced liszt to stop his life as a virtuoso and to focus on composition list was no stranger to tragedy critics scorned him some mocking him of course the loss of many friends hurtless but even more than that would be the loss of his loved ones and his children list never got over the death of his father and the loss of his children brought list into another deep depression death being such a prominent theme in list's life would creep on him in one final epilogue unable to handle the burdens of life list retreated to a monastery for a quieter more religious ending he took one last year of pilgrimage this time alone and isolated liszt's compositional style changed dramatically with one final burst of creativity the late list works were largely religious often containing elements of the prominence of death and the afterlife these late works would also be his most innovative his legend number one depicting saint francis of assisi preaching to the birds formed the bedrock of impressionist music with its cascade of arpeggios representing birds happily chirping while his macabre bagatel sans tonality created a new path for expressionists of the 20th century but his long-awaited death finally came on july 31st of 1886 and he was buried in byroid in germany as one of the 20th century's most accomplished pianist claudio arau later stated list's most important and enduring works are born of his riveting imagination his complete technique and foresight of the direction in which the language of music might evolve gradually do you struggle with the essential core skills of music i'm talking about sight reading writing and ear training many people have strong musical ambitions but have never had the opportunity to develop these skills without them you are missing so much of what music has to offer and you're holding yourself back from real development i want to introduce you to the musicality training program a complete holistic step-by-step training program for your musicianship from absolute beginnings to a university level of skill this program will guide you every step of the way to develop the key skills needed to become a first-rate musician it's designed to develop your musicianship from every angle 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Channel: Inside the Score

Views: 492,183

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Id: 4yeL4MkBLSc

Length: 16min 53sec (1013 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 12 2022