Book contents
- Liszt in Context
- Composers in Context
- Liszt in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Part I People and Places
- Part II Society, Thought and Culture
- Part III Performance and Composition
- Chapter 19 Pianos and Piano Builders
- Chapter 20 Liszt on the Road
- Chapter 21 Virtuosity
- Chapter 22 Improvisation
- Chapter 23 Transcription
- Chapter 24 Liszt as Conductor
- Chapter 25 Publishers
- Chapter 26 Genre
- Part IV Reception and Legacy
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 20 - Liszt on the Road
The Rise of the Modern Virtuoso Pianist
from Part III - Performance and Composition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 September 2021
- Liszt in Context
- Composers in Context
- Liszt in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- Part I People and Places
- Part II Society, Thought and Culture
- Part III Performance and Composition
- Chapter 19 Pianos and Piano Builders
- Chapter 20 Liszt on the Road
- Chapter 21 Virtuosity
- Chapter 22 Improvisation
- Chapter 23 Transcription
- Chapter 24 Liszt as Conductor
- Chapter 25 Publishers
- Chapter 26 Genre
- Part IV Reception and Legacy
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
The cliché that Franz Liszt was the rock star of nineteenth-century music at least captures something of what, as early as 1841, was known as ‘Lisztomania’. It also registers the extraordinary breadth and success of his travels as a virtuoso pianist. (Ken Russell shrewdly cast a real rock star, The Who’s Roger Daltrey, in the 1975 film Lisztomania.) The arc of Liszt’s entire life was of someone constantly on the move: quitting the provincial Hungarian village where he was raised to move to Vienna at age eleven, then at twelve to Paris and last, until near the end, when he divided his final years among Weimar, Rome and Budapest. The principal concern here will be the concentrated decade of Liszt’s almost constant concert touring, beginning in Vienna in 1838 and ending in Ukraine in 1847 with his decision to devote himself to composition, conducting and teaching. During his touring years, sometimes called the Glanzzeit (Time of Splendour), Liszt gave more than a thousand concerts, logged tens of thousands of miles and travelled from Glasgow to Gibraltar, Lisbon to Naples, St Petersburg to Constantinople.1 In a time before easy travel (he rarely used trains during those years, mainly going by horse-drawn coach) such scope is astonishing.
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- Liszt in Context , pp. 185 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021