Franz Joseph Liszt (1811-1886)
Hungary

Performer, teacher, priest, conductor, virtuoso, composer, and womanizer-Liszt lived his life with little reserve to hinder him from becoming one of the greatest contributors to the Romantic movement in music. His talent in music was discovered early and allowed to grow through his musical studies in Paris. There he would meet Chopin and Berlioz. Liszt's popularity as a musician at that time is undeniably similar to the popularity of a pop start today (Longyear 149). The women he knew intimately included George Sand, Countess Marie d'Agoult, and Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. Liszt performed as a musician before accepting the role as court conductor to the Duke of Weimar in 1848. At this point, he concentrated on composing until 1856, when he moved to Rome, took minor orders, and began focusing on religious composition. He lived his life much longer than most Romantic composers, yet he endured the death of his daughter and several endings of turbulent, emotionally-draining, romantic affairs. His efforts as a composer were nevertheless productive and fruitful, and his career and popularity spanned more than half a century. Through his genius and insight, Liszt gave birth to the symphonic poem, created musical impressionism and atonal music, restructured the form of music, reformed the outlines of conducting, refined the transformation of themes through harmony, rhythm and melody, and discovered new techniques for the piano.

Works

Orchestral
- Les Préludes (1848)
- Dante Symphony (1856)
- Faust Symphony (1857)
- Totentanz (1849)
- Tasso Symphonic Poem no. 2
- Orpheus Symphonic Poem no. 4 (1854)
- Prometheus Symphonic Poem no. 5(1856)
- Mazeppa (1851)
Chorus
- Missa Choralis (1865)
- Via Crucis (1869)
- Christus (1867)
Piano
- Transcendental Etudes (1851)
- Sonata in B Minor (1853)
- Hungarian Rhapsodies (1846)
- Années de pèlerinage (1848)
- Réminiscences de Don Juan (1841)
- Funérailles
- Liebersträume (1850)
- Consolations (1850)
- Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (1860)
Lied
- Die Lorelei (1856)

Sources:

Franz Liszt Page. Richard DiSilvio/Digital Vista Inc. 2001. <http://www.d-vista.com/OTHER/franzliszt.html>

Longyear, Ray M. Nineteenth-Century Romanticism in Music. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1988.

Rosen, Charles. The Romantic Generation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Sony Classical. Sony Music Entertainment. 2001. <http://www.essentialsofmusic.com/eras/romhist.html>