Salut, mes amis! If you do not already know me, I am a Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer, although I lived for many years in Paris and then later in Weimar, Rome and Budapest.
I displayed incredible talent at a young age, easily sight-reading multiple staves at once. My father gave me my first music lessons when I was six years old. Local aristocrats noticed my talent and enabled me to travel to Vienna and later to Paris with my family. As a result, I never fully learned Hungarian; that was a pity but I was always at home with French.
In Vienna I was taught by Beethoven's student Carl Czerny, the only piano teacher I ever had. Antonio Salieri taught me the composition and helped foster my musical taste. Salieri was not such a bad man as he is made out to be today.
I formed an early friendship with Frédéric Chopin, but later there were problems with Frédéric - nothing to do with Georges Sand, I can tell you. Well, maybe. Still, we had some wonderful times together, and if he was jealous of my playing, I have to admit I was someitmes a little jealous of his compositions. Ah, well. I was a lifelong friend of Camille Saint-Saëns, and the latter dedicated a symphony to me.
I left Vienna in 1823 to travel. In Paris, I studied composition with Ferdinando Paer and Anton Reicha. On April 22, 1832, I went to a concert by the virtuoso violinist Paganini. It was then that I decided to become the greatest virtuoso the world has ever known! I secluded myself in my room and practiced scales, arpeggios, trills, thirds, sixths and so on for over 10 hours a day. It was after that that I wrote the Studies of Transcendental Execution after Paganini and the 12 Transcendental Etudes.
Schumann described these pieces as "playable at the most, by ten or twelve players in the world".
My friends in those days were all the top composers of the time, such as Frédéric Chopin, Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann; and Richard Wagner, who later married my daughter Cosima. I was very widely read in philosophy, art and literature and was on friendly terms with the painter Ingres and the authors Heine, Lamennais, H.C. Andersen, and Baudelaire, who addressed his prose poem "Le thyrse" to me.
After I played dear Chopin's études for him, he was very impressed... "Je voudrais lui voler la manière de rendre mes propres études..." ("I would like to steal his way of playing my own études.") he later said. That was quite a compliment for Frédéric was a great pianist himself and an astute judge of music.
In 1835 I left Paris with Marie, the Comtesse d'Agoult, with whom I had three beautiful children. During those years we lived mostly in Switzerland and Italy.
I regularly gave concerts in Paris, maintaining my legendary reputation as one of the greatest virtuosi of all time, and published some essays, but was active chiefly as a composer.
To help raise funds for the Bonn Beethoven monument, I resumed the life of a travelling virtuoso (1839-47) and was adulated everywhere, from Ireland to Turkey, Portugal to Russia. I did a lot of work for charity and donated funds from my concert tours to the flood victims in Hungary.
In 1848 I took up a full-time conducting post at the Weimar court, where, living with Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, I wrote or revised most of the major works for which I am known. I was always happy to promote new works by my fellow composers, and conducted new operas by Wagner, Berlioz and Verdi. As the teacher of Hans von Bülow and others in the German avant-garde, somehow or another I became the figurehead of the 'New German school'. Not everyone seemed to like me and Brahms, Schumann and dear Clara were always complaining about something or another, even though I performed their music and gave genuine praise for their talents.
In 1861-9 I lived mainly in Rome, writing religious works (I took minor orders in 1865); from 1870 I journeyed regularly between Rome, Weimar and Budapest and remained active as a teacher and performer to the end of my life.
The works of Liszt's late years, misunderstood by his contemporaries, are surprisingly modern in concept and anticipate many of the devices of Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Bela Bartok, and the Austrian expressionists. He died while attending the Wagner festival in Bayreuth, Germany.
His innovations in harmony, musical form, and writing for the piano make him one of the most important and influential composers of the 19th century.
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