Hilmes Oliver - Franz Liszt: musician, celebrity, superstar

First published in English by Yale University Press in 2016

English language translation copyright 2016 Stewart Spencer

Originally published under the title Liszt Biographie eines Superstars by Oliver Hilmes 2011 by Siedler Verlag, a division of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, Munich

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Franz Liszt : biography of a superstar / Oliver Hilmes ; translation, Stewart Spencer.

Franz Liszt. English

New Haven : Yale University Press, [2016] | Originally published under the title Liszt: Biographie eines Superstars by Oliver Hilmes 2011 By Siedler Verlag, a division of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, Munich. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

LCCN 2015034552 | ISBN 9780300182934 (c1 : alk. paper)

LCSH: Liszt, Franz, 1811-1886. | ComposersBiography. | Biographies. lcgft

LCC ML410.L7 H5513 2016 | DDC 780.92dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015034552

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Chapter frontispieces and plates 4, 7 and 16 taken from Robert Bory, La vie de Franz Liszt limage, Paris, 1936.

1 Liszts father, Adam (17761827). Anonymous gouache, 1819. Unfortunately, his father wanted to derive great pecuniary advantage from him, recalled Carl Czerny.

2 Carl Czerny (17911857), Liszts music teacher in Vienna. Anonymous oil painting, 1857. Czerny later recalled that his pupil was a pale, sickly looking child who, while playing, swayed about on the stool as if drunk, so that I kept thinking he would fall off .

3 Antonio Salieri (17501825) taught the young Liszt harmony, composition and score-reading. Oil painting by Joseph Willibrord Mhler (17781860), before 1825.

4 Beethovens famous kiss of consecration. Detail from a lithograph published in 1873 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Liszts Viennese debut. The scene depicted here is almost certainly apocryphal.

5 and 6 Franz Liszt and Marie dAgoult (180576). Oil paintings by Henri Lehmann (181482) dating from 1839. You are not the woman I need, Liszt once told her. You are the woman I desire.

I say apparition because I can think of no other word to describe the extraordinary sensation caused by the most extraordinary person I have ever seen, Marie dAgoult recalled her first meeting with Liszt.

7 Among the many women who fell under Liszts spell in the salons of Paris was the cigar-smoking George Sand, the pen name of Aurore Dupin, Baroness Dudevant (180476), depicted here in a caricature by her son, Maurice (182389), probably dating from 1837. The caption reads, Maman bien tonne dentendre Liszt (Mummy very surprised to hear Liszt).

8 The young seducer. Pencil drawing by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (17801867), dating from 1839.

9 Liszt at thirty. Daguerreotype from around 1841.

10 An icon of the Romantic movement. Liszt improvising at the piano. Oil painting by Josef Danhauser (180545), 1840. Seated (from left to right) are Alexandre Dumas (180270), George Sand (180476) and Marie dAgoult (180576); standing (from left to right) are Victor Hugo (180285), Nicol Paganini (17821840) and Gioachino Rossini (17921868). On the piano is a bust of Ludwig van Beethoven (17701827) sculpted in 1821 by Anton Dietrich (17991872), and on the wall is a portrait of Lord Byron (17881824).

11 Caricature by Jean Ignace Isidore Grard Grandville (180347) depicting the Paris salon of Delphine Gay de Girardin (180455), where members of the citys high society would meet to plan their intrigues. Here, too, Marie dAgoult assumed the nom de plume of Daniel Stern. Seen here (from left to right) are Honor de Balzac (17991850), Frdric Souli (180047), Alexandre Dumas, Delphine Gay de Girardin, Liszt at the piano, Jules Janin (180474) and Victor Hugo.

12 Court Kapellmeister in Weimar. Photograph by Franz Hanfstaengl (180477), 1858.

13 Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein (181987), Liszts new partner in life. Daguerreotype taken in Odessa in 1847. I dont know why Princess G[agarin] told you that Princess W[ittgenstein] isnt beautiful.

14 Between 1848 and 1861, Liszt and Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein lived at the Altenburg in Weimar. Throughout this period, the house was an intellectual melting pot where new ideas were forged. From a lost watercolour by Carl Hoffmann, painted for the American organist and educator James M. Tracy, December 1859.