Franz Liszt: Musician, Celebrity, Superstar

by Oliver Hilmes, Stewart Spencer (Translator)

Overview

Hungarian composer Franz Liszt (1811–1886) was an anomaly. A virtuoso pianist and electrifying showman, he toured extensively throughout the European continent, bringing sold-out audiences to states of ecstasy while courting scandal with his frequent womanizing. Drawing on new, highly revealing documentary sources, including a veritable treasure trove of previously unexamined material on Liszt’s Weimar years, best-selling author Oliver Hilmes shines a spotlight on the extraordinary life and career of this singularly dazzling musical phenomenon.
 
Whereas previous biographies have focused primarily on the composer’s musical contributions, Hilmes showcases Liszt the man in all his many shades and personal reinventions: child prodigy, Romantic eccentric, fervent Catholic, actor, lothario, celebrity, businessman, genius, and extravagant show-off. The author immerses the reader in the intrigues of the nineteenth-century European glitterati (including Liszt’s powerful patrons, the monstrous Wagner clan) while exploring the true, complex face of the artist and the soul of his music. No other Liszt biography in English is as colorful, witty, and compulsively readable, or reveals as much about the true nature of this extraordinary, outrageous talent.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300219463
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	06/21/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Oliver Hilmes, the author of several best-selling biographies, lives in Berlin, Germany. Stewart Spencer is an acclaimed translator whose work includes biographies of Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner, Cosima Wagner, and W. A. Mozart.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vi

Acknowledgements vii

Prologue viii

1 Childhood and Adolescence (1811-27) 1

2 Rehearsing and Studying (1827-35) 29

3 Années de pèlerinage (1835-9) 53

4 Living Like a Lord (1839-47) 71

5 Weimar (1847-61) 101

6 Rome (1861-8) 179

7 La vie trifurquée (1869-86) 224

Postlude 307

Notes 314

Bibliography 335

Index 340

Editorial Reviews

". . . makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of Liszt as a man and superstar. Hilmes shines a light into the shadows behind a life lived in the spotlight, and he finds some surprising and indeed entertaining details there."—Andrew Taylor, Times

"If this book has a once-over-lightly feel, that is because there were many intertwined strands in Liszt’s extraordinary life, each of which could merit a book in itself. . . . Hilmes is illuminating on the emergence—and continuance into old age—of Liszt’s preternatural gifts as a pianist. And by drawing on hitherto unpublished documentary sources he provides a riveting chronicle of the composer’s tangled relationships."—Economist

"Invaluable: it is brilliantly written and comprehends material found nowhere else. Spencer's English translation is beyond praise."—Choice

"[Hilmes] sheds useful light on the way that Liszt’s achievement arose as much from his weaknesses as from his strengths."—New York Review of Books

“Hilmes conveys the authentic alongside the astonishing. . . . Engaging a wealth of prior scholarship, and incorporating several unpublished primary sources, he brings us a step closer to fully appreciating Liszt’s superstardom.”—Michael Vitalino, Notes

Won the 2017 Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title

"This is the book about Liszt I have been waiting for, vividly evoking both him and his context to reveal him as one the central figures—if not the central figure—of Western music in the nineteenth century, a vital link between Beethoven and Bartók, and a truly great and generous man. At last, we see him whole."—Simon Callow

From the Publisher

 “[A] new and vivid study of the great composer-pianist… imparts a novelistic vibrancy and urgency of narrative to a life that was undeniably of great intrinsic interest.”—Andrew Thomson, Musical Times

Musical Times - Andrew Thomson

“The sub-title of this remarkable book at once tells you where Oliver Hilmes’ chief interest lies. Liszt was, indeed, all of these things, bewilderingly multi-faceted and of super-human strength and achievement. Yet he also paid a heavy price in his journey from ‘Le petit Litz’ to ‘Le Grand Liszt’.”—Susan Nickalls, Classical Music "Editors Choice 2016" 
 

Classical Music - Susan Nickalls

“[Hilmes] sheds useful light on the way that Liszt’s achievement arose as much from his weaknesses as from his strengths.”—New York Review of Books

The New York Review of Books

“As a well-told, readable, fluently translated story of a strangely conflicted career that affected the lives of people as disparate as Lola Montez and Pope Pius IX [Franz Liszt] would be hard to beat.”—Stephen Walsh, London Review of Books

LRB - Stephen Walsh

'... Hilmes offers a riveting read, a vibrant story full of cannily etched detail. In the end you feel you have been visiting the characters at home, observing with forensic exactitude all their foibles, neuroses and, sometimes, hideous cruelty.’ - Jessica Duchen, Sunday Times Ireland

The Sunday Times Ireland - Jessica Duchen

"If this book has a once-over-lightly feel, that is because there were many intertwined strands in Liszt’s extraordinary life, each of which could merit a book in itself … Hilmes is illuminating on the emergence - and continuance into old age - of Liszt’s preternatural gifts as a pianist. And by drawing on hitherto unpublished documentary sources he provides a riveting chronicle of the composer’s tangled relationships."—Economist

The Economist

“…makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of Liszt as a man and superstar. Hilmes shines a light into the shadows behind a life lived in the spotlight, and he finds some surprising and indeed entertaining details there.”—Andrew Taylor, Times (London)

The Times - Andrew Taylor

“[It] has the great virtue of objectivity, and with the help of Stewart Spencer’s nicely fluent translation, Hilmes does a solid and fair-minded job of charting the long career of one of the dominant and iconic figures of 19th century culture — a romantic in every sense of the word.”—Rupert Christiansen, Literary Review

Literary Review - Rupert Christiansen

“Invaluable: it is brilliantly written and comprehends material found nowhere else. Spencer's English translation is beyond praise.”—Choice

Choice

06/01/2016
Franz Liszt—Superstar. That's how Hilmes (Malevolent Muse) presents one of the 19th century's most famous and flamboyant composers. In this account of the Hungarian-born Liszt (1811–86), the author emphasizes the virtuoso performances (he was a consummate pianist who dazzled audiences with his technique), the countless love affairs, and the many scandals that followed in Liszt's wake as he played concerts across Europe. Father Adam Liszt took an early interest in his son's musical career and the reigns of its promotion (a curious parallel to Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). Early on the young prodigy expressed a strong inclination toward religion (he did become an abbot), but his father admonished, "You belong to art, not the church." Hilmes, aided by Spencer's fluid translation, effectively presents the many sides of his subject as he explains how "a God-fearing Catholic [was also] a man of the world." VERDICT Despite an ample index and copious footnotes, the most striking feature of this biography is that it tells readers very little about Liszt's music or of music in general. The often gossipy and speculative presentation focuses instead on the celebrity status of its subject. A better title might be that of Ken Russell's film Lisztomania.—Edward B. Cone, New York

Library Journal