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The Death of Franz Liszt Based on the Unpublished Diary of His Pupil Lina Schmalhausen
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The Death of Franz Liszt Based on the Unpublished Diary of His Pupil Lina Schmalhausen
224Hardcover
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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780801440762 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Cornell University Press |
Publication date: | 12/15/2002 |
Pages: | 224 |
Product dimensions: | 5.00(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.88(d) |
Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations | vii | |
Preface | ix | |
Acknowledgments | xiii | |
Prologue: The Background | 1 | |
Liszt's Last Days: The Diary of Lina Schmalhausen | ||
Thursday, July 22 | 31 | |
Friday, July 23 | 49 | |
Saturday, July 24 | 59 | |
Sunday, July 25 | 69 | |
Monday, July 26 | 79 | |
Tuesday, July 27 | 97 | |
Wednesday, July 28 | 105 | |
Thursday, July 29 | 109 | |
Friday, July 30 | 123 | |
Saturday, July 31 | 131 | |
Sunday, August 1 | 137 | |
Monday, August 2 | 145 | |
Tuesday, August 3 | 149 | |
Epilogue: Liszt's Funeral | 151 | |
Sources | 195 | |
Index | 199 |
What People are Saying About This
"'The Death of Franz Liszt' is a remarkable book. It makes chilly, gloomy reading, and it scalds the reputations of a number of people treated respectful (too respectfully, according to the author) by history.... 'The Death of Franz Liszt' is a horrifying account of the dying Liszt tortured by medical incompetence, a vindictive, witchlike daughter and generally unfeeling and uncaring associates. Liszt is pictured mostly alone, denied food and companionship, scolded for complaining or asking for such necessities as help using the chamber pot.... A haunting and horrible book that, alas, is impossible to put down. Read it at you own peril."
This bizarre, sad story is thoroughly engrossing in its immediacy. It is enhanced by Walker's fascinating introduction and epilogue, his helpful annotations, and some extraordinary, if decidedly eerie, documentary photographs.
Significant sections of this volume have been prepared by musicologist-writer Alan Walker. There are of great value, as they reflect on, elucidate, and augment Schmalhausen's account. Walker is a superb writer, and his English sections flow with polished elegance; moreover, translations of Schmalhausen's German have been expertly done, so that these, too, make for fascinating but easy reading.
"No one knows more about Franz Liszt than Alan Walkerand this short work is an informative addendum to his three-volume critical biography, published between 1983 and 1997. The diary translated here not only sheds new light on Liszt's final weeks but, aided by Walker's copious commentary, adds a final act to the drama of Liszt's relationship with Wagner, that most exhausting of sons-in-law. What Liszt's former pupil Lina Schmalhausen reported from the ailing composer's bedside alters radically the 'official' story of his demise." —Malcolm Bowie, Times Literary Supplement, October 31, 2003
Lina Schmalhausen's diary provides a remarkably intimate view of the last days of Franz Liszt. It's essential —and fascinating —reading for anyone interested in the life and times of this amazing man, and particularly so for those who have enjoyed Alan Walker's extraordinarily detailed Liszt biography, to which it adds a perfect coda.
Never could we know the circumstances of a great musician's final days and death as we can here. Intimate and appalling, Schmalhausen's daily, sometimes hourly, details of Liszt's demise and of those who participated in it - students, family, and servants - are framed by a prodigious combination of prologue and epilogue and accompanied throughout with revelatory annotations by today's most eminent Liszt scholar, Alan Walker. At last, in the light of thorough research, we can access the people and circumstances of a primary source which has remained unpublished until now.