Composer franz liszt biography for children

(1811-1886)

Who Was Franz Liszt?

By the time Franz Liszt was 9 years old, he was performing in concert halls. As an adult, he toured extensively throughout Europe. He had an affair and children with Marie díAgoult and later lived with Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. By his death, he had written more than 700 compositions.

Who Was Franz Liszt?

Liszt was born on October 22, 1811, in Raiding, Hungary. His father, Adam, played the cello, as well as several other instruments, and passionately taught Franz how to play piano. By the age of 6, young Liszt was recognized as a child prodigy; by the age of 8, he was composing elementary works; and by the age of 9, he was appearing in concerts. His father worked as a secretary for Prince Nicholas Esterhazy, and, after the boy played for a group of wealthy sponsors, he asked the prince for extended leave so he could devote his time to enriching his son's musical education.

Father and son traveled to Vienna, and Antonio Salieri, Mozart's old rival, quickly became a proponent of Liszt's genius. Upon hearing the boy play at a private home, he offered to train him in composition free of charge. For several months, the young pianist held performances for both musicians and kings. His most impressive talent was his uncanny ability to improvise an original composition from a melody suggested by an audience member. At the age of 12, Liszt traveled with his father to Paris to seek admittance to the Paris Conservatory. The admissions council denied him a place in the school on the grounds that he was a foreigner. His father, ever determined, turned to Ferdinando Paer to teach his son advanced composition. It was during this time that Liszt wrote his first and only opera, Don Sanche.

In 1826, Adam Liszt passed away. The event proved to be extremely traumatic for the 15- year-old Franz Liszt, and it necessitated that he shares their one-bedroom Parisian apartment with his mother. In the years that followed,

BIOGRAPHY

Franz Liszt was born on October 22, 1811 to Adam Liszt, a talented amateur musician and a court official serving the Prince of Hungary. Adam played cello in the court orchestra, and he often played the piano at home. When Franz was six, he began to listen closely to his father’s piano playing, and began taking lessons from him at seven. Franz began composing and performing in public when he was eight years old. 

In 1821, the Liszt family moved to Vienna, where Franz was able to study with well-known musicians such as Czerny and Salieri, the music director at the Viennese court. After a performance in 1823, Liszt met Beethoven, who kissed him on the forehead! Liszt remembered Beethoven and told the story of their meeting for years to come. 

Liszt was the first person to give a piano recital—a concert that featured piano music exclusively. In fact, Liszt spent most of his life travelling around Europe giving piano recitals. He often appeared in concert three or four times a week, and it is estimated that he gave over a thousand public concerts in eight years! Liszt was a wonderful pianist and an exciting performer. When he played, he tried to make the piano sound like an entire orchestra. Liszt’s performances were so exciting that they made audiences hysterical—just like the Beatles or Elvis, but many years earlier. 

In 1842, Liszt settled down and began to focus on composing and conducting. A true Romantic composer, Liszt bypassed forms from classical music and developed his own instead. Liszt developed the Symphonic Poem, a single-movement piece for orchestra that is based on something outside of music, such as a poem, a painting, history, or mythology. He also developed “transformation of themes”, a method in which a short idea is repeated over and over again for an entire piece. The theme is repeated

Franz Liszt was a charismatic showman with a deeply spiritual personality. He was a spellbinding virtuoso who harboured serious musical ambitions. And he was a kind and generous man whose air of urbanity caused many to distrust him. His musical output ranged from dazzling showpieces to experimental works that continue to challenge audiences. Few other musicians have led such complex lives, earned such spectacular and contradictory reputations, or left such an influential body of work. Liszt showed early promise and made his concerto debut at the age of nine. A year later he moved to Vienna and studied feverishly for 14 months under the composer, pianist and former Beethoven pupil, Carl Czerny. Liszt gained a thorough grounding in piano technique, memorisation and sight-reading, skills for which he would later become legendary. Stories soon circulated about the special aura that he had when performing. When Liszt was not quite 12, he and his father moved to Paris. He was refused entry to the Conservatoire but continued to give concerts and to tour. His father’s sudden death when Liszt was still only 15 affected him deeply. He had already contemplated a religious life, and thoughts of death now brought these ideas into focus. Nevertheless, he needed to give piano lessons to survive. One of his pupils was Caroline de Saint-Cricq, the first of many women with whom he fell in love. By his early 20s Liszt was surrounded by the leading lights of Romanticism. He was personally acquainted with Hector Berlioz, Frédéric Chopin, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, Eugène Delacroix and many others. The most decisive influence, however, came from the violinist Nicolò Paganini, who conveyed cathartic expression through his extraordinary technical skills and magnetic stage manner. Paganini’s example inspired Liszt to push piano technique through previously unimagined difficulties and intricacies to attain new brilliance and sonorities. His quest was aided by the improved c

Franz Liszt (born Raiding, nr. Sopron, October 22, 1811; died Bayreuth, July 31, 1886) was a Hungariancomposer and pianist. Liszt (pronounced like “list”) was one of the most important musicians of the 19th century. He was the greatest pianist of his time and went on lots of tours through Europe where everyone filled the concert halls to hear him. He wrote a lot of music for piano. Many of his piano pieces were harder to play than anything that had been written before. In this way he developed the technique of piano playing, setting new standards for the future. In his compositions he often used new ideas which sounded very modern in his time. He was very helpful to other composers who lived at that time, helping them to become better known by conducting their works and playing some of their orchestral pieces on the piano.

Early years

Liszt’s father was an official who worked for Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, the same noble family who employed the composer Joseph Haydn. When he was seven his father started to teach him the piano. He was a child prodigy, and within a year or two he was already playing in concerts. He was so promising that some rich Hungarians said they would pay for his music education.

In 1821 his family moved to Vienna. He had piano lessons from Czerny and composition lessons from Salieri. He soon became famous although he was still a young boy, and he met famous musicians like Beethoven and Schubert. Beethoven is supposed to have kissed him on the forehead.

In 1823 his family moved again, this time to Paris. He wanted to go to the Conservatoire to study music but Luigi Cherubini would not let him in because he was a foreigner (i.e. not French). So he studied music theory privately with Reicha and composition with Paer. Soon he was asked to play the piano everywhere in Paris. He travelled to London. On his seco