To mark the 200th anniversary of composer Franz Liszt’s birth on Oct. 1811 in Raiding, Hungary, the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library at Yale University has opened an exhibit titled Franz Liszt: Transcending the Virtuosic.
Gilmore Music Library, Yale University, Photo
Liszt’s Réminiscences de Norma: Grande Fantaisie
According to archivist Richard Boursy’s essay, on the library’s website, the “exhibit features several musical manuscripts and letters in Liszt’s own hand, as well as early printed editions of his music, two books about Liszt (an early biography and a recent novel), a medallion he kept on his night stand, and even a rose that he is said to have kissed. Several of the items on display come to us from the papers of Vladimir Horowitz, the most celebrated pianist of the 20th century and a keen admirer of Liszt.”
The introduction of an in-depth biographical sketch on the Liszt Ferenc Memorial Museum and Research Centre’s (Budapest) website points out that Liszt was “one of the outstanding pianists of his time, as a bold innovator in composition, as a conductor, an influential teacher and writer on music. A loyal son of Hungary, he was open to the world and absorbed all he valued in various European countries in an eventful life, making a generous and effective contribution to music wherever he went.”
Boursy’s essay explains that “Liszt’s accomplishments were not limited to playing the piano and composing. He was also noteworthy as a conductor (he served as Kapellmeister in Weimar, and directed the premiere of Lohengrin), as a teacher (he taught a long list of distinguished students, including Hans von Bülow and Carl Tausig), and as an author (though he was not responsible for every word published under his name).”
The significance of Boursy’s mention of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin, which received its premiere in 1850, is made made clear in the first line of Michael Rodman’s biography of Liszt in the All Music Guide to Classical Music: The Definitive Guide to Classical Music (Backbeat Books, 2005): “Liszt was the only contemporary whose music Richard Wagner gratefully acknowledged as an influence upon his own.”
In his essay on the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library’s website, Boursy indicates that “the years between 1809 and 1813 saw the births of a remarkable series of composers: Felix Mendelssohn, Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner, and Giuseppe Verdi. By 2013, the Gilmore Music Library will have presented bicentenary exhibits honoring all six of these men.”
Franz Liszt: Transcending the Virtuosic will be on view at the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library through January 31, 2012.