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WORK TITLE: Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 4/6/1930
WEBSITE:
CITY: Ancaster
STATE: ON
COUNTRY: Canada
NATIONALITY: English
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Walker_(musicologist)
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born April 6, 1930. in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England.
EDUCATION:Attended Guildhall School of Music and Durham University; received doctor of music degree.
ADDRESS
CAREER
London University, London, England, lecturer, 1954-70; Guildhall School of Music, London, England, lecturer, 1959-61; British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC ), producer, 1961-71; McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, professor of music, 1971-95, professor emeritus, 1995–, department chair, 1971-80, 1990-93. City University, London, England, distinguished visiting professor of music, 1984 -87. Contributor to programs on BBC and Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
AWARDS:Hungarian Liszt Society Medal, 1980; American Liszt Society Medal, 1984; named fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. 1986; Pro Cultura Hungaria Medal, 1995; honorary doctorate, McMaster University, 2002; Knight’s Cross of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, 2012; James Tait Black Memorial Prize in Biography and Royal Philharmonic Society Book Award, both for Franz Liszt.
WRITINGS
Heard on sound recordings, including Franz Liszt: The Progress of a Biography and Liszt the Conductor. Contributor to journals and periodicals, including Musical Quarterly, Times Literary Supplement, and Times Educational Supplement.
SIDELIGHTS
Alan Walker, a longtime professor of music at McMaster University in Canada, is a noted biographer of musicians, including Franz Liszt, Hans von Bülow, and Fryderyk (Frederic) Chopin. His three-volume biography of nineteenth-century Hungarian pianist and composer Liszt “has been widely hailed as a groundbreaking work of scholarship,” reported Johanna Keller in the New York Times. Of his motivation for writing the biography, he told Keller: ”I felt that Liszt had not only not been well served by his biographers in the past, but in fact he had been very badly served. ‘Everyone concentrated on the razzmatazz, turning Liszt into a kind of Elvis Presley of the 19th century. He was very handsome, very virile. The ladies fell over themselves to get close to him, and he was always very fond of female company. But to blame Liszt for this, as many of his contemporaries did, is rather like blaming Niagara Falls for the suicides.” Liszt deserves esteem as a prolific and important composer and performer, Walker continued. ”One can’t really progress far in the piano without coming across the name and fame of Franz Liszt,” he told Keller. ”Even if you don’t play his music, he’s central to the piano repertory. All the major piano composers who follow Liszt learned from him, whether they were aware of it or not. His music and keyboard textures penetrate all the things that happened since his death in 1886.”
Franz Liszt
Walker considers Liszt’s life and career in Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811-1848, The Weimar Years, 1848-1862, and The Final Years, 1861-1886. Liszt was a child prodigy who gave his first piano recital at age nine, and he was famed throughout Europe by age thirteen. As he matured, his good looks and charisma helped attract large and enthusiastic crowds to his concerts, but his talent must not be discounted, according to Walker, who points out that he was known for performing from memory, without sheet music, the first to do so. He played with the piano’s lid raised, which improved the quality of the sound, and performed the music of every composer who wrote for the piano–both of which were unusual for the time, Walker relates. Even with a hectic touring schedule, he was a productive composer, writing more than 1,400 pieces, many of them important and innovative works, in Walker’s view, although some scholars dismiss much of Liszt’s oeuvre as superficial. Liszt ended his concert career at age thirty-five but continued composing, conducting, and teaching. He did have a colorful personal life, with numerous love affairs and three children born out of wedlock, but he was devoted to his widowed mother, and generous to his children and to friends such as Richard Wagner, whose work he championed, Walker writes. He also gave most of his fortune to charity and offered lessons without compensation. Even though he did not conform to prevailing social mores, he was a devout Catholic, his faith informed by the fact that his father had once been a member of the Franciscan order. This faith was the one thing that kept him from committing suicide during a period of intense depression, the biographer notes.
The biography received substantial praise from critics, several of whom deemed it both comprehensive and accessible. “While this superbly written biography is important for many reasons, not least its painstaking scholarship–it is the first fully reliable account of Liszt’s amazingly eventful life–Walker’s most notable achievement is to have stripped away a century’s worth of anachronistic preconceptions,” Terry Teachout observed in a Commentary review of The Final Years that also looked at the previous two volumes. Walker clearly admires Liszt, and his “advocacy is so fervent, in fact, that to some it may seem obtrusive,” but still the biography :deserves to be treated seriously,” Teachout continued. Of the three-volume work, Keller added: “Walker writes in graceful prose, and the dramatic story reads at times like a gripping novel, but one with excellent footnotes. His account, as much as it departs from the customary depiction of Liszt, is based on solid scholarship.” Alexander Morin, writing in American Record Guide, thought the final volume “more repetitive” than the first two, and found it “needlessly detailed, and often banal in expression,” while “it also verges on the hagiographic.” The volume is nonetheless “readable,” Morin commented, and does not “diminish the value of Walker’s achievement.” Liszt, he said, “emerges from these three volumes as a fully-fleshed human being, warts and all, and they bring us as close to him as we are likely to get.” A Publishers Weekly contributor, discussing the third volume, remarked that “this full-bodied portrait combines lively writing and impeccable scholarship.” Also critiquing the final installment, Booklist reviewer Ted Leventhal concluded: “Walker has written a lively, informative, and compassionate portrait of an artist.”
Hans von Bülow
Walker deals with a man who was close to Liszt and was, for a time, his son-in-law, in Hans von Bülow: A Life and Times. Bülow, who studied with Liszt, built a career as a highly regarded pianist and conductor. Like his mentor, Bülow was known for presenting the entire piano repertory, and he was also a champion of Wagner; he conducted the premieres of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. He had a more complicated personal connection to Wagner. Liszt’s daughter Cosima, while married to Bülow, had a long affair with Wagner that produced three children, and she married Wagner after her divorce from Bülow. Bülow came to despise Wagner but still promoted his work. Walker conveys all these details while making a case for Bülow’s place as an important performer and conductor who brought many new works to the public’s attention.
Some critics considered this a thorough and balanced biography of a man known primarily to music scholars. “Walker’s study not only offers a full and nuanced image of Bulow, but it also portrays the conductor’s life engagingly,” James L. Zychowicz reported in Notes. He continued: “In this study Bulow emerges as a figure in the round, and it is to Walker’s credit that his perspective avoids hero worship. More than that, this book is a good read, a solid piece of writing on its own merits, as the author shares his knowledge of a fascinating life.” In American Music Teacher, Louis Nagel remarked that the narrative of Bulow’s personal life “is a story full of twists and turns, and while it makes for darkly fascinating reading is admittedly hard to follow.” Nagel commended the book as a whole, however. calling it “a non-judgmental and thoroughly absorbing account of one of the greatest figures in the history of western music, one who up to this book has been unappreciated and under-valued.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Music Teacher, August-September, 2004, Richard Zimdars, review of The Death of Franz Liszt, p. 98;.February-March, 2006. John Ellis, review of Reflections on Liszt, p. 91; June-July, 2010, Louis Nagel, review of Hans von Bülow: A Life and Times, p. 49.
American Record Guide, November-December, 1996, Alexander Morin, review of Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886, p. 315.
Biography, spring, 2011, James L. Zychowicz, review of Hans von Bülow. p. 375.
Booklist, April 15, 1996, Ted Leventhal, review of Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886, p. 1407.
Choice, April, 2010. C. Cai, , review of Hans von Bülow, p. 1485.
Commentary, August, 1996, Terry Teachout, review of Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886, p. 100.
Library Journal, December, 2002, Larry Lipkis, review of The Death of Franz Liszt: Based on the Unpublished Diary of His Pupil Lina Schmalhausen, p. 130.
Music & Letters, May, 1996, Adrian Williams, review of Living with Liszt: From the Diary of Carl Lachmund, an American Pupil of Liszt, 1882-1884, p. 288.
New York Times. January 14, 2001, Johanna Keller, “In Search of a Liszt to Be Loved: How to Get Beyond the Manipulativeness of the Man, the Showiness in His Music?,” p. AR35.
Notes, June, 1996, Richard Zimdars, review of Living with Liszt, p. 1174; March, 1999, Kenneth Langevin, review of Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886, p. 66; June, 2007, Jonathan Kregor, review of Reflections on Liszt, p. 836; December, 2010, ,James L. Zychowicz, review of Hans von Bülow, p. 333.
Publishers Weekly, March 11, 1996, review of Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886, p. 50′.April 30, 2018, review of Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, p. 48.
ONLINE
Macmillan website, https://us.macmillan.com/ (September 14, 2014), brief biography.
McMaster University Archives website, http://archives.mcmaster.ca/ (September 14, 2014), brief biography.
McMaster University Library website, https://library.mcmaster.ca/ (August 8, 2008}, “Dr. Alan Walker: A Musicologist’s Generosity.”
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Alan Walker
Born April 6, 1930 (age 88)
Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England, United Kingdom
Genres Romantic
Occupation(s) Musicologist, biographer, professor
Years active 1965-
Alan Walker, FRSC (born 6 April 1930[1]) is an English-Canadian musicologist and university professor best known as a biographer and scholar of composer Franz Liszt.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Honours
3 Books
4 Articles
5 References
6 External links
Biography
Walker was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire.[1] He received an LGSM certificate in 1949,[1] ARCM in 1950,[1] a Bachelor of Music from University of Durham in 1956,[1] and a Doctor of Music in 1965.[1] Between 1957 and 1960 he studied privately with Hans Keller, an association which he has always acknowledged as formative. These lessons were resumed, albeit irregularly, once Walker joined Keller at the BBC in 1961.
From 1958-61 Walker lectured at the Guildhall School of Music,[1] having studied piano there with Alfred Nieman,[1] noted for teaching improvisational techniques.[2] He also taught at the University of London from 1954 to 1960.[3] Walker worked at the BBC Radio Music Division as a producer between 1961 and 1971.[1] Seeking to return to his "first love", teaching,[4] he gave up radio production and took an appointment as Professor of Music at McMaster University[1] in Hamilton, Ontario, where he chaired the Department of Music from 1971 to 1980, and from 1989 to 1995.[1] In 1981, he was responsible for the establishment at McMaster of the first graduate program in music criticism in Canada.[1] Since 1995, he has been Professor Emeritus at McMaster.[5] From 1984 to 1987, he was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Music at City University in London.[3]
His three-volume biography of Franz Liszt, which took him 25 years to complete, has been very influential. Common adjectives attached to the work include "monumental"[6][7] and "magisterial",[8] and it is said to have "unearthed much new material and provided a strong stimulus for further research".[8] Walker himself says that when he found, as a BBC producer compiling notes for program announcers, that "there wasn't a decent book in English on Liszt", he eventually decided to write one himself, but was determined "not to make a major statement that couldn't be supported by documents ... and because Liszt himself was a traveller the archives were everywhere."[4]
The first volume won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in biography for 1983[9] and best book on music from the Yorkshire Post Newspapers in 1984.[1] The three-book series was given the Royal Philharmonic Society Book Award in 1998.[10]
Time magazine praised the biography as "a textured portrait of Liszt and his times without rival", saying that Walker's work was "equally strong on the music and the life", and discussed Liszt's corpus "with greater understanding and clarity than any previous biographer".[11] The New York Times, reviewing the second volume, said of Walker's passion for his subject, "Mr. Walker can see only the good, and will stand for no criticism of his hero", but still called Walker's extensive research "incredible.... Mr. Walker seems to know everything about Liszt, and anything connected with Liszt, during every single day of the long life of that genius."[12] The Washington Post music critic Tim Page, including the third volume in his best books of the year list, called it "unquestionably a landmark" and "meticulously detailed, passionately argued and sometimes wrenchingly moving".[13]
Walker has also written substantially about Robert Schumann and Frédéric Chopin, and continues to lecture in Canada, the US, and UK on all three musicians.
Walker lives in Ancaster, Ontario.[3] He is director of "The Great Romantics", an annual festival in Hamilton, Ontario.[14]
Honours
Honorary Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music, 1974.[1]
Hungarian Liszt Society Medal, 1980[3]
American Liszt Society Medal, 1984[3]
Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 1986[1]
Pro Cultura Hungaria Medal (Government of Hungary), 1995[3]
Honorary D. Litt (honoris causa) from McMaster University, 2002[3]
Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, 2012[15]
Books
A Study in Musical Analysis, 1962.
An Anatomy of Musical Criticism, 1966.
Symposium on Chopin (Editor), 1967.
Symposium on Liszt (Editor), 1970.
Franz Liszt: The Man and His Music. New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1970. ISBN 0-8008-2990-5.
Robert Schumann: The Man and His Music, 1972. ISBN 0-214-66805-3.
Symposium on Schumann (Editor), 1972.
Liszt: v. 1. The virtuoso years, 1811-1847. Hardcover publisher Knopf, 1983, Softcover publisher Ithaca: Cornell University Press and revised, 1987. ISBN 0-394-52540-X for all three hardcover. ISBN 0-8014-9421-4 for v. 1 revised.
Liszt: v. 2. The Weimar years, 1848-1861. Knopf and Cornell University Press (no new material), 1989. Revised ISBN 0-8014-9721-3.
Liszt, Carolyne, and the Vatican: The Story of a Thwarted Marriage (Co-author, with Gabriele Erasmi). 1991.
The Diary of Carl Lachmund: An American Pupil of Liszt (Editor), 1995.
Liszt: v. 3. The final years, 1861-1886. Knopf and Cornell University Press, 1996 and 1997. Cornell edition has ISBN 0-8014-8453-7.
The Death of Franz Liszt: Based on the Unpublished Diary of his Pupil Lina Schmalhausen (Editor). Cornell University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8014-4076-9.
Reflections on Liszt, 2005.
Hans von Bülow: a Life and Times, OUP, 2009.
Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times, 2018
Articles
Walker has written over 100 articles for scholarly music journals,[3] and provided the biographical entry on Liszt for Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001).[3] Journal articles include:
'Schoenberg’s Classical Background', Music Review, xix (1958), 283–9.
'Aesthetics versus Acoustics', The Score, No.27, July 1960.
'Back to Schönberg', Music Review, xxi (1960), 140–47.
'Liszt and the Beethoven Symphonies', Music Review, xxxi (1970), 302–14.
'Liszt’s Duo Sonata', Musical Times, cxvi (1975), 620–21.
'Schumann, Liszt, and the C major Fantasie, op. 17', Music and Letters, vol. 60, 1979.
'Music and the Unconscious', British Medical Journal, 22 December 1979.
'Personal View [Infant prodigies]', British Medical Journal, 13 September 1980.
'Liszt and Vienna', New Hungarian Quarterly, No.99 (1985), 253–9; repr. in Journal of the American Liszt Society, No.xix (1986), 10–20.
'A Boy Named Daniel', Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 27, Autumn 1986.
'Liszt and Agnes Street-Klindworth: A Spy in the Court of Weimar?', Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungarica, vol. 28, 1986.
'Schopenhauer and Music', The Piano Quarterly, vol. 144, Winter 1988-89.
'Liszt and the Schubert Song Transcriptions', Musical Quarterly, lxvii (1981), 50–63; lxxv (1991), 248–62.
'Joukowsky’s Portraits of Liszt', Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 34, Summer 1993.
'Liszt and his Pupils', Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 36, Summer 1995.
'Tribute to Hans Keller', Canadian University Music Review, xvii (1996), 118–28.
'Liszt and the Lied'”, Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 37, Winter 1996.
"Ernst von Dohnányi (1877-1960): A Tribute", Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 43, Spring 2002.
"Dohnányi Redeemed", Hungarian Quarterly, vol. 43, Autumn 2002.
References
"Walker, Alan". Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
Stige, Brynjulf (1999). "Healing Heritage: Exploring the Tonal Language of Paul Nordoff". Nordic Journal of Music Therapy. 8 (2): 214–217. Archived from the original on 2006-10-16. Retrieved 2006-12-07. Via Barcelona Publishers website.
"Alan Walker: Finding Aids". The William Ready Division of Archives and Research Collections, McMaster University. Archived from the original on 6 November 2006. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
"Dr. Alan Walker". McMaster University. Archived from the original on 2007-02-07. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
"Four to receive honorary doctorates at Fall Convocation November 9". McMaster University. November 5, 2001. Archived from the original on 2006-06-28. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
Zimdars, Richard (2004). "Book Review The Death of Franz Liszt". American Music Teacher.
Hamburger, Klára (2005). "Death in Bayreuth: An Unknown Document about the Death of Franz Liszt" (Winter). Hungarian Quarterly. Archived from the original on 2007-03-20. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
"The Cambridge Companion to Liszt". Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
"The Prize Winners". University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 15 January 2007. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
"RPS Music Awards". Royal Philharmonis Society. Archived from the original on 2013-10-29.
Ravetz, Elliot (September 2, 1996). "The Book of Liszts: Finally, a Biography that Does Justice to All Facets of Franz Liszt's Messy Life and Protean Work". Time Magazine. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
Schonberg, Harold C. (July 14, 1989). "Books of The Times; A Scholarly Crusader for Fran Liszt". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
Page, Tim (1996-12-08). "Informed Opinions: Experts Pick Their Favorites". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2006-12-07.
"Roots & Legacy: Alan Walker". University of Georgia. Archived from the original on 2007-02-13. Retrieved 2006-12-07. A Celebration of Liszt and Matthay, presented by the American Liszt Society and the American Matthay Association.
http://www.mfa.gov.hu/kulkepviselet/CA/en/en_Hirek/20120123_alan_walker_kituntetes.htm
Dr. Alan Walker: A Musicologist’s Generosity
Submitted by liblawlord on August 8, 2008 - 09:19
Filed under Library News: Mills Archives & Research Collections
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McMaster University Library is pleased to announce that Dr. Alan Walker (Professor Emeritus at McMaster, Director of the Great Romantics Festival, and the celebrated biographer of Franz Liszt) has donated 14 original letters written by Liszt and 16 other letters written by people in Liszt’s circle–Hans von Bülow, Marie Lipsius, Walter Bache, etc. Dr. Walker has been a generous donor to the University Library in various ways. In the 1990s, for a period of 5 years, he provided money to convert archival finding aids in hard copy to electronic form for Web access. Once much of that work was completed, he provided a similar cash donation for the purchase of Liszt letters. In 1997 Dr. Walker also donated his rich archives to the University Library.
In September 2007, La mort de Franz Liszt (the French translation of Dr. Walker’s annotated edition of The Death of Franz Liszt, based on the diary of Lina Schmalhausen, Liszt’s pupil) was featured in the bookstores of Paris. The launch of the Hungarian translation of this work (Liszt Ferenc utolsó napjai) took place on 29 November 2007 at the Liszt Museum in Budapest; the launch at the Liszt Museum included a piano recital by Valerie Tryon and a panel discussion with Dr. Walker, Mária Eckhardt the Director of the Liszt Museum and Fejérvári Boldizsár the book’s translator. Dr. Walker is currently at work on a biography of von Bülow (scheduled for publication by Oxford University Press in 2008-9), the German conductor, virtuoso pianist, and composer, who married Liszt’s daughter Cosima.
Alan Walker’s definitive three-volume biography of Liszt, Franz Liszt, received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in Biography and the Royal Philharmonic Society Book Award, among others. His writing has appeared in journals such as The Musical Quarterly, The Times Literary Supplement, and Times Educational Supplement. A professor emeritus at McMaster University, Walker was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1986 and was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in 2012.
Dr. Alan Walker has written extensively on Franz Liszt, and his definitive three volume biography of Liszt, Franz Liszt, published by Knopf, received awards including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in Biography and the Royal Philharmonic Society Book Award. His writing has appeared in journals such as The Musical Quarterly, Times Literary Supplement and Times Educational Supplement. A Professor Emeritus at McMaster University since 1995, Dr. Walker was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1986 and was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in 2012.
Walker, Alan (1930-)
Biographical history
Alan Walker, Doctor of Music, F.R.S.C., university professor and writer, was born in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England on 6 April 1930. He was educated at the Guildhall School of Music and at Durham University, where he specialized in piano, theory, harmony and counterpoint. In his early career, he lectured at the Guildhall School of Music from 1959 to 1961, and at London University from 1954 to 1970.
Walker was a producer at the British Broadcasting Corporation from 1961 to 1971, and has contributed to programmes at the BBC and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Music at City University in London from 1984 to 1987 and has been a Professor of Music at McMaster University since 1971, where he was Chairman of the Department from 1971 to 1980 and again from 1990 to 1993. Walker is the recipient of numerous honours, including the Hungarian Liszt Society Medal in 1980, the American Liszt Society Medal in 1984, and the Pro Cultura Hungaria Medal in 1995. He was awarded an honorary doctorate, D. Litt (honoris causa), from McMaster University in 2002. In January 2012, he received the Knight's Cross of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, one of Hungary's highest honours.
He is the author of A Study in Music Analysis, 1962, An Anatomy of Musical Criticism, 1968, Franz Liszt, 1971, Robert Schumann, 1976, Franz Liszt: Volume One, 1983, (for which he won the James Tait Black Award in 1983, and Yorkshire Post Music Book of the Year Award in 1984), Franz Liszt: Volume Two, 1989, Franz Liszt: Volume Three, 1996, and The Death of Franz Liszt, 2002. He co-authored, with Gabriele Erasmi, Liszt, Carolyne, and the Vatican: The Story of a Thwarted Marriage, 1991, and was the editor of Symposium on Chopin, 1967, Symposium on Liszt, 1970, Symposium on Schumann, 1972, and The Diary of Carl Lachmund: An American Pupil of Liszt, 1995. He has written over 100 articles for learned journals including a major entry on Franz Liszt for the latest edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001. More recently he has published Hans von Bülow: a life and times, 2009, and his biography of Frederic Chopin will be out in 2018.
Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times
Publishers Weekly. 265.18 (Apr. 30, 2018): p48.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times
Alan Walker. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $40
(762p) ISBN 978-0-3741-5906-1
Nineteenth-century pianist and composer Fryderyk Chopin (1810-1849) emerges as a reserved, inward man who creates passionate music in this expansive, authoritative biography. Musicologist and biographer Walker (Franz Liszt) paints Chopin, who was born in Poland and spent his adult life in Paris, as frail, consumptive and fussy, with a polite but aloof manner, a dry wit, and an aversion to disruptions and tumults. Though a Polish patriot, he avoided involvement in Polish uprisings against imperial Russian and Prussian rule and the French revolutions of 1830 and 1848. The saga's great adventure is Chopin's years-long relationship with the cigar-chomping, cross-dressing, scandal-courting novelist George Sand; he at first considered her an "antipathetic woman," but she seduced and then became a caregiver to the sickly musician. Walker sets Chopin's life against a vivid re-creation of the culture of virtuoso piano-playing in 19th-century Paris, where Chopin's music stood out for its unaffected delicacy amid the clanging histrionics of rivals. Chopin sometimes seems like a cold fish, but Walker manages to unearth a warm, intelligent soul that matches the sublime music he wrote. The study is packed with information and insightful analyses of Chopin's major works that will interest professional musicians, and even non-specialists will be entranced by Walker's piquant storytelling and graceful prose. Photos. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times." Publishers Weekly, 30 Apr. 2018, p. 48. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537852277/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a53adece. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537852277
The Death of Franz Liszt: Based on the Unpublished Diary of His Pupil Lina Schmalhausen
Larry Lipkis
Library Journal. 127.20 (Dec. 2002): p130.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Cornell Univ. Dec. 2002. c.224p. ed. & tr. from German by Alan Walker. illus. index. LC 2002005791. ISBN 0-8014-4076-9. $29.95. MUSIC
Walker, author of a highly regarded, three-volume biography of Liszt and winner of the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize, here offers a slender but remarkable addition to the scholarship on the great Hungarian composer. While combing the Goethe and Schiller Archives in Weimar, along with the papers of Liszt biographer Lina Ramann, he ran across the diary of Lina Schmalhausen, a student of Liszt who became a devoted caregiver to her elderly master when he fell ill in Bayreuth in July 1886. Carefully translated and copiously annotated here by Walker, the diary convincingly debunks the sanitized version of Liszt's death, which had the composer passing away peacefully from pneumonia, surrounded by loving relatives. In fact, Liszt was ignored by his cold daughter Cosima (who had fallen out with her father after marrying Richard Wagner) and attended by incompetent doctors. Schmalhausen's account makes for riveting, at times horrifying reading, and Walker is to be commended for bringing it to light. Recommended for all music collections.--Larry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, PA
Lipkis, Larry
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Lipkis, Larry. "The Death of Franz Liszt: Based on the Unpublished Diary of His Pupil Lina Schmalhausen." Library Journal, Dec. 2002, p. 130. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A95917361/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6bde298f. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A95917361
Quoted in Sidelights: “more repetitive” than the first two, and found it “needlessly detailed, and often banal in expression,” while “it also verges on the hagiographic.” The volume is nonetheless “readable,” Morris commented, and does not “diminish the value of Walker’s achievement.” Liszt, he said, “emerges from these three volumes as a fully-fleshed human being, warts and all, and they bring us as close to him as we are likely to get.”
Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886
Alexander Morin
American Record Guide. 59.6 (November-December 1996): p315+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 Record Guide Productions
http://www.americanrecordguide.com/
Full Text:
This is third and concluding volume of Alan Walker's massive biography of Liszt, and its publication gives us an opportunity to appraise the work as a whole.
Walker, who was Music Director of the BBC and now teaches at McMaster University in Ontario, has spent 25 years combing the Lisztean literature, digging through all the archives and visiting all the sites, to produce what will surely stand as the definitive biography for a long time to come. It covers in great detail Liszt's activities, thoughts, relationships, and music, setting them in their contemporary social, political, and religious contexts, from the flamboyance of his early years as a touring virtuoso to his retirement from the concert stage to become court composer in Weimar to his ending years as an itinerant teacher and social lion. His troubled relationships with his daughter Cosima and her two husbands, Von Bulow and Wagner, and with his long-time mistresses, Marie d'Agoult and Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, are described and analyzed at length, as is his somewhat equivocal entrance into the lower orders of the Catholic Church. There are numerous citations from letters, reminiscences, and official documents, as well as musical examples, all of which add up to a full and convincing picture of this extraordinary man.
The first two volumes, in spite of their length, are reasonably tight in construction and well-balanced in their treatment of the problem aspects of Liszt's nature and activities; they are very well written, often with a pleasant touch of irony. Walker must have been tired by the time he got to the third volume, because while it is still very readable, it is more repetitive, needlessly detailed, and often banal in expression. It also verges on the hagiographic; we are shown a saintly Liszt, always noble, generous, and prepared to sacrifice his own interests for those of his friends, students, and the cause of music. There is in fact plenty of evidence to support this view, but his endless travels and public appearances - always in humble clerical garb - can also be seen as showmanship coupled to a voracious appetite for honors and decorations. Liszt's enemies are derided by Walker, as are the critics of his music, even though much of their criticism still seems valid today.
But this is not enough to diminish the value of Walker's achievement. Liszt's charismatic personality, his invention of the modern piano recital, his support of musical change in the work of Berlioz and Wagner, his own innovative compositions, all make him one of the most remarkable figures in the history of music. He emerges from these three volumes as a fully-fleshed human being, warts and all, and they bring us as close to him as we are likely to get.
MORIN
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Morin, Alexander. "Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886." American Record Guide, Nov.-Dec. 1996, p. 315+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A19097883/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=9d5f0cc6. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A19097883
Quoted in Sidelights: “While this superbly written biography is important for many reasons, not least its painstaking scholarship–it is the first fully reliable account of Liszt’s amazingly eventful life–Walker’s most notable achievement is to have stripped away a century’s worth of anachronistic preconceptions,” Terry Teachout observed in a Commentary review of The Final Years that also looked at the previous two volumes. Walker clearly admires Liszt, and his “advocacy is so fervent, in fact, that to some it may seem obtrusive,” but still the biography :deserves to be treated seriously,”
Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886
Terry Teachout
Commentary. 102.2 (Aug. 1996): p100+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 American Jewish Committee
http://www.commentarymagazine.com
Full Text:
To say that Franz Liszt was the most famous pianist of the 19th century barely suggests the extent of his celebrity. Born in Hungary in 1811, he made his debut at the age of nine, met Beethoven three years later, and was known throughout Europe by the time he was thirteen. As an adult, his public appearances were greeted, especially by women, with an enthusiasm that would strikingly anticipate the reception of such 20th-century popular musicians as Elvis Presley and the Beatles. "Admirers swarmed all over him," Alan Walker writes in his multi-volume biography, the third and last installment of which has just been published, "and ladies fought over his silk handkerchiefs and velvet gloves, which they then ripped to pieces as souvenirs."
If tabloid journalism had existed in the 19th century, Liszt's sexual escapades would have appeared regularly on the front pages. (He fathered three illegitimate children, one of whom became the mistress and, later, the second wife of Richard Wagner.) Still, it was not his love life but his piano playing that was the source of his celebrity. Contemporary accounts would defy belief were it not for the fact that they all say more or less the same thing: he was a performer of extraordinary and unprecedented virtuosity. The word Liszt himself used to describe his playing was "transcendental."
Liszt died in 1886, a decade too soon to have made recordings. But if we cannot hear how he sounded in performance, evidence of a different kind--namely, his compositions--suggests that he was, at the very least, the greatest musical executant of his time. Indeed, Liszt was incontestably a composer of significance. His output was vast (the catalogue of his works in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians takes up 21 closely printed pages) and, though uneven, full of pieces of astonishing individuality. He invented the single-movement "symphonic poem," and his harmonic innovations directly influenced Wagner, whose Tristan und Isolde, the fountainhead of musical modernity, could not have been written without Liszt's example. To this day, Liszt's music continues to be played regularly, and such works as the B Minor Sonata, the Hungarian Rhapsodies, the Transcendental Etudes, and the two concertos are part of the repertoire of every aspiring virtuoso pianist.
And yet, popular though Liszt's music has remained, it is regarded with considerable ambivalence by critics and scholars, and sometimes even by the musicians who play it. Alfred Brendel, among the finest present-day interpreters of Liszt's piano works, speaks revealingly of the composer's penchant for
facile melody, the compulsion to
say something two or three times,
lack of formal economy, and a
reliance on the glorious and idealistic. . . . Liszt's
variety extends
from the sacred to the utterly profane,
from the lavishly sumptuous
to the ascetic--and from the
careless to the masterly.
By contrast, Alan Walker's biography is a brief for the defense: it contends unequivocally that Liszt was both a great man and a great composer. Walker's advocacy is so fervent, in fact, that to some it may seem obtrusive. But his claim to have undertaken his three volumes in order to present "a more truthful picture of Liszt, one . . . not warped by all the old unthinking generalizations that still pass for the story of his life," deserves to be treated seriously. While this superbly written biography is important for many reasons, not least its painstaking scholarship--it is the first fully reliable account of Liszt's amazingly eventful life--Walker's most notable achievement is to have stripped away a century's worth of anachronistic preconceptions.
The key to understanding, as Walker makes clear, lies in Liszt's notion of the artist (i.e., himself) as a genius, singled out by destiny for greatness. "It was left to Liszt," Walker writes,
to foster the view that an artist is
a superior being, because divinely
gifted, and that the rest of
mankind, of whatever social class,
owed him respect and even
homage. This view of the artist
who walks with God and brings
fire down from heaven with
which to kindle the hearts of
mankind became so deeply
entrenched in the Romantic consciousness
that today we regard
it as a cliche. Nonetheless, the
cliche is important, since it
explains much about Liszt that
would otherwise remain a mystery.
When he walked on stage
wearing his medals and his
Hungarian sword of honor, it was
not out of vanity but rather . . .
the most telling gesture he could
make to show the world that the
times had changed.
What made this posturing palatable was the fact that Liszt was not just a traveling virtuoso, playing solely for cash and applause. His oft-repeated motto was genie oblige (genius obligates), and the reference to noblesse oblige was not accidental. At the age of thirty-five, he stopped giving recitals altogether: thereafter, he never again played in public for his own profit, concentrating instead on teaching, composing, and conducting. Even during his touring days, Liszt devoted much of his time and energy to playing the music of other composers, and as music director of the dukedom of Weimar (a post he held from 1848 to 1861), he continued this practice, conducting the premieres of Wagner's Lohengrin and Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini.
Indeed, such ambitious undertakings--largely forgotten today, save by scholars--obscured Liszt's own achievements as a composer. "The world persisted to the end in calling him the greatest pianist," Saint-Saens once said, "in order to avoid the trouble of considering his claims as one of the most remarkable of composers."
The third volume of Franz Liszt is particularly valuable for its detailed discussion of the little-known compositions of Liszt's old age, which Walker describes in terms whose effusiveness is--as so often in the course of these volumes--initially startling but in the end persuasive:
From the vantage-point of the
20th century, everything seems
to have flowed from him. His
experiments in harmony, his
audacious handling of form, his
unparalleled ability to draw
strange sonorities from his instruments--all
confirm that his was
one of the truly revolutionary
spirits m music.(*)
But are Walker's powers of persuasion likely to bring about a general revaluation of Liszt as a composer? That may be doubtful. The "problem" posed by his music is that its Romantic rhetoric is as alien to modern sensibilities as, say, the poetry of Shelley. Older critics, their tastes shaped by modernism, find Liszt's florid theatricality a near-insurmountable obstacle; younger ones, who view the world with the reflexive irony of postmodernism, balk at the sincerity which lies just beneath the theatricality. For the same reasons, many pianists (Alfred Brendel is an important exception), though attracted by the opportunities Liszt offers for technical display, are incapable of playing his music convincingly: what was wholly sincere in conception becomes grandiloquent and unserious in realization.
On records, the strongest case for Liszt's music, not surprisingly, was made by those prewar artists who--unlike today's musicians--took his romanticism for granted.([dagger]) And those same qualities have continued to ensure Liszt's popularity among the vast majority of music lovers whose tastes are founded not in ideology but in immediate experience, and who find his best music beautiful, thrilling, and emotionally compelling. It is only among the intellectuals that, Alan Walker's formidable labors notwithstanding, Liszt's achievement will in all likelihood remain--as it has been since his death 110 years ago--in question.
(*) Four pieces for solo piano which are representative of Liszt's innovative late style, Nuages gris, Unstern!-Sinistre, La lugubre gondola 1, and R. W.-Venezia, have been recorded by Maurizio Pollini (DGG 427 322-2GH); "Via Crucis," the masterpiece of Liszt's old age and the finest of his compositions on religious themes, is available in an excellent recording by the Danish chamber choir Vox Danica, conducted by Ebbe Munk (Danica DCD 8145). ([dagger]) Fortunately, many early recordings of Liszt's music have been reissued on CD, among the most notable of which are Simon Barere's matchless 1934 performances of Reminiscences de Don Juan and the Rapsodie espagnole, both of which are part of Simon Barere: The Complete HMV Recordings, 1934-36 (Appian CDAPR 7001, two CD's), Alfred Cortot Plays Liszt, an indispensable collection which includes the great French pianist's 1929 recording of the B Minor Sonata (Pearl GEMM CD 9396); Willem Mengelberg's volatile 1929 performance with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of the symphonic poem Les Preludes, currently available in Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra: The Complete Columbia Recordings, Vol. 1 (Pearl GEMM CDS 9018, three CD's), and the Schubert, Verdi, and Wagner transcriptions recorded by the Dutch pianist Egon Petri, Ferruccio Busoni's most distinguished pupil all of which are collected in Egon Petri: His Recordings, 1929-1942, Vol. 1 (Appian CDAPR 7023, two CD's).
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Teachout, Terry. "Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886." Commentary, Aug. 1996, p. 100+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18562988/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b6fbcb8c. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18562988
Quoted in Sidelights: “Walker has written a lively, informative, and compassionate portrait of an artist.”
Franz Liszt: vol. 3, The Final Years, 1861-1886
Ted Leventhal
Booklist. 92.16 (Apr. 15, 1996): p1407.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
In the third installment of his biography of nineteenth-century composer/pianist Franz Liszt (the previous volumes are Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years, 1811-48 [1983] and Franz Liszt The Weimar Years, 1848-62 [1989]), musicologist Walker writes with the depth and insight worthy of academia but also with the vibrancy and enough clarity to capture the interest of the lay reader. The last years of the Romantic era composer's life are fascinating to the extent that they were so much at odds with his earlier years. Walker has accomplished two laudable goals: shedding new light on Liszt's life by accessing rare documents and conveying the humanity of his subject despite a daunting amount of detail. Walker compassionately conveys the transformation of the rakish Liszt into a pious, reclusive, self-effacing man. Wracked with bouts of depression, alcoholism, and illness, Liszt's final years are remarkably similar to those of the eccentric twentieth-century pianist Glenn Gould. Abandoning performances, Liszt spent his final years as "a life split in three," dividing his solitary travels between Vienna, Rome, and Weimar, Germany. Walker has written a lively, informative, and compassionate portrait of an artist.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Leventhal, Ted. "Franz Liszt: vol. 3, The Final Years, 1861-1886." Booklist, 15 Apr. 1996, p. 1407. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18249094/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=334ea2d8. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18249094
Quoted in Sidelights: “this full-bodied portrait combines lively writing and impeccable scholarship.”
Franz Liszt: vol 3, The Final Years
Publishers Weekly. 243.11 (Mar. 11, 1996): p50.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Volume 3: The Final Years, 1861-1886 Alan Walker. Knopf, $50 (640p) ISBN 0-394-52542-6
The last quarter-century of Liszt's life was filled with dramatic turns, contrasts and emotional storms, like the Hungarian composer's romantic music. The buoyant man of the world retreated into a monastery near Rome (1863-1865), emerging as a Roman Catholic cleric. His elder daughter, Blandine, died from a breast operation, and Liszt tried his best to break up the adulterous relationship of his younger daughter, Cosima, with composer Richard Wagner, whom she married after concealing the out-of-wedlock births of three children by Wagner from her first husband, pianist and Wagner-worshiper Hans von Bulow. Shuttling endlessly between Rome, Weimar, Budapest, Paris, Vienna, overworked, over-drinking Liszt suffered a nervous breakdown in 1877 and struggled with suicidal impulses. Polish princess Carolyne yon Sayn-Wittgenstein, whose wedding to Liszt was canceled at the last minute in 1861 because of her family's meddling, betrayed him in 1881 by inserting an antiSemitic chapter into Liszt's revised book on Bohemian music. In this final volume of an extraordinary biography, Walker, a professor of music in Ontario, shows how Liszt's universal despair gave rise to the pathbreaking, proto-modernist music of his later years. A rarity among composers' biographies, this full-bodied portrait combines lively writing and impeccable scholarship. Photos. (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Franz Liszt: vol 3, The Final Years." Publishers Weekly, 11 Mar. 1996, p. 50. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18078434/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=777e177a. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18078434
Bulow, Hans von: Hans von Bulow: A Life and Times
James L. Zychowicz
Biography. 34.2 (Spring 2011): p375.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 University of Hawaii Press
http://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/t-biography.aspx
Full Text:
Bulow, Hans von Hans von Bulow: A Life and Times. Alan Walker. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. xxv + 510 pp. $39.95.
"As familiar as the name of Hans von Biilow may be for nineteenth-century music culture, his legacy has not yet been served by a full-length biography offering a rounded assessment of his life and work.... Walker proceeds to write a traditional biography which benefits from his fine sense of balance. ... He masterfully draws on the data to create a compelling narrative. As detailed as this biography is, the result is a portrait of the musician, and not a recitation of facts.... This book is a good read, a solid piece of writing on its own merits, as the author shares his knowledge of a fascinating life."
James L. Zychowicz. Notes 67.2 (2010): 333--35.
Zychowicz, James L.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Zychowicz, James L. "Bulow, Hans von: Hans von Bulow: A Life and Times." Biography, vol. 34, no. 2, 2011, p. 375. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A272168083/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=44671edf. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A272168083
Quoted in Sidelights: “Walker’s study not only offers a full and nuanced image of Bulow, but it also portrays the conductor’s life engagingly,” James L. Zychowicz reported in Notes. He continued: “In this study Bulow emerges as a figure in the round, and it is to Walker’s credit that his perspective avoids hero worship. More than that, this book is a good read, a solid piece of writing on its own merits, as the author shares his knowledge of a fascinating life.”
Hans von Bulow: A Life and Times
James L. Zychowicz
Notes. 67.2 (Dec. 2010): p333+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Music Library Association, Inc.
http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org
Full Text:
Hans von Bulow: A Life and Times. By Alan Walker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. [xxv, 510 p. ISBN 9780195368680. $39.95.] Music examples, illustrations, works list, bibliography, index.
As familiar as the name of Hans von Bulow may be for nineteenth-century music culture, his legacy has not yet been served by a full-length biography offering a rounded assessment of his life and work. Hardly a neglected figure, Bulow (consistent with Walker's usage, this review refers to the book's subject as Bulow, not von Bulow) was an influential conductor, especially because of his role in leading the premieres of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde: and Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. In this regard Bulow is the subject of excellent encyclopedia articles, including those by John Warrack in the first edition of The New Grove and Christopher Fifield in the second (and in Grove Music Online). His career has also been covered in various collected volumes on conductors, from Harold C. Schonberg's venerable The Great Conductors (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967) through Raymond Holden's recent The Virtuoso Conductors: The Central European Tradition from Wagner to Karajan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005). Moreover, Walker himself has devoted portions of his three-volume study, Franz Liszt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983-1996) to Bulow, since those two musicians interacted at various points in their careers, an interaction culminating in Bulow's marriage to Liszt's daughter Cosima, who later left the conductor for Richard Wagner. For these and other reasons, a case may be made for a biography of Bulow, whose important contributions to musical life influenced generations of solo performers and conductors.
In approaching his subject, Alan Walker-engages his readers from the start, enumerating the various ways in which Bulow is known to modern audiences. For some this takes the form of various tons mols and aphorisms, which betray a clever and sometimes cynical perspective on music and, more often, performers. The section of Walkers prologue entitled "From Alpha to Omega" contains a selection of these aphorisms, which Walker does not merely trot out, but puts into context, and in doing so also gives a sense of what he will cover in the subsequent chapters of the book. He incorporates some of those sayings of Bulow's in the text, and by invoking them, he illustrates various points. This is particularly effective when Walker discusses the principles of conducting that Bulow would evolve in the latter part of his career, during his tenure in Meiningen, when he was served as the gray eminence who would attract some of the finest musicians of the day. In this context, the witticisms fit well into the biographer's image of his subject.
After this thoughtful introduction, Walker proceeds to write a traditional biography which benefits from his fine sense of balance. The remainder of the prologue is devoted to Bulow's Family background, and sets the stage for the opening chapters in which Walker outlines the early years, the time when Bulow began his training in music and his accomplishments as a pianist. Walker deftly shows how the passing of Bulow's father left a gap at a crucial time in the young musician's development. Yet this loss would soon be filled by Bulow's own pursuit of musical training and would eventually earn the attention of Franz Liszt, with whom he studied for a time. The details Walker puts forth in his presentation of the early part of Bulow's life help to establish a context for understanding the ways in which these two musicians would work together over the years in careers that, to some degree, run parallel in their accomplishments as conductors and concert pianists. (Walker provides a catalog of his compositions and arrangements in appendix 2.)
The way in which Walker brings out this aspect of Bulow's life is indicative of the command of detail evident throughout this biography: he masterfully draws on the data to create a compelling narrative. As detailed as this biography is, the result is a portrait of the musician, and not a recitation of facts. Walker uses references to call attention to points that the reader might want to pursue on his own, as is the case with some of the seemingly self-destructive aspects of the personality of Cosima (see especially pp. 110-13 and 119-26). In touching on this point, Walker uses his perspective to relate the information in the context of Bulow's career, which was affected by Cosima's behavior. By doing this, Walker is able to focus on the conflicts he faced as he was involved with the premiere of Tristan by a colleague who influenced the musical culture of the day. At the same time, the personal loss of Cosima to Wagner has ramifications that emerge throughout the rest of Bulow's career and even after it, since his estate included a specific legacy for one of Cosima's daughters.
Walker's perspective similarly offers a balanced view of Bulow's career as both a conductor and a concert pianist. While he makes a point of Bulow's innovation in devoting recitals to a single composer, as he did in presenting the music of Chopin and Beethoven, for example, Walker includes details that show the physical and mental demands he made on himself in presenting programs that are, by modern standards, supererogation. It is rare in recent years to hear a single program which includes the last five piano sonatas for Beethoven, for example, not because of the lack of performers who could do this, but because of the nature of programming itself. Yet Bulow was a significant figure in shaping the solo recital in the late nineteenth century and broke new ground in this aspect of his career. (His practice of including numerous major works in a single evening has a counterpart in the efforts of modern interpreters like the pianist-conductor Daniel Barenboim, to cite one example.)
Bulow's accomplishments on the podium are similarly innovative in both the choice of music and the size of the programs. As much as he was a virtuosic pianist, he brought the same level of accomplishment to the podium as a conductor. His accomplishments in the opera house, especially with the music of Wagner, stand alongside his legacy as a conductor of orchestral works, a quality which emerges within the narrative of his biography. In this regard Walker is good to bring into his narrative his understanding of musical life during Billow's lifetime and also the characteristics of various cities. Without lapsing into ex-curses that deviate from the biography, Walker offers a sense of the quality of musical life in Berlin, Meiningen, Hamburg, and other cities in which he pursued his career and, in turn, in which he shaped the musical life as well.
At the same time, the music he conducted is of interest for the way it shaped the repertoire of the day. He not only selected music of previous generations, but also advocated for new works, as with his efforts on behalf of Brahms (pp. 387-90). More than that, he engaged audiences through "rehearsal concerts" (p. 392) and also repeated works in the same evening, as he did with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Later generations of conductors would do the same--for example, Gustav Mahler, who used this format for a performance of his own Fourth Symphony, in which the work was played in the first half of the program, and after the intermission reprised in its entirety. The careful and strategic placement of details like these contributes to an image of Bulow as a virtuoso conductor, a role later generations of conductors emulated and cultivated in their own ways.
For some, Bulow's criticism of Mahler's Toldtenfeier, a work which the composer would revise as the first movement of his Second Symphony, may seem unduly harsh, especially for the conductor who premiered Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, but Walker does well to distinguish between Bulow's comments about Mahler's composition and Mahler's conducting. Toward this end Walker is also careful to mention that Bulow's perspective on music was different earlier in his career, when he championed new works, and his later years, when he seemed more concerned with more standard repertoire. Nevertheless, Walker makes clear the esteem Bulow had for Mahler as the "Pygmalion" of the Hamburg Opera (p. 427). Mahler, of course, had the final word, in taking a cue for the Finale to his Second Symphony from the setting of Klopstock's "Auferstehung" sung at Bulow's funeral (p. 454). While no programmatic link exists to connect Bulow to the Second Symphony, it is tribute indeed that Mahler commemorated the occasion in his own music. More than that, the documentation of Bulow's passing not only rounds out this biography, but contributes perspectives on the posthumous reputation of this important figure.
All in all, Walker's study not only offers a full and nuanced image of Bulow, but it also portrays the conductor's life engagingly. His characterization of the role of Liszt in the early part of Bulow's career stops short of Freudian father-figure interpretation, as Walker brings out the interaction of two strong musical talents. Similarly, the complicated relationship between Bulow and Cosima has elements of melodrama, which Walker avoids in presenting clearly the details of Wagner's affair with his colleague's wife. And the information about Bulow's illnesses offers insights into the musician's behavior and the personal strength he summoned to follow through on his commitments. In this study Bulow emerges as a figure in the round, and it is to Walker's credit that his perspective avoids hero worship.
More than that, this book is a good read, a solid piece of writing on its own merits, as the author shares his knowledge of a fascinating life. While some may lament the sometimes innocuous way people write about musicians' lives (see Rainer Hersch, "Why Are Musicians' Biographies so Dull?," BBC Music Magazine 18, no. 8 [April 2010]: 19), this is not so with Walker's book, which engages the reader at many levels. Walker never becomes mired in details, but masterfully uses footnotes that interested readers can pursue if they like. His use of illustrations is apt in the way they amplify points made in the text, rather than serve any perfunctory function. While some of the more detailed biographies of composers are, at bottom, chronicles of their activities, Walker firings point and focus to his portrait of Bulow's life. Ham von Bulow: A life and Times is laudable for its mastery of its subject, and is a work of finesse suitable to it.
JAMES L. ZYCHOWICZ
Madison, Wisconsin
Zychowicz, James L.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Zychowicz, James L. "Hans von Bulow: A Life and Times." Notes, vol. 67, no. 2, 2010, p. 333+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A243879921/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=af167559. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A243879921
Quoted in Sidelights: “is a story full of twists and turns, and while it makes for darkly fascinating reading is admittedly hard to follow.” Nagel commended the book as a whole, however. calling it “a non-judgmental and thoroughly absorbing account of one of the greatest figures in the history of western music, one who up to this book has been unappreciated and under-valued.”
Hans von Buelow: A Life and Times
Louis Nagel
American Music Teacher. 59.6 (June-July 2010): p49+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Music Teachers National Association, Inc.
http://www.mtna.org
Full Text:
* Hans von Buelow: A Life and Times, by Alan Walker. Oxford University Press, 2010. www. us.oup.com; (800) 451-7556; 510pp. $39.95.
When Alan Walker began the journey through the life of Hans yon Buelow, I suspect that not even he had a sense of how complex and convoluted this biography would be. Von Buelow is truly a storybook character, but he had to be real. Not even E.T.A. Hoffmann could have created such a character! And as always, Walker writes so that it is hard to put down the book. Along with a portrait of the main character, he creates a sense of the times in which yon Buelow lived, and we can share in the battles that he fought.
Von Buelow wore many different hats, as did his teacher Franz Liszt. First and perhaps foremost, like Liszt, he was a pianist whose repertoire encompassed everything. Unlike his teacher, he continued performing public concerts to the end of his 64 years. He was a conductor, and his mastery of that art included a complete knowledge of the symphonic and operatic repertoire, all rehearsed and conducted from memory. And he was a teacher--a feared, yet respected teacher--one whose comments could be toxic in their message, but whose musical sense was unquestionably correct.
He was an editor of much music. Today his editions are discredited, a fact that seems somewhat misguided to me after reading the biography. Von Buelow was giving his readers a lesson down to the last detail of how he felt the music ought to be played. He edited articulately and precisely, if perhaps verbosely, and it would do us well to consider what he had to say. And he, perhaps more than any other musician of his time, including Liszt, Joachim, Schumann and Rubinstein, raised the artistic standards and expectations wherever he went, performed or resided.
Walker chronicles yon Buelow's life in remarkable detail, and sometimes one gets lost on the journey. It is a long, painful and tangled saga: von Buelow's 1857 marriage to Cosima, his denial of her affair with Richard Wagner, yet all the while conducting and promoting Wagner's music--well beyond the beginning of divorce proceedings in 1869 von Buelow still championed the music of the man he once worshipped, but grew to hate violently. This is a story full of twists and turns, and while it makes for darkly fascinating reading is admittedly hard to follow.
More comprehensible is von Buelow's work as a pianist. For example, he gave the formal premier of the Liszt B Minor Sonata on January 22, 1857. He performed many times massive Beethoven cycles, exploring the major works of that composer. In Boston in 1875, he gave the world premier of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto in B-flat Minor, a work Tchaikovsky re-dedicated to him after the original dedicatee, Nikolai Rubinstein verbally trashed it in front of the composer. And, he played and championed the music of Brahms, the first person after Brahms himself to perform that little understood music in public.
As a teacher he is legendary. His acerbic wit and withering criticisms are well-known to all pianists. Such comments as the following one to the incompetent Lina Schmalhausen: "I have heard it said--that there are people who cannot count three. You cannot even count TWO," or the famous one to Dori Petersen: "I hope never to see you here again--you should be swept out of here--not with the broom but with the handle." Such comments are brutal today, but were the norm for avon Buelow master class. Yet people studied with von Buelow and profited from his knowledge, which was second to none. He left behind both in his editions and his lessons a standard of excellence and intensity that pumped life into the world of classical music both in Europe and America. His conducting of all repertoire from memory (and demanding the same memory mastery from his orchestral players) was astonishing.
Von Buelow's legacy lasts to this day, and Walker takes us through his life always with the respect for who he was and what he accomplished even as he reveals his difficult and intractable personality. It is a non-judgmental and thoroughly absorbing account of one of the greatest figures in the history of western music, one who up to this book has been unappreciated and under-valued.--Reviewed by Louis Nagel, University of Michigan
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Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Nagel, Louis. "Hans von Buelow: A Life and Times." American Music Teacher, June-July 2010, p. 49+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A228440370/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=f220c041. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A228440370
Walker, Alan. Hans von Bulow: a life and times
C. Cai
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 47.8 (Apr. 2010): p1485+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Full Text:
47-4322 ML422 2008-39701 CIP
Walker, Alan. Hans von Bulow: a life and times. Oxford, 2010. 510p bibl index afp ISBN 9780195368680, $39.95
Walker (emer., McMaster Univ., Canada) provides a fascinating study of a man who intersected with all the great musicians of his day. Bulow (1830-94) had a double career as pianist and conductor. He became the model for 20th-century pianists and conductors with his devotion to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (he coined the term "the three Bs'). Yet Bulow was also committed to the music of Wagner and Liszt, deliberately and provocatively crossing the battle lines in the Brahms-Wagner "War of the Romantics." Bulow frequently performed all the Beethoven piano works from memory, in four recitals over one week. At both rehearsals and performances, he conducted from memory. During his five seasons as director of the Meiningen orchestra--and his later seasons concurrently directing the Hamburg, Bremen, and Berlin subscription concerts--he turned these orchestras into the finest of Europe. But his personal life was a terrible saga of physical illness and psychological pain, the latter including especially the betrayal by his wife, Cosima, who gave birth to two of her three children by Wagner while still married to Bulow. Walker describes all of this in this engaging, well-written book. Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** All readers.--C Cal, emerita, Kenyon College
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cai, C. "Walker, Alan. Hans von Bulow: a life and times." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Apr. 2010, p. 1485+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A251861213/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=52ad2685. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A251861213
Reflections on Liszt
Jonathan Kregor
Notes. 63.4 (June 2007): p836+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 Music Library Association, Inc.
http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org
Full Text:
Reflections on Liszt. By Alan Walker. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005. [xii, 277 p. ISBN 0-801-44366-6. $39.95.] Illustrations, music examples, bibliography, index.
Few scholars can be given more credit for reinvigorating a critical investigation of the life and music of Franz Liszt than Alan Walker. For almost forty years he has been the most vocal exponent of a more nuanced--even sympathetic--consideration of the composer and pianist. When the final volume of his three-part Franz Liszt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987-1996) appeared, it brought to conclusion an immense project that encompassed more than 1,600 compellingly detailed pages, incorporating overlooked and entirely unknown primary-source material that radically altered the inherited notions of just who and what Liszt was to himself and his contemporaries. Walker's account has become the starting point for today's Liszt scholars from all walks of life who previously had to rely on the fulsome yet highly problematic studies by Lina Ramann (Franz Liszt. Als Kunstler und Mensch [Leipzig: Breitkopf und Hartel, 1880-1894]) and Peter Raabe (Franz Liszt. 2d rev. ed. [Tutzing: H. Schneider, 1968]) for biographical and analytical insight. But even Walker's comprehensive treatment of Liszt and his world was far from exhaustive, with the author admitting as much in the prologue to his new Reflections on Liszt: "there were some things that could be mentioned only in passing, and others not at all" (p. xiii). Like Liszt, who seemed irresistibly drawn to his compositions long after they were published, Walker revises and expands upon material previously published in Music & Letters, the Musical Quarterly, and the Hungarian Quarterly to help flesh out his picture of one of the nineteenth century's most cosmopolitan characters; he similarly draws judiciously from passages first penned for his massive biography. Indeed, the overlap in tone and content makes this collection of ten essays and an epilogue most effective when read in tandem with Walker's earlier three volumes.
Although some of these revisions--which at times simply consist of longer quotations or more music examples--add little to the overall argument (as in chapters 1-4 and 10), there is much new material here. Walker is at his most comfortable as a storyteller, and his vignettes of Carl Tausig, Hans von Bulow, and Walter Bache in chapter 5 shed much light on the state of the virtuoso world in the second half of the century, a world which Liszt had helped make possible during his concert years in the 1830s and 1840s. Although Liszt still hovers in the background of Walker's narratives, pulling strings for or coming to the aid of his students whenever possible, he remains an essentially peripheral character. That being said, however, readers might be tempted to interpret each of Walker's three excellent character studies as projections of an individual facet of Liszt's own artistic personality: Tausig is sketched as the "pianist's pianist" (p. 78), Bulow the "thinking man's pianist" (p. 87), and Bache the pianist of "missionary zeal" (pp. 108, 115). As Walker argued indefatigably throughout his biography, Liszt's life can be read as a perennial struggle to balance his chief vocations as musical executant, savant, and evangelist (see, for example, p. 254), and Tausig, Bulow, and Bache eagerly extended the ideals of their master into the next generation.
Chapters 7-9 further develop these three pursuits by examining Liszt's lieder, his role as editor, and his posthumously-published (1983 in their complete form) Technical Studies, respectively. With the exception of, say, "Ich mochte hingehn" and "Die Lorelei," which have been sparring for years with the opening measures of Tristan und Isolde for the right to lay claim to the eponymous sonority, most of Liszt's almost eighty songs have suffered serious neglect from both scholars and performers. Walker hears many of Liszt's essays in musical poetry as anticipating Mahler, with affective tonal ambiguities, clever enharmonic modulations, and thoughtful moments of word painting enriching the German song landscape considerably. Walker can introduce the reader to only a handful of Liszt's songs, of course, but his tactic of comparing different versions of the same piece (even considering piano arrangements thereof) reveals the composer's careful attention to--and developing conception of--matters of interpretive and compositional detail.
Liszt brought a similar level of attention to his role as editor. Beginning in 1857 and continuing for almost twenty years, he issued editions of Beethoven's sonatas and selected piano works by Schubert, Weber, Chopin, and others. Liszt was anything but a philologist, yet as Walker shows he nevertheless produced volumes of Beethoven that for the nineteenth century are remarkably consistent in their editorial policy, providing none of the more imaginative readings that had gotten Liszt into trouble when he performed such works for audiences that demanded more conservative interpretations. Liszt does provide such alternatives in his editions of music by other composers, but is still keen on clearly differentiating his suggestions by means of ossia staves or footnotes. Liszt's own renderings are often quite clever, challenging the pianist to devise new ways of getting around the instrument. Who better than Liszt to issue this challenge? For these editions, writes Walker, "offer that most instructive of opportunities: a glimpse of one great musical mind coming to terms with another" (p. 175). The Technical Studies perhaps offer the means to overcome some of these thornier passages. Scales, arpeggios, octaves, leaps, and repeated notes combine to reveal the immense range of Liszt's pianistic achievements, made especially clear when Walker brings the abstract exercises to bear on specific compositions by the Hungarian composer. Indeed, the Reflections as a whole offers a constant celebration of Liszt the author, performer, teacher, and cosmopolite.
When Walker began publishing his biography in the 1980s, few modern studies of the composer and his oeuvre existed. Since then, however, a number of articles and book-length studies have appeared--by Serge Gut, Axel Schroter, Jim Samson, and Dana Gooley, to name but a few--that have built upon the strong foundation provided by Walker's scholarship. Many of these studies deal directly with or at least touch upon most of the subjects considered by Walker in his Reflections, yet the author rarely takes them into account when elucidating upon his own analyses or interpretations of the historical data. (The bibliography lists only six sources published since the 1990s.) Consider Walker's treatment of the Weihekuss ostensibly bestowed by Beethoven on the young Liszt in 1823 at Vienna, the subject of chapter 1. He concludes that "(1) Liszt received his kiss of consecration, (2) the Liszt-Beethoven encounter took place in private, and (3) Beethoven did not attend Liszt's concert or fulfill Liszt's request to provide a theme on which he might improvise" (p. 10). As evidence for his first claim, and after excoriating many a biographer for muddling the facts, Walker unquestionably accepts Liszt's statement made to Ramann more than a half century after the alleged event. But Allan Keiler ("Liszt and Beethoven: The Creation of a Personal Myth," 19th Century Music 12, no. 2 [Fall 1988]: 116-31) argued soon after the appearance of Walker's first volume that the kiss of consecration probably never took place, citing Liszt as the disseminator of the myth on the psychological grounds that Beethoven acted as an idealized father image during a turbulent period in the Hungarian's adolescent life. Constructing a stemma of sources for this event is no simple task, and the matter will probably never be settled conclusively. Nevertheless, there seems to be more than one way to convincingly interpret this confusing series of events.
A similar guardedness can be traced in his analysis of the Sonata in B Minor (chapter 6), which Walker rightly observes "is clearly intriguing enough to bear many interpretations" (p. 128). Walker's chapter is half structural dissection, half reception history. He identifies the work, as he did in the second volume of his biography, as possessing a "double-structure," that is, four movements developing alongside a sonata-allegro framework. Walker attempts to ascribe this analytical argument to Liszt himself by way of Ernst von Dohnanyi and Liszt's one-time student Istvan Thoman, but the details of this approach were first laid out in print by William S. Newman (The Sonata Since Beethoven [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969], 364-67, 373-78), who proceeded from the view that Liszt's Sonata operated under a "double-function" design. As Walker cites neither Newman, nor Sharon Winklhofer, nor Kenneth Hamilton, nor the rich literature concerned with the Sonata, his analysis rarely brings insight beyond the level of detailed program notes. Indeed, throughout his Reflections, Walker's reluctance to acknowledge well-researched yet pre-existing or contrasting opinions ultimately weakens the impact and import of his own conclusions. Liszt remains a biographically and musically static figure, unfortunately shielded from the very critical discourse of contemporary ideas that Walker's earlier efforts brilliantly inspired.
But this scholarly self-reliance does enable a supremely confident tone, which moves seamlessly between weaving a tale and analyzing a composition. Readers familiar with Walker's biography will not be surprised by the lucidity and vivacity of his prose, and those who agree with his interpretation of the facts will find much to praise. However, it is this same confident tone--coupled with reliance upon often anecdotal evidence to fill out the narrative and a cumbersome bibliographic apparatus--that others have criticized in the past. The epilogue is an extraordinary case in point. Delivered as "An Open Letter to Franz Liszt," it misses the mark on being (if that is its goal) a genteel, rhetorical throwback to the 1830s, when figures such as Heinrich Heine, Hector Berlioz, and Liszt appeared in the press to weigh in on the state of the artistic world, lacing thoughtful reflection with provocative confession. "In the deepest sense," muses the author, "the best biography is motivated by admiration. And along the way it may even reveal some autobiography trying to get out" (p. 255). Although the new material peppered throughout the Reflections would have been better served in an updated edition of Walker's epic biography, it nevertheless sharpens the biographical and musical image of its colorful subject.
JONATHAN KREGOR
Harvard University
Kregor, Jonathan
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Kregor, Jonathan. "Reflections on Liszt." Notes, vol. 63, no. 4, 2007, p. 836+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A165238540/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2873ad68. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A165238540
Reflections on Listz
John Ellis
American Music Teacher. 55.4 (February-March 2006): p91+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2006 Music Teachers National Association, Inc.
http://www.mtna.org
Full Text:
Reflections on Listz, by Alan Walker. Cornell University Press (512 E. State St., Ithaca, NY 14850), 2005. 277 pp. $39.95.
Just when it seemed that Alan Walker had written the last word on Franz Liszt, Reflections on Liszt appears, amplifying our understanding of Liszt the composer, pianist, teacher, conductor, editor, writer and human being. Walker has drawn upon a wealth of documentary research that he was not able to include in his definitive three-volume biography. Throughout the book, Walker debunks myths about Liszt and focuses on little known aspects of his life and work. For example, Walker goes into great detail to unravel the mystery surrounding Beethoven's kiss of consecration of the 11-year-old Liszt at a concert. He then makes an enlightening presentation on how Liszt's transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies and Schubert's songs influenced his own compositions for piano. We also learn how Liszt transmitted his unique pianism to three influential students: Carl Tausig, Hans von Bulow and the little-known Walter Bache. Reading the story of Bache's lifelong sacrifice in the service of his beloved teacher's music is quite moving.
True to its title, the book is a not a linear biography, nor does it focus on a single event or topic. Instead, Walker has given us a series of biographical and analytic vignettes that help reinforce our knowledge of the stunning reach of this still misunderstood artist. It is clearly and enjoyably written and contains practical tips for pianists (especially in the chapter on the B Minor Sonata) and invaluable information for teachers about Liszt's pedagogical style (including an entire chapter on technical exercises). Particularly interesting is Walker's advocacy for rarely played pieces, such as Liszt's transcription of Schubert's Schwanengesang. The chapter on Liszt's lieder makes a strong case for viewing the composer as a "missing link" between Schumann and Mahler in the history of the German lied. And throughout, regardless of genre, Walker allows his readers a glimpse of Liszt, the restless composer, tirelessly revising his scores over many years.
Walker ends the book with a chapter entitled, "An Open Letter to Franz Liszt." It is a fitting conclusion to this remarkably lucid and affectionate set of essays on a composer whose biography has been Walker's life's work. Perfect for pianists, teachers and music lovers, Reflections on Liszt is a poetic coda to Walker's sustained, insightful research into a man who shaped so much of the musical world we inhabit today. Reviewed by John Ellis, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Ellis, John
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ellis, John. "Reflections on Listz." American Music Teacher, Feb.-Mar. 2006, p. 91+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A142338505/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=558d202a. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A142338505
The Death of Franz Liszt
Richard Zimdars
American Music Teacher. 54.1 (August-September 2004): p98+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 Music Teachers National Association, Inc.
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Full Text:
The Death of Franz Liszt, introduced, annotated and edited by Alan Walker. Cornell University Press (Sage House, 512 E. State &, Ithaca, NY 14850), 2002. 224 pp., $29.95.
Most coverups eventually fail, but seldom hold up for 110 years. A truer tale of Franz Liszt's very last days than told up to now appeared in 1996 in the second to last chapter of Alan Walker's Franz Liszt: The Final Years. The source for Walker's account, a diary of Liszt's student Lina Schmalhausen, is now available in an annotated edition titled The Death of Franz Liszt.
Schmalhausen was a pupil, caregiver and confidante of Liszt in his last years. Her diary covers July 22, 1886, to August 3, 1886, the day of Liszt's funeral in Bayreuth. Its contents include the daily comings and goings around the dying Liszt and her very personal comments on events and many of the people involved. We hear from Liszt on topics such as his personal keepsakes, his students, human relations, May-December romances, Ludwig II of Bavaria and artistic and practical aspects of the Bayreuth Festival.
Many subsequently famous Liszt pupils were in Bayreuth during the days recounted in the diary: Arthur Friedheim, August Gollerich, Marie Ja%ll, Sophie Menter, Alexander Siloti and Bernhard Stavenhagen. Schmalhausen's observations of them during the last days of their great teacher add, not always flatteringly, to our knowledge of the personal profile of these younger artists.
And, of course, the powerful figure of Cosima, Liszt's daughter and Wagner's widow of three years, is present throughout. She faced overseeing the performances and social events of the Bayreuth Festival while her mortally ill father lay close by. Schmalhausen gives a daily account of this situation.
Is the diary reliable? Walker became familiar with its contents in 1977. As his work on his three-volume Liszt biography progressed, his research in other sources supported Schmalhausen's rendering of the facts. In his prologue, Walker does caution the reader to view her interpretation of the facts in the light of her relations with Liszt, Cosima and several other Liszt pupils, relations which he presents to the reader.
Must a reader be familiar with Walker's monumental Liszt biography to understand and enjoy reading this diary? No. Walker's prologue and epilogue (a revealing look at various parries arguing over where Liszt should be buried) clearly frame the diary's events. His annotations on people and events in the diary place everything in context with clarity and sovereign erudition.
The book, attractively produced and formatted, presents eight black-and-white photos. Editorial errors and indexing omissions are at a minimum.
Reviewed by Richard Zimdars, Athens, Georgia.
Zimdars, Richard
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Zimdars, Richard. "The Death of Franz Liszt." American Music Teacher, Aug.-Sept. 2004, p. 98+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A120392673/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=464cddb3. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A120392673
Franz Liszt. vol 3: The Final Years, 1861-1886
Kenneth Langevin
Notes. 55.3 (Mar. 1999): p665+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1999 Music Library Association, Inc.
http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org
Full Text:
By Alan Walker. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. [xx, 594 p. ISBN 0-8014-8453-7. $24.95 (pbk.).]
"Picaresque": suggesting a type of fiction dealing with the episodic adventures of an amiably roguish protagonist. Franz Liszt's life was nothing if not picaresque, and Alan Walker's trifurcate Franz Liszt (vol. 1, 1811-47; vol. 2, 1848-61) is storytelling in the leisurely, digressive manner of the old school. Indeed, this dedicated bard of Liszt's epic swath has performed research prodigies of his own in order to tell the tale so convincingly. He provides a vigorous critique of the existing literature in volume 1, and he concludes each volume with a set of ynusual appendixes, plus a list of sources consulted. No index is perfect, but given the specific content of volume 3, some means of tracing such topics as "tonality" or "thematic transformation" would be more helpful than the "Namenregister" approach followed here. Some of the political and military information could have been more carefully checked (e.g., the Prussian needlegrin could hardly have been a threat to Paris, and Otto von Bismarck's Reich was not the first one). There is also the usual sprinkling of typographical errors and misspellings (e.g., "Gauthier," "Schopenauer," etc.).
Because this concluding volume is the storv of Liszt's "final years" (1861-86), it possesses the natural focus of any denouement. On the other hand, the contrast in chapter content can seem abrupt. One reason for this is adumbrated by the author in his opening acknowledgments, where he refers to "two other books, both of which grew out of this biography and have meanwhile been published ahead of it. The first was Liszt, Carolyne, and the Vatican: The Story of a Thwarted Marriage, which I issued jointly with my colleague Dr. Gabriele Erasmi in 1990. . . . The other book to engross me was my annotated Living with Liszt: The Diary of Carl Lachmund: An American Pupil of Liszt, 1882-84, which appeared in the early part of 1995" (p. xviii). For example, pages 326-30 are repeated largely verbatim from Liszt, Carolyne, and the Vatican, where they seemed more appropriate.
The chapters on Liszt himself, and especially those on his piano playing, focus themselves more easily. The chapter titled "The lion of Weimar: Liszt and His Pupils" will rivet the attention of anyone who has pondered the mystique and marketing of the mastercass concept. Walker reports that liszt refused (often quite testily) to teach techniqtle at all! In Walker's words, "Pianists, like plants, were placed there by nature. The gardener may cultivate the plant, but he does not create it. So too the teacher of pianists; he can cultivate but he cannot create. Moreover, inside every good pianist is a musician struggling to get out. Liszt took it to be his duty to set the musician free and lead him forth. Everything else would follow once the musician had been released, including his technical development" (pp. 230-31). Also of interest is the chapter entitled "The Music of Liszt's Old Age," in which the author divides the late works into three categories - the music of retrospection, the music of despair, and the music of death - and proceeds to connect these with the composer's frame of mind at the time, with numerous music examples.
Walker makes no secret of his contempt for sloppy research and unsubstantiated assertions (particularly those that reflect unfavorably on Liszt), nor should he. It is therefore doubly disappointing when he launches this bit of innuendo: ". . . Cardinals Franchi, Schiaffino, and Hohenlohe, all of whom died tinder mysterious circumstances and were generally believed to have been poisoned. Their enemies the Jesuits were known to be expert in the preparation of the acquetta. Their most famous victim was Father Antonio RosminiSerbati" (p. 329). This passage first appeared in Walker's epilogue in Liszt, Carolyne, and the Vatican, which I reviewed in the June 1994 issue of Notes (pp. 1399-1401), pointing out the absence of any proof in the author's documentation. Of course, the passage characterizes Rosmini only as a "victim" of the Jesuits, without specifying poisoning. Still, Walker's pique at the inventiveness of others is thereby made to seem perhaps a matter of whose ox is being gored.
In any discussion of the music of Franz Liszt, inventor of the symphonic poem, the issue of music as a conveyor of meaning lies not far below the surface. To his credit, Walker spares the reader that quagmire, but he does so by focusing on the sarcastic tone of critics such as Eduard Hanslick rather than on the legitimate questions raised. Hanslick is summarily dispatched with the comment "Music, for Hanslick, was a self-contained communication - somewhat like a mathematical formula - and the best of it was untouched by time and place. This was the central idea that had always separated Hanslick from Liszt and his contemporaries" (p. 60). However, the persistence of this issue is demonstrated much later in the book, in an explication of Liszt's piano piece "Les jeux d'eaux a la Villa d'Este": "Liszt transcended simple visual imagery and turned his streaming fountains into mystical symbols, associating them with the well-known verse from the Gospel According to St. John (4:14) which he quotes in Latin in the score: Sed aqua quam ego dabo ei, fiet in eo fons aquae salientis in vitam aeternam ('But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst [but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life]')" (p. 372). Four pages later we find: "Liszt played to Wagner some of his recent piano compositions, including Les jeux d'eaux, the 'Cypress' Threnodies, and the Angelus! While Wagner evidently liked these pieces, he saw in them only impressions of the Villa d'Este, a somewhat superficial response; their deeper psychological significance was lost on him" (p. 376). Perhaps Wagner forgot to read the Latin inscription.
Legitimate questions have also been raised abont the inconsistency between Liszt's scandalous private life and his rather public profession of devout Catholic belief. Walker deals with this much as he did with Hanslick: "Here was a supreme man of the world who had rubbed shoulders with kings and princes; for much of his life he had commanded power and luxury; he had only to open a piano and audiences swooned; he had enjoyed the favours of beautiful women, and his illicit union with Marie d'Agoult had produced three children. How could such a man take holy orders? Predictably, Liszt was accused of lack of sincerity. His detractors . . . took it to be a superb coup de theatre by a master showman" (p. 85). Walker's rebuttal consists of this: "The charge will hardly bear scrutiny, however. Liszt had pondered his decision for a long time" (p. 85). In essence, that's it.
Liszt's student Amy Fay may have intuited a more earthy explanation: "'Liszt looks as if he had been through everything, and has a face seamed with experience. He is rather tall and narrow, and wears a long abbe's coat reaching down nearly to his feet. He made me think of an old time magician more than anything, and I felt that with a touch of his wand he could transform us all'" (p. 235). And: "'His personal magnetism is immense, and I can scarcely bear it when he plays. He can make me cry all he chooses. . . . Liszt knows very well the influence he has on people, for he always fixes his eye on some one of us when he plays, and I believe that he tries to wring our hearts'" (p. 235).
Liszt may not have donned the cassock as a good way to meet women, but he certainly didn't mind the attention, either. If Liszt the godlike artist-hero were to seem unattainable, he could alternatively be experienced through his music. Irving Berlin said more than he knew when he wrote that "Somehow they'd rather be kissed/To the strains of Chopin or Liszt" ("Say It With Music").
KENNETH LANGEVIN Carnegie Mellon University
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Langevin, Kenneth. "Franz Liszt. vol 3: The Final Years, 1861-1886." Notes, vol. 55, no. 3, 1999, p. 665+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A54251150/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=afe87922. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A54251150
Living with Liszt: From the Diary of Carl Lachmund, an American Pupil of Liszt, 1882-1884
Richard Zimdars
Notes. 52.4 (June 1996): p1174+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 Music Library Association, Inc.
http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org
Full Text:
Readers with enthusiasms for Franz Liszt, the piano, and the social context of music study in late nineteenth-century Germany will take delight in this book, one with an unusual history. In 1970, G. E. Schroeder of Eschwege published Mein Leben mit Franz Liszt: Aus dem Tagebuch eines Liszt-Schulers. For years, this reviewer deemed it a wonderful previously undiscovered document featuring quotes from Liszt taken down, in German, in teaching and social settings. No credit, however, was given to a modern editor. Why? It was actually an anonymous, unauthorized German translation of diary notes taken down in English by Carl Lachmund!
Alan Walker sets the record straight with his edition of Lachmund's diary in the original English. It contains entries about Lachmund's summer study with Liszt from 1882 to 1884. Walker appends forty-four pages of letters from the large Lachmund Archive in the New York Public Library. He also includes Lachmund's roster of 351 Liszt students in a revision based on modern scholarship.
Carl Lachmund (b. Booneville, Missouri, 1853-d. Yonkers, New York, 1928) studied piano in Europe with Moritz Moszkowski and Xaver Scharwenka before going to Liszt in Weimar in 1882. He eventually returned to the United States and taught in Minneapolis and New York. He did not have a solo performing career. Near the end of his life he worked his diary into a book, but could not get it published.
Lachmund's diary describes Liszt's piano lessons, often given before twenty to thirty people in a master class setting. He recorded his thoughts on Liszt's playing and teaching, on social events spent with Liszt, and on other Liszt pupils. He also included a ten-page description of his visit to Bayreuth for the first performance of Parsifal in 1882 and selections from Liszt's diary for 1876, which Lachmund possessed.
The accounts of the lessons tell of Liszt's musical and worldly wisdom and give Liszt's comments on his works and those of other composers performed in the lessons. His description of Liszt's performance of the first two etudes from Chopin's op. 25 bears witness to Lachmund's musical perception:
His apparent disregard of metric time, without disturbing the symmetry of rhythmic balance, which lent the Lisztian charm to his phrasing, was to me the most characteristic and wonderful. (P. 244)
Although the diary covers three summers of study, its comments on specific pieces taught in the lessons only total about ten pages of text. Walker has inserted forty-four music examples that clarify these comments. One might wish for more examples, but sometimes Lachmund's references to the music are not precise enough to locate the relevant measures or, in a few cases, to identify precisely the piece.
The relative sparsity of Liszt's comments on specific works is more than counterbalanced by the rich detail and charm of the rest of the diary. Liszt's teaching and social personality, his concern for his students, the atmosphere in the lessons and at social occasions, Liszt reminiscing, Liszt as conductor, playing four-hands with Liszt, and Liszt's opinions of other musicians are some of the other riches presented to us. Lachmund's descriptions of fellow students add to our knowledge of future pianistic greats such as Eugene d'Albert, Arthur Friedheim, Alfred Reisenauer, Moriz Rosenthal, Emil Sauer, and Alexander Siloti.
Walker's inclusion of twenty-six letters Lachmund received from various musicians in the United States gives a glimpse of his activity in his later years. Thirteen letters written by Lachmund's wife, Caroline, to her family in Illinois add a personal, domestic point of view of the Lachmunds's life in Germany in 1882 and 1883.
Alan Walker provides a superb introduction and background to the diary. His footnotes consistently enhance the understanding of people and events mentioned in the text. The number of printing errors is insignificantly small. The otherwise helpful index has some omissions, notably from the letters in the appendixes.
August Gollerich's diaries of his study with Liszt from 1884 to 1886 (forthcoming from Indiana University Press) deal almost exclusively with Liszt's teaching of many of the approximately three hundred works played in the lessons of those years. Taken together with Lachmund's emphasis on the social aspects, the two diaries provide a comprehensive picture of studying with "der Meister" at the height of his musical maturity and add a great deal to our knowledge of Liszt's last years.
RICHARD ZIMDARS The University of Georgia
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Zimdars, Richard. "Living with Liszt: From the Diary of Carl Lachmund, an American Pupil of Liszt, 1882-1884." Notes, vol. 52, no. 4, 1996, p. 1174+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18580211/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7617e116. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18580211
Living with Liszt: From the Diary of Carl Lachmund, an American Pupil of Liszt, 1882-1884
Adrian Williams
Music & Letters. 77.2 (May 1996): p288+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 1996 Oxford University Press
http://www.ml.oxfordjournals.org/
Full Text:
In the summer of 1882, and again in 1883 and 1884, Carl Valentine Lachmund, a young American pianist of German descent, was so fortunate as to take part in Liszt's master-classes in Weimar; and it is now posterity's good fortune that he kept detailed diaries of all that he saw and heard both in those classes and when associating socially with the old and ailing master, who at this time, as throughout his life, accepted no remuneration for his teaching and, although far from wealthy, even helped some of the poorer of his many pupils pay for their board and lodging.
More than a century after the events they describe, and nearly 70 years after Lachmund's death (in 1928), the diaries have at last become available in the diarist's own (very American) English. (A German translation - anonymous and apparently unauthorized - appeared in 1971.) Happily, the editor of this long-overdue publication is Alan Walker, a Lisztian par excellence whose sterling contributions to the book include a Prologue which provides many interesting details about Lachmund and his wife Caroline, and about the background to publication of the diaries, numerous informative notes on many of the pupils and other individuals mentioned, and a generous selection of music illustrations to accompany Lachmund's reports of the pieces played to and commented on by Liszt. The four appendices include a selection from letters written to Lachmund in later life by other former pupils of Liszt or by well-known musicians of the time, some of the letters written by Caroline Lachmund to her family in America, and a useful - if rather imperfect - catalogue of Liszt's 'pupils and disciples'.
Since, as well as being a great composer, Liszt was also a supremely great pianist - Lachmund describes him variously as 'a phenomenon as a pianist', 'a super-pianist' and 'the only perfect pianist' - and an outstanding teacher, it is the descriptions of his playing, and his advice to those who played to him, that form the most valuable part of the diaries. Any young aspiring pianist today, even if not particularly Liszt-orientated, might learn much from a careful study of these pages. The different talents and merits of performers at the classes are also described and assessed, ranging from the outstanding pianism of the young Eugen d'Albert, probably the greatest of this last generation of Liszt's pupils, to the apparently hopeless efforts of the pretty Lina Schmalhausen. The latter, generally regarded favourably by Liszt's biographers because of the agreeable companionship she gave the lonely old master, comes out of these pages rather badly, being described not only as a tale-bearer (her very nickname was 'Fraulein Telltale') but even - in Professor Walker's words - as a 'common shoplifter'.
Among various nuggets of musical information that emerge here and there are Liszt's admission that he had himself written much of the two-piano arrangement (usually attributed to the Hungarian composer Karoly Thern) of his Fantasie and Fugue on B-A-C-H, and some interesting details of the composition and first public performance (by Hugo Mansfeldt) of the Bagatelle sans tonalite.
At one point Lachmund turns aside from his own diary to present extracts from Liszt's 'little pocket diary' for 1876, which came into his possession; it is full of quotations and references to books and reading as well as of the more conventional kind of entry. The only matter for regret - the sole major disappointment in this otherwise very handsomely and carefully presented volume - is that the brief quotations from writings by Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt and Michelangelo, written down by Liszt in their original German, French and Italian, are here given only in Lachmund's English versions. His rendering of Goethe's German, it must be said, is of a banality verging on meaninglessness. Strangely, the editors of the unauthorized German edition of Lachmund's diaries - an edition superior to the one under discussion only in the quantity and quality of its illustrations - hadn't the wit to see that the page from Liszt's diary bearing these quotations forms one of their own facsimile reproductions, and the Goethe quotation is given not as Goethe wrote it, and Liszt recorded it, but in a translation from Lachmund's English rendering. Needless to say, it comes out in a very different German from Goethe's. (The whole thing puts one in mind of the valiant Constance Bache, who, translating Liszt's letters and finding therein the title of a German opera but not realizing that it was merely the German rendering of a well-known play by Shakespeare, put it back into English as 'The Subduing of the Refractory One'.)
Because Liszt is popularly believed to have led a life of scarcely paralleled brilliance and glamour, some readers of the diaries may be surprised to find Lachmund describing, with touching compassion, the composer's home life as that of a recluse who, 'with signs of age and enfeebled health now more frequent, had not one blood-relative near to extend a loving and sympathetic hand'. Fortunately, what he did have were some excellent local friends, a devoted housekeeper - one who even 40 years later, in her own old age, could not speak of him without weeping - and the company of the pupils whom towards the end, if for different reasons, he needed as much as they needed him.
One does not want to make too much of the little errors that almost inevitably make their way into such a book. Some are trivial - for example, a reference to the 'Empress' Louise of Prussia (there has never been any such person), or the attribution to Liszt, whose French was exquisite, of the words 'Parlez-vous Allemagne?' for 'Do you speak German?' A few others do, however, call for brief correction. G. H. Lewes was never the 'husband' of George Eliot (p. 16); and it was in 1854, not 1857 (p. 25), that that couple had a 'garden-breakfast' with Liszt and the Princess Wittgenstein. The long footnote (p. 41) that Professor Walker devotes to arguing - quite correctly - that Liszt, Schumann and Wagner were never 'together one evening in Weimar' is wasted effort, for a careful reading of the passage he is annotating, and a moment's thought, make it clear that Lachmund refers not to Schumann but to A. W. Gottschalg, one of Liszt's Weimar adherents. The composer on whose Halka Carl Tausig wrote a Fantasy for piano was not 'Mouluszko' (p. 174) but Moniuszko.
Professor Walker's conclusions about the when and where of the young Liszt's encounter with Beethoven - the facts of which remain to a large extent a matter of interpretation - have been challenged on other occasions, and this is not the place to rehearse the contra once again. One is rather taken aback, however, to find him in the same footnote (p. 226) making the categorical statement: 'there is no evidence that Liszt ever met Hummel'. I have to remind him of Adam Liszt's letter to Carl Czerny of 14 August 1825, from Paris (my italics): 'We gave our own concert at the Theatre . . . and a second at Erard's . . . But Hummel did not attend; probably so as not to have to see for himself that someone can have a larger audience than he. But that did not bother me, and at his next soiree. I placed my boy at his side to turn the pages for him.'
Finally, the 'Memories of Franz Liszt' written by the explorer Gerhard Rohlfs were not published 'for the first time' (p. 277) in 1993: they appeared long ago in K. Guenther's Gerhard Rohlfs: Lebensbild eines Afrikaforschers (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1912).
These and some other minor slips do not amount to much. Nor do Liszt's little human foibles and failings, which Lachmund rightly makes no attempt to conceal or gloss over: a flash of temper here, an outburst of vexation there (generally when being imposed upon beyond all endurance, but causing Lachmund to write with relief at one point that he and his wife were 'losing much of the fear that possessed everyone when conversing with the great man') - and a dependency on alcohol. This last apparently 'affected neither his piano-playing nor his conversation, and may in fact have stimulated both', writes Professor Walker. Set beside Liszt's outstanding qualities - above all his almost unexampled generosity and lack of materialism - and his genius as musician and mentor, such everyday weaknesses fade into nothingness. Lachmund's words recording his final leave-taking of Liszt in July 1884, two years before the death of the great composer-pianist, in any case make very clear his own feelings about the legendary figure with whom he had been privileged to have so close an association: 'Memory brings back the emotions of that hour and that parting even now. But why grieve? I feel ever grateful that fate, or good fortune, enabled us so long to experience the charm of personal contact with that supreme genius, that inspired prophet of the piano, and Master of Masters, who guided his pupil-disciples with the radiance of his character - that generous and great-hearted friend Franz Liszt.'
ADRIAN WILLIAMS
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Williams, Adrian. "Living with Liszt: From the Diary of Carl Lachmund, an American Pupil of Liszt, 1882-1884." Music & Letters, vol. 77, no. 2, 1996, p. 288+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A18557592/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ef5402b5. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A18557592
Quoted in Sidelights: “has been widely hailed as a groundbreaking work of scholarship,” reported Johanna Keller in the New York Times. Of his motivation for writing the biography, he told Keller: ”I felt that Liszt had not only not been well served by his biographers in the past, but in fact he had been very badly served. ‘Everyone concentrated on the razzmatazz, turning Liszt into a kind of Elvis Presley of the 19th century. He was very handsome, very virile. The ladies fell over themselves to get close to him, and he was always very fond of female company. But to blame Liszt for this, as many of his contemporaries did, is rather like blaming Niagara Falls for the suicides.” Liszt deserves esteem as a prolific and important composer and performer, Walker continued. ”One can’t really progress far in the piano without coming across the name and fame of Franz Liszt,” he told Keller. ”Even if you don’t play his music, he’s central to the piano repertory. All the major piano composers who follow Liszt learned from him, whether they were aware of it or not. His music and keyboard textures penetrate all the things that happened since his death in 1886.”
“Walker writes in graceful prose, and the dramatic story reads at times like a gripping novel, but one with excellent footnotes. His account, as much as it departs from the customary depiction of Liszt, is based on solid scholarship.”
In search of a Liszt to be loved: how to get beyond the manipulativeness of the man, the showiness in his music?
Johanna Keller
The New York Times. (Jan. 14, 2001): L, Arts and Entertainment: pAR35.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
Full Text:
I HAVE long suffered from Lisztophobia. Though I've occasionally admired a piece by Franz Liszt, I have avoided his music for decades whenever possible. It just doesn't appeal to me, I told myself. I ignored Liszt recordings by Martha Argerich, Claudio Arrau and Jorge Bolet, all of whose work I admired in other repertory. Stubbornly, I held out against Lisztophiliacs (all, inevitably, had-been pianists) who tried to convert me. Meanwhile, I took comfort in the results of highly unscientific surveys (conversations with musical friends and colleagues) that proved I was not alone in my affliction. Why this widespread repugnance? When it comes to Liszt, there are damning common perceptions.
Here's the man: a strutting, manipulative, priapic rock star for the Romantics, with a sexual magnetism that set off what the poet Heinrich Heine dubbed Lisztomania, a condition in which swooning female fans collected his cigar butts to secrete in their cleavages. Here's the piano music: all flying fingers and crossing hands and empty virtuosity, thorny thickets of 32nd-notes that sound of fury signifying nothing. (Oh, please, spare me yet another unmusical rendition of the ''Mephisto Waltz'' No. 1.)
But in the last few years when I've heard, or even overheard, Liszt's music -- especially his symphonic and late works -- I've felt the tug of a great intelligence. A snippet of his oratorio ''Christus,'' broadcast on the radio, inspired me to seek it out and hear it again for the first time in 20 years. A recording of the ''Faust Symphony'' with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein on Deutsche Grammophon, acquired last month, became a favorite, heard repeatedly over several days. My musical curiosity aroused, I have come to suspect that my wholesale rejection of Liszt is based on prejudices about the man himself. And while I hold that biographical considerations ought not affect my assessment of a composer's works (otherwise, who could stomach Wagner's music?), in the case of Liszt, they had.
A three-concert series, ''The Romantic Piano: Aspects of Liszt,'' beginning on Saturday at the 92nd Street Y, seems tailor-made for us open-minded Lisztophobes. Performances by five pianists -- among them, Marc-Andre Hamelin and Steven Mayer -- will be given context by an accompanying biographical narrative and readings from Liszt's letters.
The series is designed and narrated by Alan Walker, whose biography of Liszt, running to around 1,700 pages (the last of the three volumes was published in 1996), has been widely hailed as a groundbreaking work of scholarship. If anyone could help me understand -- and perhaps overcome -- my prejudice, it might be Mr. Walker. Not only did his dogged research correct numerous, mostly damaging preconceptions about Liszt, but his cogent musical analyses made the case for the importance of the music.
''I felt that Liszt had not only not been well served by his biographers in the past, but in fact he had been very badly served,'' Mr. Walker said recently. ''Everyone concentrated on the razzmatazz, turning Liszt into a kind of Elvis Presley of the 19th century. He was very handsome, very virile. The ladies fell over themselves to get close to him, and he was always very fond of female company. But to blame Liszt for this, as many of his contemporaries did, is rather like blaming Niagara Falls for the suicides.''
Mr. Walker, a pianist and musicologist, first took up the cause as a music producer at the BBC in London in the 1960's. When asked to put on a complete series of Liszt's piano music, he first estimated that it could be done in 20 major recitals of two hours each but quickly realized that this would only scratch the surface. Writing the program notes for the radio announcers, he discovered that there was need for a good biography in English. Liszt's importance was evident to him right from the start.
''One can't really progress far in the piano without coming across the name and fame of Franz Liszt,'' he said. ''Even if you don't play his music, he's central to the piano repertory. All the major piano composers who follow Liszt learned from him, whether they were aware of it or not. His music and keyboard textures penetrate all the things that happened since his death in 1886.''
Among Liszt's innovations were the invention of the modern piano recital; even the term ''recital'' is his. He was the first to play from memory and to perform consistently with the open lid of the piano reflecting sound into the auditorium. He was the first to assay the entire keyboard repertory (which then ranged from Bach to Chopin).
The familiar outlines of Liszt's life begin with his obscure birth in Hungary in 1811 and concert tours as a child prodigy, and proceed to his growing fame as the world's greatest piano virtuoso and to scandalous liaisons with Countess Marie d'Agoult and Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein. Liszt scholars have called the years 1839 to 1847, when the composer undertook the frenzy of concert tours that secured his fame, the period of ''transcendental execution.''
Then there was the famously tumultuous friendship with Wagner, who married Liszt's daughter, Cosima, after she had abandoned the conductor (and former Liszt pupil) Hans von Bulow. And at 50, Liszt took the first four orders of priesthood, a religious commitment that puzzled many of his contemporaries and continues to raise questions even today.
Mr. Walker depicts Liszt as having maintained lifelong and deeply felt religious beliefs inspired by his father's early training with the Franciscan order. At several difficult moments in his life, Liszt considered withdrawing to religious retreat, and even at the best of times, he prayed regularly.
''People have always been worried by the seeming contradiction between the worldly and the spiritual,'' Mr. Walker said, ''but in fact it's all spiritual when you get behind the surface and study Liszt's life.''
In Mr. Walker's account, Liszt comes off less like Elvis and more like Jesus, less a sinner than one sinned against, more to be pitied than censured. In fact, Liszt comes off as a downright saint. Mr. Walker portrays a man of genius who was a devoted son (he supported his mother after his father's early death) and lover (Countess d'Agoult's emotional instability is shown as the primary cause of their very public breakup, whereas difficulties in obtaining the blessings of the church for a marriage to Princess Carolyne gradually eroded that liaison).
Liszt is also shown as a dedicated, if absent, father to his three children, supporting them financially as well as emotionally through a constant stream of affectionate letters. His motto, ''genie oblige,'' signified to Liszt that he was obligated by the gift of his genius to help others; indeed, his sincerity can be judged by the chronicle of his charitable contributions (he made a huge fortune, then gave it away), his numerous benefit concerts, and his teaching, for which he did not accept money. His efforts to promote the careers and music of Wagner and Berlioz, among many others, often entailed the sacrifice of his own interests.
''He was giving Wagner money, giving up his own composition in order to promote Wagner's cause,'' Mr. Walker said with a trace of indignation. ''He was putting his own career at risk, trying to find a political pardon for Wagner. And that was really the big surprise, the extent of Liszt's self-abasement, if you like. It was almost pathological.''
LISZT'S constant travel and stress were caused not only by the brief shining period of public acclaim but also by the later public neglect and even hatred stirred up by his enemies.
Mr. Walker writes in graceful prose, and the dramatic story reads at times like a gripping novel, but one with excellent footnotes. His account, as much as it departs from the customary depiction of Liszt, is based on solid scholarship.
Mr. Walker spent 25 years of pilgrimage retracing Liszt's footsteps throughout Europe, locating much important primary source material in the five or six major archives that, he says, he came to know intimately. Among his many scholarly coups was the discovery of important papers in the Vatican archive that significantly changed the story of Liszt's attempt to marry Princess Carolyne. His dealings with the Vatican, in particular, took unending patience and persistence. In this regard, Mr. Walker is fond of quoting a fellow scholar who told him, ''It takes a life to study a life.'' He has become, he says, a believer in the ''geography of biography.''
''Going to Weimar, walking down the same street that Liszt walked down, visiting his houses, seeing the rooms in which he worked and taught, this makes a great difference to your prose,'' he said. ''If you simply stay at home and read two or three biographies and join them together and claim you've written a new work, which is the way most biographies -- and certainly most biographies of Liszt -- are written, the result isn't going to advance Liszt's cause very far.''
For Mr. Walker, understanding the realities of Liszt's life also led to a reinterpretation of the music. As an example, he relates his research into an accident in 1881, in which Liszt fell down a staircase. It had always been portrayed as a minor inconvenience. Tracking down the doctor's name led Mr. Walker to a letter in the Weimar archive that gave a complete report. Liszt, it turns out, was incapacitated for six weeks, and the infirmity precipitated an emotional crisis, during which he wrote several works that Mr. Walker characterizes as ''strange.''
''One of them is 'Nuage Gris,' often considered to be a kind of Impressionistic work of the kind Debussy might have written,'' Mr. Walker said. ''But in fact, it's a world of music depicting Liszt in despair. He was in great pain, and this was a major setback for him. It all comes out in the music.''
Another surprise for Mr. Walker was that Liszt suffered from depression so severe that he contemplated suicide and was deterred only by his strong Catholic faith. Current knowledge of the pathology of depression, Mr. Walker said, gives a greater understanding of what Liszt was experiencing.
''Liszt has been described as a 'man of a thousand faces,' and that is why he is such a difficult personality to penetrate,'' Mr. Walker said. ''With justice, one can use the same phrase to describe his music, because on the surface it is full of contradictory styles. There is the religious Liszt, the operatic-paraphrase Liszt, the virtuoso Liszt. We are trying to illustrate as many aspects as we can in these concerts.''
It is surprising that Liszt, with all his traveling, performing and teaching, wrote as many pieces as he did; his catalog numbers more than 1,400 works, about half of them for piano. In fact, Mr. Walker points out, Liszt's complete works outnumber the combined catalogs of Brahms, Chopin, Mendelssohn and Schumann. And yet numbers can't tell the whole story. Is it accurate to compare reams of pianistic trifles with more substantial works? While Mr. Walker invariably gets his facts right, he tends to interpret the data in Liszt's favor.
Not everyone has been persuaded by Mr. Walker's revisionist view of Liszt, he said, and Harold C. Schonberg, a former chief music critic of The New York Times, accused him (in a friendly conversation) of ''falling in love with his subject.''
Mr. Walker argued: ''Being objective is a great mistake on the part of biography. You have to write from a standpoint of love, certainly not from a standpoint of hatred, but not even of objectivity. Love opens doors, and hatred closes them. The great antimodel that I always tell my students about is Ernest Newman's book 'The Man Liszt,' which is a character assassination. Newman was misled about a lot of things simply because of his dislike of Liszt, which comes out on every page of the book.''
Love him or hate him as a saint or a sinner, Liszt still has the capacity to stir great passions. The truth about the man and his music may lie somewhere in the middle, but surely Mr. Walker has done a great service in correcting many misconceptions and thus raising the question about the true character of Liszt.
Has all of this made me hear the music differently? Not yet. But what is clear is that I haven't heard enough Liszt. And perhaps I haven't heard the right Liszt. If there is any cure for Lisztophobia, it may ultimately come through listening.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Keller, Johanna. "In search of a Liszt to be loved: how to get beyond the manipulativeness of the man, the showiness in his music?" New York Times, 14 Jan. 2001, p. AR35. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A69133709/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5492a6a4. Accessed 13 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A69133709