The Virtuoso Liszt

Dana Gooley examines the concert career of the great nineteenth-century piano virtuoso Franz Liszt.

Dana Gooley (Author)

9780521108720, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 April 2009

300 pages, 16 b/w illus. 2 tables 10 music examples
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.45 kg

'… a responsible piece of historical and interpretative writing, a valuable contribution to our understanding of Liszt and the forces that made his remarkable career possible.' The Times Literary Supplement

The greatest virtuoso career in history - that of Franz Liszt - has been told in countless biographies. But what does that career look like when viewed from the perspective of European cultural history? In this study Dana Gooley examines the world of discussion, journalism, and controversy that surrounded the virtuoso Liszt, and reconstructs the multiple symbolic identities that he fulfilled for his enthusiastic audiences. Gooley's work is based on extensive research into contemporary periodicals - well-known and obscure journals and newspapers - as well as letters, memoirs, receipts and other documents that shed light on Liszt's concertising activities. Emphasising the virtuoso's contradictions, the author shows Liszt being constructed as a model aristocrat and a model bourgeois, as a German nationalist and a Hungarian nationalist, as a sensitive romantic artist and a military dictator, as a greedy entrepreneur and as a leading force for humanitarian charity.

Acknowledgements
Note on periodical citations
Introduction: A virtuoso in context
1. Liszt, Thalberg, and the Parisian publics
2. Warhorses: virtuosity, violence, and the cult of Napoleon
3. The cosmopolitan as nationalist
4. Liszt and the German nation, 1840–43
5. Anatomy of 'Lisztomania': the Berlin episode
Bibliography
Works cited.

Subject Areas: Techniques of music / music tutorials [AVS], Romantic music [c 1830 to c 1900 AVGC5], Theory of music & musicology [AVA]