Franz Liszt

About the composer

Franz Liszt is of German origin, but was born in Raiding, nowadays Austria, in 1811. In those years Austria-Hungary was a sort of political unity and as he grew up in Hungary the Hungarians regard Liszt as an Hungarian and refer to him as Ferenc Liszt. Like Mozart he was a musical child prodigy, especially as a pianist. One of his first recitals occurred at the age of 9 years. After winning a piano player contest in 1836 he became immensely popular in all Europe. After living in Paris for some 10 years he moved in 1848 to Weimar in Germany, where he became tutor of a whole generation of young  pianists and composers, among who were Borodin, Saint-Saëns and Smetana. In his later years Liszt became not only more and more interested in church music, but he was deeply religious and finally received minor orders of the church and became Abbé Liszt. He died in 1886 in Bayreuth. Liszt composed a large amount of music for piano, but also symphonic works, rhapsodies, a requiem, several masses and oratorio. Among these we find the oratorio “Christus”, which contains not only a full scale Stabat Mater Dolorosa, but also a Stabat Mater Speciosa.   Furthermore, Liszt did use the first stanza of the poem in his “Via Crucis” . This composition is a musical setting of the fourteen Stations of the Way of the Crucifixion, by soloists, choir and organ. In the three Stations where Jesus stumbles, the female part of the choir sings this stanza. Finally, Liszt frequently made transcriptions for piano from famous compositions of other composers; one was Rossini’s Stabat Mater. Though these transcriptions are nowadays somewhat looked down upon, one should realize that for many people in those days it was the only way to get acquainted with Beethoven’s symphonies or Verdi’s operas.