50 Fun Facts About Franz Liszt

Which cartoon duo won an Oscar for The Cat Concerto, set to Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2?

Tom and Jerry won Best Animated Short for it, their fourth Oscar in a row. Tom is the concert pianist, and Jerry, who lives inside the piano, keeps disrupting the performance.

Which word, coined by poet Heinrich Heine, names the fan frenzy at Franz Liszt's 1840s concerts?

Lisztomania began in Berlin, where admirers fought over his gloves and handkerchiefs and kept his cigar stubs as souvenirs. Heine's word arrived more than a century before Beatlemania.

Which opera composer became Franz Liszt's son-in-law by marrying his daughter Cosima in 1870?

Richard Wagner was less than two years younger than his new father-in-law. Liszt disapproved of the affair, broke off contact for years and learned of the wedding from the newspapers.

Franz Liszt was born in a Kingdom of Hungary village that now belongs to which modern country?

Austria took over the village of Doborján, now called Raiding, when western Hungary was handed over after the First World War. The house where he was born still stands there.

Which European capital renamed its international airport after Franz Liszt for his 200th birthday?

Budapest had called the airport Ferihegy, after the surrounding neighbourhood, until the 2011 bicentenary. Its three-letter code is still BUD.

Which word for a solo concert was first used for Franz Liszt's 1840 London performances?

Recital entered concert language at the Hanover Square Rooms in June 1840. Until then a solo pianist normally shared the bill with singers, an orchestra or even ballet.

Which rock frontman, fresh from starring in Tommy, played Franz Liszt in a 1975 Ken Russell film?

Roger Daltrey of the Who played the composer as the first pop star, with Ringo Starr as the Pope and a synthesiser score by Rick Wakeman of Yes.

Which violin virtuoso's 1832 concert drove Franz Liszt to practise up to fourteen hours a day?

Niccolò Paganini made the 20-year-old vow to become as great on the keyboard as the Italian was on four strings. Liszt later turned six of his showpieces into piano études.

Which great composer is said to have kissed the boy Franz Liszt's forehead after a Vienna concert?

Ludwig van Beethoven's supposed kiss in 1823 became the legend of an artistic christening for the 11-year-old, though historians still debate how much of the story is true.

Which music director of the Vienna imperial court gave the young Franz Liszt lessons in composition?

Antonio Salieri, best known today as Mozart's rival in the film Amadeus, was in his seventies when the boy's improvising and sight-reading won him over.

Franz Liszt began a biography of which fellow pianist-composer within a month of the man's funeral?

Frédéric Chopin's sister found the timing insensitive and refused to help, so the book that appeared in 1852 contained several factual errors.

Which Franz Liszt étude, built on a violin concerto's finale, is famous for two-octave right-hand leaps?

La campanella means 'the little bell': the tune copies a handbell that rang in the concerto's finale, and Liszt turns its chimes into leaps played at speed.

Which famous Franz Liszt piano nocturne began as a song setting a poem by Ferdinand Freiligrath?

Liebestraum No. 3 is the last of three 'Dreams of Love', all first written as songs; its poem urges the reader to love for as long as they can.

Which one-movement orchestral form built around a story is Franz Liszt credited with creating?

Symphonic poem was his own label for thirteen such works, and the idea spread across Europe to Smetana, Sibelius and Richard Strauss.

Which teaching format, with each pupil playing while the others watch, did Franz Liszt pioneer?

Masterclass sessions let him hear some twenty pupils in a four-hour sitting, and he never charged any of them a fee.

In which German city did Franz Liszt settle as court music director after quitting concert tours?

Weimar became a hub of modern music under him: he conducted new operas there, taught a generation of pianists and wrote his major orchestral works.

In Franz Liszt's first Mephisto Waltz, the devil seizes a fiddle and whips up dancers at which event?

A village wedding at an inn is the setting, borrowed from Nikolaus Lenau's verse Faust; the playing is so seductive that Faust waltzes a village beauty out into the woods.

Which medieval epic poem inspired a Liszt symphony with movements named Inferno and Purgatorio?

The Divine Comedy has a third part, Paradise, but Liszt was persuaded that no earthly composer could depict its joys, so he closed with a gentle choral Magnificat instead.

Which Viennese composer's Ave Maria and Schwanengesang songs did Liszt arrange for solo piano?

Franz Schubert's songs were a lifelong love: Liszt was still playing his Ave Maria arrangement to young musicians in Rome a few months before his own death.

Why did the Paris Conservatoire refuse the boy Franz Liszt despite a letter from Metternich?

He was a foreigner, and director Luigi Cherubini would not bend the rule even for a famous prodigy, so Liszt took private lessons from Anton Reicha and Ferdinando Paer instead.

Which Viennese teacher, famous for his piano exercises, taught the young Franz Liszt free of charge?

Carl Czerny at first refused to take the boy on, then taught him for nothing for eighteen months, until he felt he had nothing more to teach.

In which Bavarian town did Franz Liszt die while attending the opera festival run by his daughter?

Bayreuth is also where he lies buried: his daughter insisted on it, and despite controversy over the choice of resting place, the body was never moved.

After taking minor Catholic orders in Rome, Franz Liszt was often addressed by which title?

Abbé Liszt had already moved into a spartan monastery apartment outside the city, with a piano in his cell, a startling turn for the former idol of the concert hall.

Which French composer had Franz Liszt as a witness at his wedding to the actress Harriet Smithson?

Hector Berlioz went ahead although his friend had cautioned him against the match. The two had first met the day before the premiere of the Symphonie fantastique.

Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony paints three character portraits from a drama by which German writer?

Goethe's Faust, his beloved Gretchen and the tempter each get a movement, and the tempter has no tune of his own: he only twists Faust's themes into sneering distortions.

Which percussion instrument's prominent part led a critic to mock Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1?

Triangle strokes open the third movement, and the conservative critic Eduard Hanslick sneered that the whole work was a 'Triangle Concerto'.

For the 1867 coronation of which Habsburg ruler as King of Hungary did Liszt compose a Mass?

Franz Joseph I was crowned alongside his wife Elisabeth, better known as Sisi. Liszt added two further sections to the Mass after the ceremony.

Which young French composer heard Franz Liszt play in Rome and likened his pedalling to breathing?

Claude Debussy was 23 and living at the Villa Medici as a prize student. Liszt played him a rippling piece about a spring, a sound-world his own piano music would later explore.

Which young composer's piano concerto in A minor did Franz Liszt sight-read from manuscript in Rome?

Edvard Grieg, then 26, watched him play it at sight before an audience of musicians and left with warm praise, plus a suggested trumpet tune that he later took back out.

Which musicians, heard in the countryside of his childhood, shaped Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies?

Romani bands impressed him so much that he wrote a book crediting them with a large share of Hungary's native music, a claim Hungarians hotly disputed.

Which French countess, a writer under the name Daniel Stern, had three children with Franz Liszt?

Marie d'Agoult never divorced the count she had left for him, and after their bitter break-up Liszt took full custody of all three children.

Liszt dedicated his piano sonata to which German composer, who had dedicated a Fantasie to him?

Robert Schumann had been committed to a mental institution by the time the 1854 dedication was made, and his widow Clara later struck Liszt's name from the Fantasie.

Which conductor, a Franz Liszt pupil, was the first husband of Liszt's daughter Cosima?

Hans von Bülow gave the first public performance of his teacher's piano sonata in 1857, the year he married Cosima, who later left him for another composer.

Which composer stood among the leading conservatives against Liszt in the War of the Romantics?

Johannes Brahms and his allies fought the 'war' mostly on paper, through articles, essays and reviews, and each camp claimed to be the true heir of the same great symphonist.

Which Liszt orchestral work lends its closing fanfare to the titles of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe?

Les préludes had a darker afterlife too: the same fanfare introduced news bulletins on German radio under the Nazi regime.

Which set of twelve fearsome Franz Liszt piano pieces includes Feux follets and Chasse-neige?

Transcendental Études grew out of exercises he wrote at 15 and reworked twice over the next quarter-century; critics call the result 'Liszt at his most Lisztian'.

Which Japanese novelist's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki takes part of its title from a Liszt piano cycle?

Haruki Murakami centred the novel on 'Le mal du pays', a homesick movement from the Swiss volume of Liszt's Years of Pilgrimage.

Liszt's father was a steward for which princely family, long-time employers of the composer Haydn?

Esterházy service put music in the house: his father played the piano, guitar and flute, had known Haydn personally and pushed the boy's talent from the age of five.

Which term for instrumental works that follow a story did Franz Liszt coin in an 1855 essay?

Program music had existed for more than a century, but Liszt made the novel claim that it was artistically superior, against the prevailing view that such pieces were unserious.

Under which Hungarian form of his first name is Liszt known at home, where the surname comes first?

Ferenc is the Hungarian for Franz, so at home he is Liszt Ferenc, the name borne by the national music academy where he was the first president.

Which rival pianist met Franz Liszt in a famous 'duel' at Princess Belgiojoso's Paris salon?

Sigismond Thalberg opened with his Moses fantasy, and the hostess refused to pick a winner: he was the first pianist in the world, she ruled, while Liszt was unique.

Which Irish-born dancer, later mistress of Bavaria's King Ludwig I, had an affair with Franz Liszt?

Lola Montez was really Eliza Gilbert, who had reinvented herself as a Spanish dancer; Liszt introduced her to the Paris circle of the novelist George Sand.

In which city did Liszt meet his long-time companion Princess Carolyne during an 1847 concert tour?

Kyiv, Kiev in older books, is where the Polish princess met him; within a few weeks she had resolved to leave her estates and follow him to Germany.

Liszt's Totentanz, inspired by a fresco of death in Pisa, is built on which medieval plainchant?

Dies irae, the chant of the Last Judgment, is hammered out by the piano and then varied; the same tune haunts the finale of the Symphonie fantastique.

Which opera, famous for its Bridal Chorus, did Franz Liszt premiere while its composer was in exile?

Lohengrin was dedicated to Liszt in thanks. Its composer, wanted for his part in a failed uprising, had fled to Switzerland on a false passport that Liszt arranged.

Which Cossack leader, tied to a wild horse in a Victor Hugo poem, names two Franz Liszt works?

Mazeppa ranks among the hardest of his twelve great études, and its fingering deliberately makes the running thirds choppy so that they sound like galloping hooves.

What is the title of Liszt's only opera, staged in Paris shortly before his fourteenth birthday?

Don Sanche, a one-act opera about a castle of love, closed after four performances, and the older Liszt waved it away as a work that was nothing and became nothing.

Which piano maker gave the boy Liszt a grand with a new double escapement for rapid repeated notes?

Érard had only just patented the action, a key advance that allows a note to be repeated faster, and Liszt's glittering keyboard style made the most of it.

Franz Liszt's only piano sonata, a single unbroken span of about half an hour, is in which key?

B minor frames a work now treated as a landmark of the piano repertoire, though one leading pianist of the day never played it and dismissed it as merely a blind noise.

Which short 1881 Liszt piano piece ends in an ambiguous tonality, anticipating later modern music?

Nuages gris, meaning 'grey clouds', dates from August 1881, a few weeks after a fall down a flight of stairs had left the 69-year-old composer bedridden.