Music for Pianos

Liszt's Keyboard

This web page is an extract from Professor Alan Walker’s Biography of Franz Liszt. The Biography is in Three Volumes and the following, which is reproduced by kind permission of Professor Walker, is taken from Volume One, The Virtuoso Years 1811-1847.

Liszt and the Keyboard.
Section II

Whatever else the world may debate about his life and work, one thing is generally conceded: Liszt was the first modern pianist.  The technical “break-through” he achieved during the 1830s and ‘40s was without precedent in the history of the piano.  All subsequent schools were branches of his tree.  Rubinstein, Busoni, Paderewski, Godowsky, and Rachmaninoff—all those pianists who together formed what historians later dubbed “ the golden age of piano playing”—would be unthinkable without Liszt.  It was not that they copied his style of playing; that was inimitable. Nor did they enjoy close personal contact with him; not one of them was his pupil.  Liszt’s influence went deeper than that.  It had to do with his unique ability to solve technical problems.  Liszt is to piano playing what Euclid is to geometry.  Pianists turn to his music in order to discover the natural laws governing the keyboard.  It is impossible for a modern pianist to keep Liszt out of his playing—out of his biceps, his forearms, his fingers—even though he may not know that Liszt is there, since modern piano playing spells Liszt.  When he was already thirty years old, Busoni began the study of the piano afresh in order to remedy what he considered to be defects in his own playing.  He turned to Liszt’s music.  Out of the laws he found there Busoni rebuilt his technique “Gratitude and admiration,” wrote Busoni, “made Liszt at that time my master and my friend.”

 In his younger days Liszt’s total absorption with the piano provoked comment even from his friends and supporters.  Why not branch out into the larger orchestral forms, like Berlioz, instead of wasting time at a keyboard?  Liszt reflected carefully on his position and produced his “Letter to Adolphe Pictet,” an autobiographical document of some importance.  His abiding love for the piano, and his unshakable belief in its future, shine forth.

"You do not know that to speak of giving up my piano would be to me a day of gloom, robbing me of the light which illuminated all my early life, and has grown to beinseparable from it.

My piano is to me what his vessel is to the sailor, his horse to the Arab, nay even more, till now it has been myself, my speech, my life. It is the repository of all that stirred my nature in the passionate days of my youth.  I confided to it all my desires, my dreams, my joys, and my sorrows.  Its strings vibrated to my emotions, and its keys obeyed my every caprice.  Would you have me abandon it and strive for the more brilliant and resounding triumphs of the theatre or orchestra?  Oh, no!  Even were I competent for music of that kind, my resolution would be firm not to abandon the study and development of piano playing, until I had accomplished whatever is practicable, whatever it is possible to attain nowadays.

Perhaps the mysterious influence which binds me to it so strongly prejudices me, but I consider the piano to be of great consequence.  In my estimation it holds the first place in the hierarchy of instruments…In the compass of its seven octaves it includes the entire scope of the orchestra, and the ten fingers suffice for the harmony which is produced by an ensemble of a hundred players…

Cornell University Press publishes the paperback edition of all three volumes of Professor Walker’s Biography of Franz Liszt.  The address is:

Cornell University Press
Sage House
512, East State Street
Ithaca
NY 14850
Tel: 607-277-2338
Fax: 607-277-2374

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