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Franz Liszt Research Paper

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Franz Liszt was many things in his lifetime; an author; a philanthropist; a scintillating, detail oriented, conductor; a brilliant, inventive, composer; more than a mere pianist, he was an intriguing and captivating performer; an altruistic piano teacher; and eventually a devout clergyman. His father, Adam Liszt, an extremely talented musician, gave young Liszt his earliest lessons on the piano. It wasn't long before he realized the uncanny talent his son possessed. Seeing this, he placed his own career as a musician on the back burner in order to obtain further musical education for his son, a blossoming prodigy. Soon young Liszt was studying composition with Antonio Salieri, and piano with Carl Czerny, a previous student of Beethoven. By the time he was eight, he had written his first …show more content…

He transcribed for solo piano, a selection of works by various other composers, such as Berlioz, Paganini, J.S.Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert. In fact Liszt’s music is largely divided in two main categories; his transcriptions, which easily make up almost half of his works, and his original works which he composed himself. Regardless of the originality of the music, Liszt’s performance was often so improvised and embellished that it might as well have been his own. For this reason he was criticized to lack creativity. On the contrary, his execution of improvisation and embellishments of fluttering trills, cascading runs and trickling arpeggios, proved his extensive creativity, as the pieces he improved upon were often already masterpieces in themselves. As a composer, Liszt contributed significantly to the Romantic Period with his invention of the symphonic poem, a one movement orchestration that depicts a story or artwork of some kind. Liszt also incorported thematic transformation to combine differing

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