performed three times at the Académie Royale. The score was accidentally
destroyed by fire, but a set of studies à la Czerny and Cramer,
belonging to 1826 and published at Marseilles as 12 Études, op. i., is
extant, and shows remarkable precocity. After the death of his father in
1828 young Liszt led the life of a teacher of the pianoforte in Paris,
got through a good deal of miscellaneous reading, and felt the influence
of the religious, literary and political aspirations of the time. He
attended the meetings of the Saint-Simonists, lent an ear to the
romantic mysticism of Père Enfantin and later to the teaching of Abbé
Lamennais. He also played Beethoven and Weber in public--a very
courageous thing in those days. The appearance of the violinist Paganini
in Paris, 1831, marks the starting-point of the supreme eminence Liszt
ultimately attained as a virtuoso. Paganini's marvellous technique
inspired him to practise as no pianist had ever practised before. He
tried to find equivalents for Paganini's effects, transcribed his violin
caprices for the piano, and perfected his own technique to an
extraordinary degree. After Paganini he received a fresh impulse from
the playing and the compositions of Chopin, who arrived in 1831, and yet
another impulse of equal force from a performance of Berlioz's
"Symphonie Fantastique, épisode de la vie d'un artiste," in 1832. Liszt
transcribed this work, and its influence ultimately led him to the
composition of his "Poèmes symphoniques" and other examples of
orchestral programme-music.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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