Song library
Browse piano sheets by Franz Liszt on Zen Virtual Piano. Franz Liszt achieved the seemingly impossible feat of transcribing Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique for the piano in 1833, and he helped Berlioz by transcribing other works of his and playing them in concert. He was the first to apply the terms “transcription” and “paraphrase” to music, and he would perform arrangements of his contemporaries’ music to popularise it. Giving names to arrangement, calling one a transcription and another a paraphrase, turns a practical task into a craft of its own. In March 1831 he had heard Niccolò Paganini play for the first time. Transcribing a full symphony for one keyboard asks the piano to stand in for an orchestra. His first public concert was in Sopron in 1820, at the age of nine, and its success led to further appearances in Pressburg and for Prince Nikolaus’s court in Eisenstadt. Czerny, impressed by the initial audition, taught him regularly and free of charge for the next eighteen months, at which point he felt he had nothing more to teach. Czerny’s own judgement that he had nothing more to teach after eighteen months suggests how fast the young pianist’s talent was moving. Even with a letter of recommendation from Chancellor Klemens von Metternich, the director Luigi Cherubini refused his entry to the Conservatoire, which did not accept foreigners, and Liszt studied instead under Anton Reicha and Ferdinando Paer. In a radical departure from his earlier compositional styles, many of his later works also feature experiments in atonality, foreshadowing developments in 20th-century classical music. Experiments in atonality late in life suggest a composer still moving forward after a career built partly on other people’s music.
Browse piano sheets by Franz Liszt on Zen Virtual Piano.
Franz Liszt achieved the seemingly impossible feat of transcribing Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique for the piano in 1833, and he helped Berlioz by transcribing other works of his and playing them in concert. He was the first to apply the terms “transcription” and “paraphrase” to music, and he would perform arrangements of his contemporaries’ music to popularise it. Giving names to arrangement, calling one a transcription and another a paraphrase, turns a practical task into a craft of its own. In March 1831 he had heard Niccolò Paganini play for the first time. Transcribing a full symphony for one keyboard asks the piano to stand in for an orchestra.
His first public concert was in Sopron in 1820, at the age of nine, and its success led to further appearances in Pressburg and for Prince Nikolaus’s court in Eisenstadt. Czerny, impressed by the initial audition, taught him regularly and free of charge for the next eighteen months, at which point he felt he had nothing more to teach. Czerny’s own judgement that he had nothing more to teach after eighteen months suggests how fast the young pianist’s talent was moving.
Even with a letter of recommendation from Chancellor Klemens von Metternich, the director Luigi Cherubini refused his entry to the Conservatoire, which did not accept foreigners, and Liszt studied instead under Anton Reicha and Ferdinando Paer. In a radical departure from his earlier compositional styles, many of his later works also feature experiments in atonality, foreshadowing developments in 20th-century classical music. Experiments in atonality late in life suggest a composer still moving forward after a career built partly on other people’s music.
Search the library
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Common questions
He was the first to apply the terms “transcription” and “paraphrase” to music and performed arrangements of his contemporaries’ music to popularise it, including a piano transcription of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique in 1833.
Czerny taught him regularly, free of charge, for eighteen months until he felt he had nothing more to teach; Liszt also studied under Anton Reicha and Ferdinando Paer.
In a radical departure from his earlier styles, many of his later works feature experiments in atonality, foreshadowing developments in 20th-century classical music.