Published on Franz Liszt Group, on May 7, 2021. If you want to know how the Story Behind series started, I give details in “Story Behind” Series #1″.
My mind and fingers have worked like the damned. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them. I devour them with fury.
Franz Liszt
Conversation and story behind:
Group member:
Quote from about 1830.
Diane Kolin:
Ready for a quote and picture backgrounds? 🙂
Actually, this is a quote dated May 2nd, 1832, in a letter Young Liszt (21 years old) wrote to his friend Pierre Wolff in Paris. The quote goes on: “Ah! provided I don’t go mad, you will find an artist in me! Yes, an artist such as you desire, such as is required nowadays.” He is also mentioning in this letter Paganini’s performance that put him in a state of excitement and pushed him to challenge himself to become an even better pianist. As for the picture, it was taken much later, in 1873, in Budapest by photographer Ferencz Kozmata. Kozmata took pictures of Liszt during years 1873 to 1875, each time he was coming to Pest. He didn’t take only single portraits in his Studio. He was the photographer who took the famous picture of Liszt’s 50th anniversary as an artist in Pest (Liszt was 12 when he performed for the first time in Pest in 1823, and was 62 at the moment this picture was taken, in November 1873), where Liszt appears surrounded by Archbishop Lajos Haynald, Imre von Huszár, Count Imre Széchényi, Ödön von Mihalovich, Baron Antal Ausgusz, Count Albert von Apponyi, conductor Hans Richter, Count Guido Karácsonyi and Johann Nepomuk Dunkl (I attached the picture in question).
