LISZT ON CHOPIN, CHOPIN ON LISZT
LISZT ON CHOPIN, CHOPIN ON LISZT

Summary/Abstract: Given his stature as the composer of a tremendous musical oeuvre, it is perhaps not surprising that Ferenc Liszt is less often considered as a romantic author, yet his writings reveal an unusual and less broadly familiar side of the towering figure of music and pianistry. One stumbles across connections in his writings that are closely intertwined with his compositions and indeed the artistic principles he championed throughout his life. Liszt’s book on Chopin is outstanding even among his other written works in the quality of its poetry and the subtle depictions of mood. While the notion of a close friendship between the two is indeed little more than a romantic legend, their professional and personal lives nonetheless often intersected and overlapped. They were both Central Europeans. Chopin was born on 1st March, 1810 in Zelazowa Wola, a city that had been part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth before the final partition in 1795, and Liszt was born in Doborján (today Döblingen in Austria) on 22 October, 1811. Both children grew up in a supportive milieu. Their parents quickly realized their sons’ unusual talents and attentively saw to it that the budding prodigies receive the appropriate education and training. The two families were also willing to make sacrifices in order to support the boys’ callings. The fathers, Adam Liszt and Mikolaij Chopin, purchased instruments, by no means a small investment under the circumstances in which they lived, and paid for first-rate private instruction. In search of the finest instructors Chopin’s family ended up sending the boy to Warsaw to study with Zywny and later Elsner.

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