Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening
up a file that I have to admit I thought was
going to be a pretty straightforward history
lesson. I saw the name Fernanda's List and my
brain immediately went to classical music. You
know, I pictured a dusty bust on a piano, polite
applause, maybe a velvet smoking jacket. Which
is the standard image for sure. It's what most
people think of. Right. But after reading through
this stack of research, the biographies, the
letters, the music analysis, I realized that
image is completely wrong. Or at least it's a
tiny piece of the story. It's maybe 10 % of the
story. We aren't just talking about a composer
today. We are talking about the man who practically
invented the concept of the superstar. It's not
an exaggeration to say he was the blueprint for
the modern rock guy. I mean, before Elvis, before
the Beatles, before Michael Jackson. There was
Franz Liszt. The sources describe scenes that
sound like they're from a stadium tour in the
1960s, not Europe in the 1840s. Fainting fans,
actual hysteria, people collecting his garbage
as souvenirs. It's just, it's wild. It really
is. But the mission for this deep dive. isn't
just to gawk at the celebrity aspect, as fun
as that is. No, because the fame is almost a
distraction. It's the shiny object. If you look
deeper, as we're going to do, you find a man
living what he himself called a tripartite existence.
The three lives. I found that concept fascinating.
Exactly. You have the hedonistic celebrity touring
the world and, you know, breaking hearts. Okay,
that's life number one. Then you have this serious,
almost avant -garde musical innovator who changed
the very... structure of how we listen to music.
And then the third one, which is the twist I
really didn't see coming. The religious recluse.
Yeah. The man who retreats to a monastery to
become an abbé. It is a massive, massive narrative
arc. So we are going to unpack all of it. We've
got the biographical data, the scandalous relationship
details, the war of the romantics, and analysis
of music that, frankly, was predicting the future.
And to understand how you get a man this complex,
you have to start... where every superhero origin
story starts. The discovery of the power. The
discovery of the power. Okay, let's jump into
act one, the making of a prodigy. So List enters
the world in 1811 in a small town called Doborzhan.
Today it's in Austria, but back then it was part
of the Kingdom of Hungary. And looking at his
family background, it seems like the die was
cast pretty early. His father, Adam List, wasn't
just some random bureaucrat. Adam is a crucial
figure here. He was a land steward for the Esterhazy
princes. Now, if you know your music history,
the name Esterhazy is huge. Right. That's Hayden's
family. That's the family that employed Joseph
Hayden for decades. So Adam List actually played
cello in the court orchestra. He knew Hayden
personally. He had seen musical greatness up
close. So when his son, little Franz, crawls
up to the piano at age five and starts not just
plinking, but actually improvising melodies,
Adam doesn't just think, oh, that's cute. No,
he recognizes the spark immediately. And he becomes,
well, let's say intense is a good word. The sources
say Adam diligently encouraged his progress,
which is a very polite way of saying he drilled
the kid relentlessly. And it pays off. By age
nine, Franz is giving his first public concert.
And it goes incredibly well. So well, in fact,
that a group of wealthy Hungarian sponsors steps
in. They basically create a scholarship fund
to finance his education in Vienna. So this is
the first big pivot. The family packs up and
moves to the capital of music. And Adam, through
sheer will, manages to land him a teacher who
is basically piano royalty, Carl Czerny. Now,
for anyone listening who took piano lessons as
a child, the name Czerny might trigger a little
bit of PTSD. Oh, the finger exercises. Thousands
of them. Exactly. But we have to remember, Czerny
wasn't just a writer of exercise books. He was
a student of Beethoven. He was the real deal.
The direct lineage. But the funny thing is, the
notes say Czerny initially didn't want to teach
him. Right, he was overworked. He hated teaching
children. He called them infant prodigies with
a bit of a... sneer. But Adam List begged him
just to listen to the boy play for a few minutes.
So Fran sits down, plays a few bars, and Cherni
is just floored. What did he say? He later wrote
that it was like nature herself had formed a
pianist. He was so impressed he ended up teaching
List for free for the next year and a half. That's
the ultimate endorsement right there. But there's
an even bigger endorsement that pops up in the
legends, right? The Beethoven kiss. Ah, yes.
Yeah? This is one of the most famous stories
in all of classical music lore. It's such a cinematic
moment. It feels like it has to be true. The
story goes that in 1823, Liszt gives his farewell
concert in Vienna. He's 12 years old. And the
great Ludwig van Beethoven himself, old and deaf,
walks onto the stage, grabs the boy, and kisses
him on the forehead. The passing of the torch.
It is. The old king anointing the new prince.
But I have to be the buzzkill historian here.
Oh, no, it didn't happen. The evidence is very
shaky. Beethoven was profoundly deaf by 1823.
He rarely, if ever, attended public concerts.
Most modern scholars are pretty sure this is
apocryphal. A good story that got repeated. But
the fact that people believed it for so long
tells you everything you need to know. Liszt
was seen as the heir apparent. You'd carry that
weight. So the heir apparent heads to Paris.
The family moves there so he can attend the famous
Conservatoire de Paris. And this is where they
hit a wall that just feels incredibly unfair.
It was pure bureaucratic nonsense. The director
at the time, a composer named Luigi Cherubini,
refused to let Liszt enroll. Not because he wasn't
talented. No, no. He was probably more talented
than the teachers. It was because he was a foreigner.
The rules stated the conservatoire was for French
citizens only. Imagine being the guy who rejected
Franz Liszt because of his passport. Oof. Not
a great look in retrospect. But this rejection
seems to just fuel him. He studies privately.
He writes a whole opera by age 14, Don Sanch.
He's touring England, playing for King George
IV. He is on the absolute fast -tracked glory.
Until the floor just falls out from under him.
In 1827, Adam Liszt dies suddenly of typhoid
fever. And Franz is only 15 years old. 15. I
want to pause on this because this feels like
the moment where the child prodigy narrative
just crashes and burns. He's 15. His father was
his manager, his teacher, his mentor, his entire
support sister. His whole world. And now he's
alone in Paris and he has to support his mother.
It was a brutal, brutal transition. The glamour
was gone. Overnight, he had to work. The sources
describe him just walking all over Paris, giving
piano lessons from early morning until late at
night. He was completely exhausted. And this
is where some of the rock star habits start to
form, isn't it? It is. He started smoking heavily,
started drinking. He fell into a deep depression
and had a crisis of faith. He actually considered
becoming a priest right then and there. Wow.
For a few years, he stopped touring. He was just
drifting. He was reading voraciously. hanging
out with intellectuals like Victor Hugo and George
Sand. But musically, it was kind of stagnant.
He needed a jumpstart. And according to the timeline,
that jumpstart arrived in 1832. But it wasn't
a pianist who inspired him. No, which is the
fascinating part. It was a violinist. Niccolo
Paganini. The devil's violinist. Just the best
nickname ever. Paganini came to Paris and gave
a concert that basically terrified people. He
played with such speed, such violence, and such
technical perfection that people legitimately
whispered that he had sold his soul to Satan
for his abilities. And List is in the audience
for this. And List has an epiphany, a life -changing
moment. He realizes that the piano is capable
of that same level of sorcery. He looks at what
Paganini is doing, the showmanship, the impossible
leaps, the drama, and he says to himself, I will
be the Paganini of the piano. So this isn't just
about practicing a few more scales. This is a
complete reconstruction of his entire It was
obsessive. He basically locked himself away.
He practiced for 10, 12, sometimes up to 14 hours
a day. 14 hours? I mean, that's not practice.
That's physical torture. He was drilling things
no one else was doing. Double octaves, rapid
-fire repeated notes, massive stretches for the
hand. He wasn't just learning songs. He was expanding
the very mechanics of what the human body could
do on a keyboard. So he goes into this crucible.
And he emerges from it, not just as a great pianist,
but as a monster. This sets the stage perfectly
for act two, the virtuoso in Listomania, because
when he comes back to the public scene, he's
ready for a fight. And he finds a rival almost
immediately. Every great champion needs a foil.
For List, that foil was Sigismund Thalberg. The
descriptions of this rivalry are just hilarious.
It's like a refined 19th century version of a
rat beef. It really was. Thalberg was the reigning
darling of the Paris salons. He was handsome.
aristocratically aloof and he played with this
beautiful singing tone the gimmick was that he
never moved a muscle in his face he was the epitome
of cool control and list is the complete opposite
he's sweat and passion and hair flying everywhere
and list being young and you know full of himself
wrote an article publicly trashing thalberg's
music calling it Impotent and monotonous. Shots
fired. Big time. So the public, of course, demanded
a showdown. It was billed as the Ivory Duel.
Do you love that name? It happened at the salon
of the Princess Belgio Shoso in 1837. Ostensibly,
it was a charity event for Italian refugees,
but everyone in that room knew it was a title
fight. So they both play. Falberg plays his Fantasia
on themes from Rossini. Liszt plays his Niobe
fantasy. The tension in that room must have been
suffocating. And then the princess has to deliver
the verdict. Her verdict is absolutely legendary.
She stands up and says, Thalberg is the first
pianist in the world. Okay, so that sounds like
a clear loss for Liszt, a public takedown. But
then she continued. She let that sink in, and
then she said, Thalberg is the first pianist
in the world, but Liszt is unique. Ooh, that
is such a masterful diplomatic sidestep. But
it was the truth. Thalberg was perfect, but he
was terrestrial. Liszt was something else entirely.
And after that duel, Thalberg's star slowly faded
and Liszt just exploded into the stratosphere.
This is what launches the period that becomes
known as Lisztomania. And we should be clear,
we use that word lightly now. But it was coined
by the poet Heinrich Hein as a genuine medical
diagnosis. He wasn't being poetic, he was being
literal. He was actually kind of horrified by
it. It wasn't just applause, it was mass hysteria.
When Liszt played, women would literally faint.
They would fight each other to get close to the
stage. I was reading about the souvenirs. It
wasn't just asking for an autograph. Oh, not
even close. If Liszt left a pair of velvet gloves
on the piano after a concert, the audience would
rush the stage and rip them to shreds so everyone
could have a little scrap of fabric. That's insane.
They collected his cigar stubs and wore them
in lockets around their necks. Wait, cigar stubs?
In a locket? Yeah. That is... That's a new level
of dedication. There are documented reports of
women keeping his used coffee dregs in glass
vials. There was a level of obsession that was
completely new. So you have to ask, why? I mean,
was he just handsome? The portraits show he was
very striking. Long hair, sharp features. He
was, no doubt. But it's the performance style.
Before Liszt, pianists... played with their backs
to the audience or facing them directly over
the piano. You couldn't really see their hands
or face. Liszt was the one who turned the piano
sideways, creating the profile position that
is standard for every concert pianist today.
He wanted them to see his face. He's thinking
about the optics. He wanted them to see the suffering,
the ecstasy, the sweat. He made the music visual.
He understood instinctively that an audience
listens with their eyes just as much as their
ears. He also completely changed the format of
the concert itself. Before him, you didn't go
to a piano recital. No, that word didn't even
exist in that context. A concert was a variety
show. You'd have an orchestra, then a singer,
maybe a poet, a violinist, and then a pianist
might play one or two pieces. A real grab bag.
Right. And Liszt decided that wasn't enough.
In 1839, he wrote a now famous letter where he
just declared, Le concert. C 'est moi. The concert
is me. The sheer arrogance of it. And it was
arrogant, but he backed it up. He was the first
person to walk out on stage completely alone
with no orchestra, no other acts, and play for
two hours straight. And from memory, too, which
was not standard at the time. Not at all. It
was high wire acrobatics with no safety net.
And the audiences just ate it up. He toured Europe
relentlessly. Russia, Turkey, Ireland, Portugal.
He played over a thousand concerts in eight years.
He was the most famous man in Europe, bar none.
But, and here is the nuance that I think makes
him so much more interesting. He wasn't just
hoarding the cash like some kind of diva. The
research really emphasizes his charity. That's
a crucial counterpoint to his ego. He made a
fortune, an absolute fortune, but he gave massive
amounts of it away. Like what? When the Great
Fire of Hamburg in 1842 left thousands homeless,
Liszt immediately rushed there to play a series
of charity concerts. He donated huge sums to
the completion of the Cologne Cathedral. He set
up pension funds for struggling musicians. He
really established a precedent that the artist
has a moral duty to society. So he's burning
the candle at both ends. He's touring. He's composing.
He's giving away money. He's dodging screaming
fans. It sounds completely unsustainable. It
was. And then, abruptly... In 1847, he stops.
He just quits. Quits. Cold turkey. But he's 35
years old. He is at the absolute zenith of his
fame. That's like Mick Jagger retiring in 1975.
Why on earth would he walk away from that? He
was tired of the circus. He felt that being a
traveling virtuoso was, in his own words, a mountebank's
trade, like being a carnival act. He wanted to
be taken seriously as a composer. He wanted to
create art that would last longer than the applause
of one night. So he accepts a job in a small,
quiet German court called Weimar. And this kicks
off Act III, the Weimar years and the infamous
War of the Romantics. This is the intellectual
heart of his life. He becomes the Kapelmeister,
the official music director in Weimar. Yeah.
And he basically turns this sleepy little town
into the European center of the avant -garde.
He gathers a posse. He does. Becomes known as
the New German School. And this group included
some heavy hitters like Hector. berlioz and most
famously a young controversial composer named
richard wagner and they were united by a specific
philosophy about what music should be a philosophy
that caused a war A literal war of words and
ink that raged for decades. On one side, you
had the conservatives, led by Johannes Brahms,
and the powerful critic Edward Hanslick. They
believed in what they called absolute music.
Which means what exactly? Music for music's sake.
Pretty much. The idea that music shouldn't be
about anything. A symphony shouldn't tell a story.
It shouldn't represent a painting or a poem.
It should just be pure sound, form, structure,
harmony. It's abstract art. Okay, so that's Team
Brahms. And Liszt's side. Liszt and the New German
School were champions of program music. They
believed music should be explicitly linked to
literature, poetry, and painting. It absolutely
should tell a narrative. So it's like, is music
a beautiful, abstract pattern, or is it a painting
of a story? That's a perfect way to put it. And
to prove his point, Liszt invents a brand new
genre, the symphonic poem. Right. This is a huge
innovation. It is. A symphonic poem is a piece
for orchestra, usually in one long, continuous
movement that is driven entirely by an extra
musical idea. So Liszt writes Le Prelude, based
on a poem by Lamartine. He writes Mazepa. based
on a Victor Hugo poem about a Ukrainian hero
being strapped to a wild horse. He's literally
painting with sound. Exactly. And the conservatives
absolutely hated it. They thought it was formless,
self -indulgent, and that it was destroying the
purity of the classical tradition established
by Beethoven and Mozart. This war of the romantics
got nasty, right? Oh, it was brutal. They were
savaging each other in newspapers and journals
for decades. It was the major artistic fault
line of the 19th century. But while he's fighting
this big artistic war, His personal life is arguably
even more dramatic. We can't talk about List
without talking about the women in his life.
List's love life was, well, complicated is an
understatement. His first major partner was Marie
de Gaulle. A countess. A countess, yes. And she
was married with children. She basically abandoned
her husband and family to run away with List.
That's scandal number one. They lived together
for years, traveling through Switzerland and
Italy. Those travels directly inspired one of
his most famous piano cycles, Anne de Pelerinache,
Years of Pilgrimage. And they had three children
together. They did. Blandine, Kosuma, and Daniel.
But the relationship was incredibly volatile,
and they eventually had a very bitter split.
And then, in 1847, right around the time he decides
to retire from touring, he meets Princess Caroline.
Princess Caroline Zuzane Wittgenstein. A Polish
noblewoman? Immensely wealthy. Very, very intellectual.
Also married. Also very married. I'm sensing
a pattern here. He liked powerful, intelligent
women who were technically unavailable. He certainly
did. But Carolyn was different. She wasn't just
a lover, she became his manager, his muse, his
intellectual equal. She was the one who really
convinced him to stop touring and focus on composing.
She moved to Weimar to be with him, setting up
a home called the Villa Altenburg, which became
the headquarters of the new German school. But
they couldn't get married. Not while her husband
was alive. This was the Catholic Church. There
was no divorce. So they spent over a decade and
a fortune trying to get her marriage annulled
by the Vatican. They pulled every string. They
paid every lawyer. And finally, it looks like
they've done it. Finally, in 1861, it looks like
they have succeeded. The Pope himself gives the
green light. They plan the wedding for Liszt's
50th birthday in a church in Rome. The stage
is set for the happy ending. And then... And
then, the day before the wedding, literally hours
before they are to be married, a messenger from
the Vatican arrives. Don't tell me. The annulment
is halted. The permission is withdrawn. What
happened? How? It turns out Caroline's estranged
husband's family and even the Tsar of Russia
were pulling strings behind the scenes. They
were terrified that if she married Liszt, her
massive fortune would leave their control and
go to this Hungarian musician. So they used their
political power to block it at the last possible
second. That is just absolutely heartbreaking
to get that close. It broke them. The wedding
never happened. Caroline became a religious recluse,
and List's life took another sharp, dark turn.
This leads us right into Act IV, tragedy, the
church, and teaching. The 1860s seemed to be
just a cascade of one piece of bad news after
another for him. He called it his decade of sadness.
And it really was. In 1859, his son Daniel died
of tuberculosis at age 20. Then just a few years
later, in 1862, his daughter Blandine died in
childbirth. She was only 26. So he's lost two
of his three children. The love of his life is
legally barred from marrying him. He's feeling
isolated in the music world because of the war.
He felt completely and utterly alone. So what
does the former rock star, the great hedonist,
do? He retreats. He retreats. He moves into a
monastery in Rome, the Madonna del Rosario. And
in 1865, he shocks the entire world by taking
minor orders in the Catholic Church. He becomes
a monk. Well, not a full priest. He couldn't
say mass or hear confession. But he became an
abbé. He had to shave his head in the tonsure
style. He wore the black cassock. He lived in
a Spartan cell with just a hard bed, a crucifix,
and a piano. That image is just wild to me. The
guy who had women fighting over his silk handkerchiefs
is now known as Abbe List, living in a monastery
and writing choral music. And he wrote some beautiful,
profound religious works in this period, pieces
like his Oratorio Christus and the very stark
Viacrucis. But he didn't just stop being List.
This is where that tripartite existence he talked
about really solidifies. He divides his year.
He divides his year into three parts. He would
spend part of the year in Rome living his monastic
life. Then he'd go to Weimar. to teach and advise
the court. And then he'd go to Budapest, where
he was a national hero and helped found their
Academy of Music. The source notes say he was
traveling something like 4 ,000 miles a year
in his old age. I mean, that's grueling even
today, let alone in the 1870s on steam trains
and carriages. He was restless. Yeah. But he
dedicated a huge part of this later life to teaching.
And this is another major innovation we have
to credit him for. He basically invented the
master class. So how is his teaching different
from a normal lesson? Before Liszt, piano lessons
were almost always one -on -one, a very private
affair. Liszt held group lessons. A student would
get up and play a piece in front of everyone
else, a room full of their highly talented peers.
And Liszt would critique them while the others
watched and learned. So it was a performance
and a lesson rolled into one. High pressure.
Very high pressure. And his teaching style was
fascinating. He didn't care about your technique.
He assumed if you were in his class, you could
already play the notes. He famously told the
students, wash your dirty linen at home. Meaning,
do your boring skills and exercises before you
come to me. Right. Don't waste my time with that.
He focused entirely on interpretation. on the
poetry, the soul of the music. There's a funny
quote where a student was banging on the keys
too hard and Liz stopped him and said, do not
chop beefsteak for us. He wanted art, not just
noise. He wanted poetry. But here is the absolute
kicker, and this really speaks to the transformation
in his character. Yeah. He never charged a single
penny for these lessons. What? For decades. For
the last 20 years of his life, he taught hundreds
of students, the next generation of Europe's
greatest virtuosos, completely for free. He believed
that since God had given him the gift of music,
he had a moral duty to give it back to others.
That is such a stark, unbelievable contrast to
le concert, c 'est moi. It creates this fascination
duality, doesn't it? The ego and the servant.
He was somehow simultaneously both. So let's
move to Act V, his musical legacy and a glimpse
into the future. Because while he's traveling
and teaching for free, he's still composing.
And the music he writes in his final years, the
old age works, is, for lack of a better word,
bizarre. Bizarre is exactly the right word. If
you listen to his early stuff, the Hungarian
Rhapsodies, for example, it's flashy, romantic,
full of catchy melodies. But his late work, pieces
like Nuige's Gris, which means gray clouds, or
the Bagatelle's Sans Tonalité. It sounds like
it was written in the 1950s, not the 1880s. How
so? For the non -musicians listening, what was
he doing that was so strange? He was systematically
dismantling the rules of music. He abandoned
traditional keys. He was using harsh dissonance,
strange chords like the tritone, which used to
be called the devil in music, and harmonies that
just hang in the air and never resolve. Why is
never resolving such a big deal? Think of a simple
song like Happy Birthday. At the end, on the
last note, it feels finished. You've arrived
home, musically. That's tonality. Liszt, in these
late pieces, took away the home. The music just
floats in this anxious, gray, uncertain space.
It's unsettling. So he saw the cliff edge of
romantic music, where everything was big and
heroic and emotional, and he just jumped off
into the void. He completely predicted the breakdown
of tonality that would define 20th century music.
He was anticipating impressionism, like Debussy,
and even atonality, like Schoenberg, by decades.
He famously told one of his students, the time
for such things has not yet come. I can wait.
He knew. It's incredible. We also need to touch
on his relationships with other composers because
he was like the Kevin Bacon of the 19th century.
He knew absolutely everyone. And he was, for
the most part, incredibly generous. He championed
Berlioz when no one else would. He transcribed
all nine of Beethoven's symphonies for piano
so people in small towns without an orchestra
could hear them. But his relationship with Richard
Wagner is the most complex and dramatic. Here
we go. The soap opera part again. List. was Wagner's
greatest champion. He helped Wagner when Wagner
was a political refugee and nobody would touch
him. He gave him money. He conducted the premieres
of his operas in Weimar when no one else would.
He was his cheerleader, his banker, his promoter.
And how did Wagner repay this incredible loyalty?
By having an affair with Liszt's daughter, Cosima.
Who was already married at the time. She was
married to Hans von Bülow, who wasn't just anybody.
He was Liszt's favorite student and a brilliant
conductor in his own right. It was an absolute
mess, a complete betrayal. How did Liszt handle
that? I mean, that would destroy most families.
It caused a massive rift. Liszt and Wagner didn't
speak for years. Imagine the pain your best friend
runs off with your daughter, destroying your
favorite student's life in the process. But eventually...
The pull of the music and the fact that Kosima
had children with Wagner, his grandchildren,
brought them back together. A reconciliation.
A tense one, but yes. And in a poetic, almost
tragic twist of fate, Liszt actually died in
Bayreuth. Bayreuth is the town where Wagner built
his massive custom opera house, right? The temple
to his own music. Exactly. Liszt died there in
1886 during the annual Wagner Festival. He passed
away essentially in the shadow of the man he
had helped make famous, the man who had also
caused him so much pain. Wow. That's a complicated
end. It is. But by that time, I think Liszt was
beyond caring about worldly fame or slights.
He had lived enough for 10 lifetimes. So let's
try and bring all of this together. We started
by calling him a rock star, but clearly rock
star is too small a label for this man. He is
the Brudge. That's how I see him. He was supposedly
kissed by Beethoven, representing the classical
past. And he wrote music that sounded like the
atonal modernists representing the 20th century
future. He contains the entire 19th century within
his own life and work. And he completely transformed
the piano. He took it from being a polite parlor
instrument into a powerhouse that could rival
an entire orchestra. He changed how we listen
to music. He changed how we sit at a concert.
He changed how we think about the role of the
artist in society, from celebrity to servant.
It's just incredible to think about that journey.
From the boy practicing 14 hours a day to be
like Paganini, to the superstar dodging fans,
to the old abbé in a robe teaching for free.
It's a life of constant radical reinvention.
He never settled. Just when the world thought
they had him figured out, he would change into
someone else. Okay, so here's a final thought
for you to chew on as we close out. We talked
about his famous, unbelievably arrogant, quote,
Le concert c 'est moi. The concert is me. It's
the ultimate statement of ego. The peak of his
celebrity phase. Right. But he ended his life
living in a monastery cell, serving the church,
and teaching the next generation of artists for
zero profit. It raises the question, which was
the real Liss? Was the humility of his old age
a genuine penance for the arrogance of his youth?
Or was the performance of the humble abbé just
another role he was playing, the ultimate act
of a lifelong showman? That is something to mull
over. Was the monk just the final costume change?
Or was it the man who was trying to be all along?
We'll never truly know. And that mystery, I think,
is part of his legend. Thanks for diving deep
with us today. If you enjoyed this, maybe go
listen to Nuez's, it's only about two minutes
long, and see if you can hear the 20th century
hiding inside it. We'll catch you on the next
deep dive.