Klára Hamburger
Liszt: Conclusion to a Life
Alan Walker: Franz Liszt, Volume Three. The Final Years 1861–1886. New York, A. Knopf, 1996, 594 pp.
June of last year saw the publication of the third and final volume of this, the largest of Liszt biographies to date, a work which Alan Walker, Professor of Music at the McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (Canada) has devoted much of his life to. The Virtuoso Years, 1811–1847 appeared in 1983, and The Weimar Years, 1848–1861, in 1989. The Hungarian government has honoured this distinguished Liszt scholar with the Pro Cultura Hungarica order and this final volume was named as Book of the Year in the United States. Professor Walker has edited and contributed to a volume of essays on Liszt and, as a byproduct of the great biography, has also published two other important works. He has been an untiring organizer of Liszt conferences and festivals in Canada. He frequently lectures in Hungary, acts as a judge of the International Liszt Piano Competition, and generously supports the Liszt Ferenc Museum and Liszt Ferenc Society.
"To Lisztians across the world, wherever they may be… affectionately dedicated", Professor Walker writes, and indeed, he presents Liszt as one of the most important composers with a key role in 19th-century music, and not like many musicologists as merely an incomparable pianist. Many, such as the French and the Germans, have claimed Liszt as their own but Walker shows him to be self-evidently and unambiguously the Hungarian musician Liszt himself always considered himself as being. This also means that Liszt's activity in Hungary, the main events in Hungarian history during the last century, a detailed description of Liszt's Hungarian background, and the story of the foundation and early years of the Budapest Academy of Music have all found their way into the standard literature on Liszt abroad.
Across nearly 600 pages, Walker narrates the last phase of Liszt's life - one rather more colourful and eventful than that of most artists, and presents the locales and participants in a way which makes the book almost impossible to put down even for those, like the present writer, who have been professionally concerned with the subject for many long years. For Walker, readers are sacrosanct and for their sake he has provided this rolling stream of events, as in the earlier volumes, with an excellent frame, dividing it into books, chapters and sub-chapters, all with pertinent and poetic titles (often harmonizing with Liszt's works) and numbers. A résumé of each is included in the Contents. Even the typographical design assists the reader in finding his way effortlessly through this huge mass of material with running heads at the top of each right hand page and those of the sub-chapters on the left. Indeed, the staggering dimensions of the material are also evident from the footnotes, which in a masterly fashion condense people and events that could fill further volumes. Orientation is further facilitated by illustrations of real curiosity value, four Appendixes (two of documentary nature: "Liszt's Titles and Honours" and a "Catalogue of Princess Carolyne's Writings"), a bibliography of sources consulted, and a detailed index of persons, places, and titles.
As the earlier volumes did, so too does this take a pre-eminent place, outstanding among biographies of musicians in general. It too processes a multitude of so far unpublished documents resting in the libraries and archives of several countries: manuscripts (letters, diaries, reports, medical diagnoses, notes and official entries, papers and minutes) along with items from the contemporary press and old publications which had been completely forgotten or inaccessible - indeed even the very existence of most of them had not been known.
During the course of his many years of research, the author visited all the many and different places that Liszt's career had taken him to. Clearly his own prestige and personal charm helped him gain access to places that Hungarian scholars can only dream about, places closed so far to curious scholars, such as the Dominican convent of the Madonna del Rosario on Rome's Monte Mario. He gathered important information in institutions where others are glad even to gain admission, such as the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, and was received by private collectors who possess Liszt documents.
All the many quotations taken from the fantastically rich documentary material and primary literary sources add new elements to the biography or clarify some neglected, distorted aspects, circumstances and their background. They present Liszt as he showed himself to others in word or deed and convincingly display the way he was seen by his contemporaries. The personalities of people around him who were crucial to his own life are clearly portrayed. All this provides a more precise, complete and authentic history of Liszt's life than any earlier one. Indeed, it seems as if at last a great many so far irresolvable conundrums have been solved: how exactly did that-and-that happen? Who exactly was so-and-so? Where exactly did such-and-such happen and why?
[...]
Klára Hamburger
is Secretary of the Hungarian Liszt Society. Her many publications on Liszt include biography in English, ublished by Corvina Books (1985).
