Franz Liszt Biography

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gloves, ripping them to shreds as souvenirs. The atmosphere in his concerts was due to his personality and presence onstage. Many witnesses said it’d reach a ‘level of mystical ecstasy.”

In his later years, Liszt drifted more and more away from the musical taste of his time. An early example is the melodrama "Der traurige Mönch” after a poem by Nikolaus Lenau, composed in the beginning of October 1860. While in the 19th century harmonies were usually considered as major or minor triads to which dissonances could be added, Liszt took the augmented triad as central chord. Liszt liked to experiment with ‘forbidden’ things such as parallel fifths in the "Csárdás macabre” and atonality in the “Bagatelle sans tonalité.”

Liszt fell down the stairs of a hotel in Weimar on July 2, 1881. He was left immobilised for eight weeks after the accident and never fully recovered from it. He then developed dropsy, asthma, insomnia, a cataract of the left eye and heart disease. He suffered from recurring feelings of desolation, despair and preoccupation with death, which were reflected in his works from this period."I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound,” he told Lina Ramann. Liszt died in Bayreuth, Germany, on July 31, 1886, at the age of 74, officially as a result of pneumonia. Some argue that medical malpractice played a role in his death. He was buried on August 3, 1886, in the municipal cemetery of Bayreuth in fulfillment of his wishes.