VIRTUSO LISZT

"In this study Dana Gooley examines the world of discussion, journalism, and controversy that surrounded the virtuoso Liszt, and reconstructs the multiple symbolic identities that he fulfilled for his enthusiastic audiences. Gooley's work is based on extensive research into contemporary periodicals - well-known and obscure journals and newspapers - as well as letters, memoirs, receipts, and other documents that shed light on Liszt's concertizing activities. Emphasizing the virtuoso's contradictions, the author shows Liszt being constructed as a model aristocrat and a model bourgeois, as a German nationalist and a Hungarian nationalist, as a sensitive romantic artist and a military dictator, as a greedy entrepreneur and as a leading force for humanitarian charity. His popularity, Gooley argues, was not an inevitable result of his musical genius, but depended on specific ways in which his playing intersected with the concerns of his contemporary world."--Jacket.