Franz Liszt Franciscan Tertiary

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One of the greatest pianist, and a composer on a high status in musical literature, his musical precocity was early recognized by his parents, and his first teacher was his father, Adam Liszt, a musical amateur. His first public appearance at Oedenburg at the age of nine was so startling a character, that several Hungarian magnates who were present at once assumed the financial responsibilities of his further musical education. 

Taken to Vienna by his father, who devoted himself exclusively to the development of his talented child, he studied the piano for six years with Czerny, and theory and composition with Salieri and Randhartinger. His first public appearance in Vienna (1 Jan., 1823) proved a noteworthy event in the annals of music. From Beethoven, who was present, down to the merest dilettante, everyone forthwith acknowledged his great genius.

His brilliant concert tours in Switzerland and England enhanced an already established reputation. His father's death (1827) made Liszt and his mother dependent on his own personal exertions, but the temporary hardship disappeared when he began his literary and teaching career. His charming personality, conversational brilliancy, and transcendent musical ability opened the world of fashion, wealth and intellect to him. 

His Catholic sturdiness was temporarily shaken by the "Nouveau Christianisme" of Saint-Simon, to which. The unhealthy atmosphere of his associations with Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Heinrich Heine, George Sand, and their coterie, could not fail to weaken his religious moorings. 

His concert tours throughout Europe evoked an unparalleled enthusiasm. Kings and national assemblies bestowed titles of nobility and decorations on him; universities honoured him with academic degrees; cities vied with one another in granting him their freedom; audiences were thrilled as if by an hypnotic influence; public demonstrations, torchlight processions, poetic greetings met him in all directions and made him the object of a hero-worship, that has seldom, if ever, fallen to the lot of any other artist.

It was an act of the same progressive intrepidity, meeting with public manifestations of protest at the performance of an opera of one of his pupils, that caused him to resign his position as court conductor. 

As early as 1856 or 1858 he became a Franciscan tertiary. The failure of the Princess Caroline von Sayn-Wittgenstein, a most estimable lady whose influence over him was most potent for good, to secure a dispensation to marry him, only brought his religious designs to a more definite point. 

He received minor orders from Cardinal Hohenlohe in his private chapel at the Vatican on 25 April, 1865. His career of twenty-one years as an abbé was most exemplary and edifying. His piano pupils followed him on his casual wanderings, contemporaneous art was not neglected, but above all the old ecclesiastical masters and the new movement for the restoration of liturgical music, represented by the Cäcilienverein, found a devoted, enthusiastic, and generous supporter in him. 

His own larger ecclesiastical compositions, though no doubt unwittingly deviating from strict liturgical requirements, are nevertheless imbued with deep, religious sentiment. It was while attending the marriage of his granddaughter, that, after receiving the rites of the Church, he succumbed to an acute attack of pneumonia at the home of a friend. His wish, expressed in a letter (La Mara, I, 439) breathing the most loyal devotion to the Church and humble gratitude to God, to be buried without pomp or display, where he died, was carried out by interring him in the Bayreuth cemetery.