Franz Liszt, Volume 3: The Final Years: 1861-1886 Kindle Edition

This volume of Alan Walker’s biography of Alan Walker’s Liszt biography covers the last 25 years of Liszt’s life, from 1861 to 1886. Walker shows how Liszt set the paradigm for the master class where pianists, singers and instrumentalists go to a senior figure of international for guidance in matters of interpretation of music. Walker also give detailed analysis of how Liszt’s music anticipated much of the development of music in the 20th-century with piano pieces embracing atonality and tonal clusters. Where Liszt’s earlier music anticipated the music of Wagner and even Debussy, his later music looked forward to Arnold Schoenberg and Bela Bartok. The personal drama of Liszt’s life is well-covered with his complicated relationships with friends and family. In short, a highly recommended book.

I can only echo what I wrote about Volume 2:This is a magnificent biography. I have read all three volumes and recommend them to every music lover. Liszt was significant in so many ways, as a nurturer of other composers, as a voice of his native land, and of course as a friend and victim of Wagner (but who was NOT a victim of that anti-musical megalomaniac?)This biography covers other complex musical relationships existing between Liszt and the most famous composers of that time, including Brahms and both Schumanns. Then too there are stories of difficulties in the musical world beyond the personal, such as with the dedication of a memorial to Beethoven at his birthplace.Without a doubt, a wonderful history of that thrilling era in European music when sonority and actual human passion meant something to the creators.

How to review such a gigantic and magnificent biography as Alan Walker's on Franz Liszt and do full justice to its three bulky volumes and its about 1700 pages, all of them well stuffed with information? Almost impossible! This is probably one of the best biographies ever written, one of the most fascinating, one of the most readable and attractive. It is not only a ravishing story of a composer's life that is more riveting than most composers', glorious in its palmy days as well as a little tragic and sentimental in the third volume's account for his old age and its decay and fall, full of alcoholism, depression and diseases; sensationally super-romantic in his relationship with women and illegitimate children as well as sympathetically generous and open-handed in his contacts with other musicians and composers and musical disciples - and ultimately the pious Catholic Abbé Liszt taking holy orders. It is also a biography covering Liszt's music with initiated though always very lisible analyses, a great surplus in a biography, as biographies often turn their backs on the real reason why a composer, a writer, a painter is well worth being biographied. Finally, it gives a grandiose survey of the musical and cultural life in Europe in the middle of the 19th century, stunningly rich and meaty and well-informed, continuously offering you new aspects of an extremely enthralling field. Walker's ambition has been to weed in the marshland of legends and errors and inaccuracies in the prevalent image of Liszt's life, spread since the composer's own lifetime. It is the scholarly result of his incredible efforts to get a clearer picture of his life. This is a truer picture of a mysteriously legendary composer than we have had earlier - though it is a very kind and maybe a bit uncritical portrait we get of this charismatic super-genius. Liszt's position in European music and culture in all during his active life was incomprehensibly great, maybe greater and more influential than any composer ever had. It is a tremendous adventure to read about all his glorious triumphs as a virtuoso pianist and as a composer, a conductor, a teacher and a musical promotor, a writer, a freedom symbol and patriot, a friend of Chopin's and Wagner's and many other activities and characteristics. I have been rapturously plunged into these three volumes for a very long time, and I wish every music lover to enjoy them as much as I have. All three of them!

By the time you finish volume 3 of this magnificent biography, you’ll feel as if you’ve lost an old friend. Walker’s portrait of Liszt is both comprehensive and compelling, and deservedly loving. The best biography of anyone I’ve ever read!

This is the third and final volume of Alan Walker's lengthy and in-depth biography of Liszt. It so happens to be the third volume I purchase. This is the most informative and entertaining biography I've ever read (including footnotes and the appendices). Mr. Walker goes beyond the call of duty (or defines it), by having done extensive travels during his years researching for this masterwork on the master of Romantic music, Franz Liszt. He was even granted access to the Vatican's Secret Archive to study what happened during Liszt and Carolyne's struggle to get married.Anyone truly interested in reading the definitive biography on Liszt cannot consider anything else but these three volumes by Mr. Walker. I came upon them by chance, and now do I consider myself very lucky. He has since the publication of the third volume released some complimentary books, with more specific topics and correspondence of the time. Alan Walker is indeed The Liszt erudite. Period!

I purchased this version(Kindle Version)just for convenience!I have regular print copies of the Alan Walker Liszt Vol. 1,2,&3 series already.I wanted another choice of "method of reading",and it's easier to read my Kindle Fire in the dark and ANYWHERE whenever..Alan Walker is an EXCELLENT author and I re-read his books and always find them interesting each time.There is so much information in his writings,one needs to read things a few times regardless of what one reads them on.

Walker spent a good portion of his life producing I believe 5 volumes on Liszt's life. His writing style flows and is enjoyable.The info in those books is astounding. Walker presents a true picture of Liszt's amazing life. I would highly recommend all of the volumes. Because of Walker, Liszt's music is getting better known though much prejudice still exists from Liszt's time to this very day against his music esp. here in the USA.

I have just read all three volumes of this biography of Liszt over the past 2 months. Once I had embarked on it (inspired by a visit to Weimar) , I found it hard to put down - it is a page turner of mega proportions. The scholarship is astounding down to the smallest details which are never pedantic or boring (even the copious footnotes are eminently readable) but all woven into the larger portrait of this remarkable man. Through this epic journey, we come to love him as a friend and companion and I know of no other biography of a long dead celebrity which brings the subject to life in so vivid a way . The cast of many characters in a life that stretched almost throughout the 19th century includes many other famous musicians of their day (including of course the dislikable Richard Wagner) , but many of the lesser known brought out of dusty musical history textbooks into the realms of the living. I can't recommend this biography highly enough to anyone who is remotely interested in the history of music in the 19th century - you will be taken on an exciting roller coaster ride of epic proportions which was Liszt's life and career.

Alan Walker’s magisterial 3-volume biography of Liszt needs no further endorsement having been a standard work for many years. This is just to urge anyone interested in Liszt to plunge in and not be put off by its length - it is compulsive reading, even the footnotes, which contain much fascinating material. The scholarship is awesome.Liszt has suffered at the hands of his biographers in the 20th century - Ernest Newman’s disgraceful character assassination, Sacheverell Sitwell’s friendly but inaccurate biography, and Eleanor Perenyi’s quirky volume which stops abruptly in 1861, to name but three. Walker unpicks the many controversies surrounding Liszt’s long and complicated life, and explores the man, his life and his music in a compelling narrative.

This is without question the best biography of Franz Liszt. It was thoroughly researched over a 25-year period. It was written in an engaging manner and does not gloss over any details. The table of contents was written in the informative old-school manner. The footnotes are helpfully located on the pages where they are referenced, rather than at the end of the book. Everything about this book is outstanding. You might think that three volumes are a lot to read, but they are pure enjoyment. This shows the painstaking work that the author brought to this book in writing in a manner that invites you into the 19th century life of Franz Liszt.

Das Buch war wie neu; dies ist einfach ein muß für alle F.Liszt fans (wie eben die andere zwei Volumen auch), gut geschrieben, sehr, sehr interessante Geschichten aus dem vergangenen Jahren... !