Franz Liszt - Totentanz

The Fab One in 1843

In eight years of posting classical music on Sundays - over 300 posts to day - I'm kind of surprised that I've never posted Franz Liszt.  Good thing that Halloween is coming because it gives be a great opportunity to correct that with one of the all time great/creepy classical music pieces.  And I can't believe that I've never posted about Liszt before.  You see, he was The Beetles of the 1840s.

Really.  A contemporary  coined the term Lisztomania.  Women packet his many concerts, fought over a dropped glove or handkerchief, and any of these relics were cut up and sold as souvenirs.  He was the greatest performer of his day, and his fame was such that when he personally paid to publish his friend Hector Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique, it saved Berlioz from poverty.

He knew literally everyone who was anyone in the arts in Europe, from Beethoven to Hans Christian Andersen - but including Frédéric Chopin, Richard Wagner, Robert Schumann, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg,  and Alexander Borodin.  He shacked up with a (married) countess for years and had three kids with her.  Like I said, he was The Beetles.

He is without doubt the greatest Hungarian composer of all time,  He wrote too many pieces to count - many of which are famous for their difficulty, leading to frequent performance by musicians looking to display their virtuosity - but a number had a definite fascination with the macabre.  Mephisto Waltz, Pensées des morts, and La lugubre gondola ("The Funeral Gondola") would all be good Halloween songs, but Totentanz (Dance Of The Dead) shows both his virtuoso composition (the creepy part) and his virtuoso performance side - this is serious piano.  As a matter of fact, it's worthy of a performance in Shea Stadium with a screaming audience hoping to get a piece of his handkerchief.