Liszt was the son of a steward in the service of the
Esterházy family, patrons of
Haydn. He was born in 1811 at Raiding in
Hungary and moved as a child to
Vienna, where he took piano lessons from
Czerny and composition lessons from
Salieri. Two years later, in 1823, he moved with his family to
Paris, from where he toured widely as a pianist.
Influenced by the phenomenal violinist
Paganini, he turned his attention to the development of a similar technique as a pianist and in 1835 left Paris with his
mistress, the Comtesse d'Agoult, with whom he travelled widely during the following years, as his reputation as a pianist of astonishing powers grew.
In 1844 he separated from his mistress, the mother of his three children, and in 1848 settled in
Weimar as Director of Music Extraordinary, accompanied by Princess Sayn-Wittgenstein and turning his attention now to
composition and in particular to the creation of a new form, the
symphonic poem.
In 1861 Liszt moved to Rome, where he found expression for his long-held
religious leanings. From 1869 he returned regularly to Weimar, where he had many pupils, and later he accepted similar obligations in
Budapest, where he was regarded as a national hero.
He died in
Bayreuth in 1886, four years after the death of his son-in-law
Wagner. As a pianist, he had no equal, and as a composer he suggested to a younger generation of musicians the new course that music was to take.
Source: http://www.hnh.com/composer/liszt.htm