Franz Liszt: Classical Music's Monosodium Glutamate 

Liszt is to music what Salvador Dali is to painting. The critics keep telling us their work is in such bad taste and we are not supposed to like them, but something in their work connects and resonates with people and they never fadeaway.

My supervisor at university held to the unpopular view that Liszt was the most important musical innovator of the 19th century. Everyone hated him saying it, but I’ve come to the view that he was basically right. Liszt’s technique of thematic transformation (inspired by Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy) made Wagnerian Leitmotifs possible. His harmony was always forward-looking: Les Jeux d'Eaux à la Villa d'Este seems to anticipate Debussy.

Those who criticize Liszt either never listened to his large and versatile output, or obediently fell in-line with the haughty critics. Liszt is endlessly fascinating and takes you on various journeys; thrilling, pure fun, serious, spiritual and sublime.

Liszt is my desert island composer. He composed over 3000 works. His personality dominated the 19th Century piano scene. You need a pianist such as Arrau or Bolet to bring this music to life.

Thanks Dave! Looking forward to your Liszt Essential Works for Beginners video

The orchestra I play in performed Liszt's second piano concerto a few months ago, and we greatly enjoyed playing it. Our conductor quoted Bartók in the program notes, who said something like, "When Liszt is fairly appraised, everyone will realize that he is the one who led us into the 20th century."

A theme played by trombones in the last movement of Liszt’s first piano concerto shows up as one of the main themes in the first movement of Mahler’s 6th, with almost no alterations. Also, the peaceful pause before the entrance of the choir in Liszt’s Faust Symphony reminds me a lot of when the choir first comes in, in Mahler’s 2nd. If Liszt is monosodium glutamate, Mahler is stereosodium glutamate.

I’ve always said Liszt makes my musical life taste fabulous 🤤

I think the critics who dislike Liszt have never forgiven him for being a popular virtuoso. Liszt and Paganini were essentially the first rock stars, drawing the same sorts of fanatical audiences that rock stars drew once rock became a "thing." They composed music that emphasized their showmanship and virtuosity, though (at least in Liszt's case) it also reached major heights of genuine profundity. Liszt wrote most of his pieces (especially his piano solos) for himself to show off his technique, and he frequently improvised in public and then wrote out his improvisations from memory a day or so later, publishing them as "variations" if the piece he was improvising on was by someone else and as "revisions" if the piece was his own (which is one reason why there are so many versions of some of Liszt's pieces).

That Donizetti funeral march was played on the march for Lincoln’s funeral.

That Chinese lady on the jar has tickled the taste buds of millions with her recipes - I love it! I had an early encounter with Liszt's music as a youngster in the form of a selection from the Annees de Pelerinage. It was unusual for me as growing up I mostly liked the drama & impact of orchestral music but there was something quite expansive about those pieces that engaged me in a way that other solo piano composers didn't. So I then dug further into the piano music, the symphonic poems, piano concertos, Faust symphony etc. & discovered the tainted love that what appreciating Liszt is all about. I still can't quite work out why I like him, but as time has passed I've given up looking for an explanation. Liszt is just possessed of something that defies any kind of analysis in the accepted sense. And that's more than good enough & satisfying for me!

My parents came into my room while I was watching you list off the ingredients for hot sauce, and I had to try and explain to them that it's a conservation about liszt 😅

Lizst was the avant-garde composer of his time, an experimenter, an artist. Hugely influential. There is garlic music snd music without garlic, in my view. British music of course has no garlic, and German music only occasionally.

My goodness that funeral march really does sound exactly like the middle section of Mahler’s “Die zwei blauen Augen” I guess we know where that came from! Thank you for that :)

I used to arrange my CD collection by composer birthdate, reasoning that instead of browsing through the Sch___ section, I was more interested in hearing something from a specific time period. As such I found composer birthdate to be a more useful Dewey decimal system than alphabetically. Anyway, when I did so, some composers always seemed out of place and way more modern and experimental than their peers. Liszt always stuck out as someone who was born several decades too early. [marriage forced me to go to an alphabetical arrangement]

Liszt, and Berlioz also, were pathfinders who paved the way for later composers like Wagner and Mahler. It took the advent of LP recordings to get Mahler into the musical big leagues. Liszt has been left behind.

This is great!! My love for classical music combined with my love for chili crisp!!

I think Liszt's keyboard paraphrases of other people's music are some of his best contributions. He did that sort of thing really well.

Funny and insightful Analogy, Dave! Liszt is in my list of Top 10 preferred composers due to the characteristics you so well described in the video. Thank you!

PLEASE STOP !!!!!All these food items are making me hungry......Instead of Franz Liszt, I'll be needing a SHOPPING LIST.....Another fine video.. THANKS DAVE.......

Have you ever tried monosodium glutamate crisps (or chips as Americans call them)? Absolutely delicious.

Hi Dave. Do you think Gottschalk was influenced by Liszt? I hear a definite resemblance in this piece.

Lao Gan Ma! I love this stuff. The chili crisp is great, but the Chili Oil with Fermented Soybeans is INCREDIBLE. You gotta try it, Dave. Total umami bomb.

I'll take an order of Peking Duck and Prometheus to go, thank you.

The first pieces that hit me as a kid were Liszt’s piano concertos (Brendel/Vox). Years after that I heard the Ervin Nyiregyházi album and I realized that Liszt was a towering musical mystic.

Music and food: without using a search engine, I instantly think of the poisoned mushrooms in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the chicken dinner at the end of Don Giovanni, the roasted goose in Carmina Burana -are there any other examples?

Well said sir. I've never been of the school that looks down on Liszt and I've always thought of those people as snobs and rather limited in their musical range and appreciation.

Liszt is flour. It literally means "flour" in Hungarian 🙂

This is so nice. Thanks!

I've always liked Liszt, but now I'm interested in checking out Chili Crisp!

Academics at a certain Antipodean music department (*cough Sydney University cough*) used to leave a performance if a student was playing Liszt. There's an Australian documentary called "Facing The Music" from 2001, which is really quite good, about the department facing funding cuts. I was perhaps slightly less sympathetic towards them all than I might have been. (To be fair the documentary was filmed quite a while after my time there (not that I was a music student. Knew people who were though).

You’re funny, man. Good stuff!

Please show us your rock collection in the overflow room.

Liszt is not MSG. He is cocaine.

I recently worked my way through the Leslie Howard Liszt box set, listening to every CD twice (interspersed with other recordings of other artists in order to maintain my sanity). I came to appreciate Liszt all the more, but now I need to take a long break from him! :-)

Massenet and fluff, Now Liszt and Chilli Crisp. I sense an ongoing theme.

I became a Liszt addict after hearing David Wilde play the B minor sonata at my school. Then came Bolet's recordings. BTW, surely mahler 8 is heavily influenced or indebted (?) to the faust symphony.

The musical cooking channel. LOL

That funeral march was Donizetti inventing Mahler--as Mahler well knew and I believe acknowledged. Donizetti heard the transcription and loved it. But it's pretty much all in the opera. It's not trashy at all. Giulini conducted a powerful performance in Florence (MMF) in the 50s. MSG makes me thirsty but I love me some umami.

Yeah, good analogy. - I looked it up … FYI 川南 油辣子 means “Southern Sichuan Chili Oil”.

I avoid palm oil (listed in the last jar featured here) at all costs. bad for your heart and bad for the environment. Sometimes I take the trouble of avoiding things with monosodium glutamate. Liszt? Every now and then I'll listen to his music, but he's not one of my go to composers.