Liszt's Final Decade

Reviews / Votes

The product of painstaking scholarship. It brings to light unpublished letters and treats this period of Liszt's life in great detail, revealing new information about his attitudes toward composition and his general world-view...Most importantly, it realigns our understanding of Liszt's late output, moving the focus away from a handful of famous pieces. -- Joanne Cormac * MUSIC & LETTERS * The Liszt that emerges from the pages of Dolores Pesce's account of his last decade is admirable--no surprise--and likeable as well...If anyone still believes that Liszt's religion was a pose, that he took his minor clerical orders as a kind of publicity stunt, Pesce's book should put that notion to rest. -- Stephen Brown * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT * The University of Rochester Press has been publishing significant books about Liszt lately...A highly elaborate scholarly study of the life and works of a composer whose final years had not been described as thoroughly and perceptively before. -- Albert Brussee * LISZT BULLETIN * Examines closely Liszt's last period, relying more extensively on Liszt's own words, via his copious correspondence, than has any previous biographer. The volume reveals rather more of the composer's late interior life than emerges in Alan Walker's standard and satisfying biography. -- B. J. Murray * CHOICE * Particularly welcome are the close readings of Liszt's late correspondence, the detailed coverage of his late religious music, and the reconstruction of his self-image. This is an important book. -- Jonathan Kregor, author of <i>Liszt as Transcriber</i> and editor of the Journal of the American Liszt Society A series of studies that allow [Pesce] to focus on particular critical issues, rather than get distracted by the endless detail of Liszt's extremely busy life. Her in-depth analysis of Liszt's correspondence from these years is based on the highest critical standards...Pesce questions the nature of Liszt's 'depression' and corrects the simplistic notion that professional disappointment was its main cause. The idea that Liszt's Catholicism 'saved him' is both qualified and substantiated through an examination of particular religious ideas, as well as [his] sacred works. This music is the least well known of Liszt's late oeuvre, and therefore its close consideration constitutes an important scholarly contribution in itself. -- Shay Loya * NINETEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC REVIEW *