LISTON. 323 LISZT. melancholy nature, he was veiy successful in old- man roles, and afterwards as a clown. His danc- ing was good, and gradually he made himself a favorite with the London audiences. In 182.3 he removed from Covent Garden to Drury Lane, and rn 1837 retired from the stage. During his last jears his mind failed rapidly. Liston's gravity of deportment added much to his comic force, and he was highly praised by Lamb, Matthews. Col- man, and by Leigh Hunt, who considered his rustics much better than his old men. The best roles of Listen were Paul Pry, of which his treatment has become a tradition, Polonius, Slender, Bottom, Bob Acres, Bombasto Furioso, Apollo Belvie in Hook's Killing Xo Murder, Jacob Gawky in The Chapter of Accidents, and Grizzle in Three and Deuce. His wife, whom he married in 1807, was a tiny woman, famous for her Queen Dollalolla in O'Hara's Tom Thumb. LIS'TON, Robert (1794-1847). A Scotch sur- geon, born at Ecclesmachan, in the County of Linlithgow. He studied anatomy at Edinburgh, and was made a surgeon to the Royal Infirmary. In 1835 he became professor of clinical surgery at Vniversity College, London. The skill and the rapidity with which he performed serious opera- tions acquired for him a wide European reputa- tion and an extensive surgical practice in London. His most important works are his Elements of Surgery ( 1831 ) , and Practical Surgery ( 1837 ) , the latter of which passed through several edi- tions. LISTOWEL, lis-tf/fl. A town of Perth Coun- ty, Ontario, Canada, on the llaitland River. 54 miles northeast of London. It is an iniportant railway junction on the Grand Trunk Railway, and has a considerable grain trade. Population, in 1891, 2.587; in 1901, 2693. LISZT, list, Fra>-z (1811-86). A famous Hun- garian pianist and composer. He was bom at Raiding, near Oedenburg, in Hungary, October 22, 1811, and began his musical education at the age of six years. After three years' instruction he surprised his friends by playing a difficult con- certo in public. The evidences of his genius were so patent that his father organized further con- certs, which not only eniianced the boy's musical reputation, but gained for him many important friends and patrons among the Himgarian nobil- ity. It was by means of their financial support that the young pianist was enabled to spend six years, completing his education, at Vienna, to which city his family removed in 1821. His teachers were the celebrated Czerny (piano) and Halieri (theory), men of strong artistic personal- ity, who luidoubtedly supplied the ballast that enabled him to resist the musical trickery in com- position which at first beset his work. After a few public concerts in 1823, he and his father journeyed to Paris, with the view of securing for the boy admission to the Paris Conservatory, which, however, was refused him. owing to an old rule which excluded all foreigners. He. how- ever, studied theory for a time under Paer and Reicha. His first operetta, Don Saneho ou le chateau de I'amour. was produced in 1S25. Two years later his father died, upon which he gave up his concert work, and settled as a teacher in Paris. Contemporary critics described him as 'a pianist, the most extraordinary and fascina- ting ever known, and one of the most wonderful of improvisators.' His early piano compositions were in the style and fashion of the period, and were largely paraphrases upon popular or fash- ionable ofieras, in which art was frequently sae- riiieed to a .sort of trickery, whole passages being so written as to lie practically impos- sible to any one but himself. He met with immediate success as a teacher, the aristo- cratic patrons and friends of his boyhood ral- lying to him, and enabling him to satisfy every social as well as musical ambition. The appear- ance of Paganini in I'aris in 1831 inspired him to become as gieat a virtuoso on the piano as that master was on the violin. He was of a peculiarly impressionable temf)erament, and was in turn strongly affected by the political happen- ings of the period, the ceremoniali.sm of the Church, the genius of Beethoven, Weber, Chopin, Berlioz, Schumann, and Wagner; besides which he experienced several affairs of the heart, the most .serious of which was his liai-ion with the au- thoress 'Daniel Stern' (the Countess d'Agoult). Together they retired to Geneva (1835), where three children were born to them, two daughters and a son. Cosima, the youngest of the daugh- ters, married first Hans von Biilow (1857), and. after separating from him in 1869, became the wife of Wagner, of whom her father was a mighty champion. In 1839 he reapjieared in public with signal success, his only serious competitor being Thalberg (q.v.), whom he easily out- rivaled. In 1849 he became ka|)ellmeister to the Grand Duke of Weimar, a post which he relin- quished in 1861. Four years later he took minor orders in the Catholic Church, and was subse- quently known as the AhhO Liszt. During his period of service at Weimar occurred the really great events of his life. He was enabled to dte- eover, help, and introduce many artists of whom the world came to be i)roud : he advanced most thoroughly the school of music to which he be- longed, and which has since been described in the history of music as the Xew German School, whose characteristic was a freedom from the old classical rules of tonality and form. Here also he began his second period of composition, by which alone he is to l)e judged as a composer. His work was now characterized by his own individ- uality as a creative artist, and marked by the inherent mysticism of his nature. He took up orchestral instrumentation and the classic sjTn- phony where his great predecessors had left it, and evolved the symphonic poem, in which the emotions and their portrayal are of more impor- tance than the prescribed forms of the classic symphony or overture. While the symphonic poem was akin to the symphony in style, it was smaller in extent, and had no pause lietween the movements — which latter were bounded or di- vided according to the emotional moods and de- mands of the subject or story under treatment. In brief, the fundamental laws of form were adhered to, but not the conventional formula-. Perhaps the most eventful incident connected with his stay at Weimar was his introduction and championship of Wagner and his work. He pro- duced Lohengrin in 1850. and revived Drr Flie- gcnde Hollander and Tannhiiuser. He also pre- sented notable works of Raff, Schumann, and Berlioz. In 1875 he became presiilent of the Hun- garian Academy of Jfusic at Pesth. between which city, Weimar, and Rome he spent the last few years" of his life. With the passing of time critical musical opinion has come to be widel,>
