In 1835/1836 Liszt was staying in Switzerland with his mistress Marie Comtesse d’Agoult. He published his bold, avant-garde musical portrayal of his travels in the Swiss mountains in 1842 under the title Album d’un Voyageur. Around 1850 the one-time enfant terrible had become a mature composer. Liszt reworked his early compositions and published them in 1855 as Années de Pèlerinage, Erstes Jahr, Schweiz. The showpiece in the collection is the naturalistic and poetic Vallée d’Obermann after the novel by Senancourt; the early version is also reproduced in the appendix to our edition (single edition with extensive commentary of the 1855 version HN 813).
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Preface
Thanks to the kind courtesy of the Saltykow-Shchedrin Library in Leningrad, it has now been possible to base this new edition of Part 1 of Années de Pèlerinage, Première Année, Suisse, on the autograph, not available for the first edition and for a long time considered to be lost. The original edition published by Schott in 1855 agrees, for the most part, with the … more
Critical Commentary
About the composer

Franz Liszt
The most famous piano virtuoso of the nineteenth century is regarded as the most influential artist and composer (with Berlioz, Wagner) of the so-called New German School. His immense musical oeuvre comprises, above all else, works for solo piano, including numerous transcriptions; he also devised the symphonic poem. Important, too, are his sacred and secular choral works and songs.
1811 | Born in Doborján/Raiding (Sopron) on October 22, son of an official in the service of Prince Esterházy. First piano lessons from his father, early first attempts at composition, first public performance at age nine. |
1822 | Relocation of the family to Vienna, studies with Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri. |
1823 | Relocation of the family to Paris. Composition studies with Ferdinando Paër and Antonín Reicha (1826). Performances in salons, concerts. |
1824–27 | Concert tours through France, to England and Switzerland. Composition of opera paraphrases for piano. |
1830 | Acquaintance with Berlioz, self-study by reading. He becomes Parisian society’sfavourite pianist and piano teacher. |
1835 | He moves to Switzerland with Countess Marie d’Agoult: their first child together, Blandine-Rachel, is born here. He continues concertizing in Paris. |
from 1839 | Continuous concert tours throughout Europe. |
from 1847 | Symphonic poems, including No. 2, “Tasso: lamento e trionfo”; No. 1, “Ce qu‘on entend sur la montagne” (‘Bergsymphonie,’ ‘Mountain Symphony’); “A Faust Symphony in Three Character Pictures”; “A Symphony to Dante’s Divine Comedy” (‘Dante Symphony’); as well as [No. 11], “Hunnenschlacht” (“Battle of the Huns”). |
1848–61 | Kapellmeister in Weimar; he advocates for progressive music (Wagner, Schumann, Berlioz). |
1857–62 | Oratorio, “The Legend of St. Elisabeth.” |
1861–68 | Resident in Rome. |
1865 | Takes minor holy orders. |
1866–72 | Oratorio, “Christus.” |
1871 | Appointed Hungarian court councilor; he lives in Rome, Weimar, and Budapest. |
1886 | Death in Bayreuth on July 31. |