THE BOOK OF LISZTS

By ELLIOT RAVETZ

It is mainly the image of Liszt as music's first international superstar, and one of the Romantic Century's great Don Juans, that remains fixed in our collective memory: a slim, strikingly handsome six-footer with a flowing mane of shoulder-length hair, a piano conjurer able to summon near orchestral effects and rouse audiences to such frenzied emotional states that the poet Heinrich Heine coined the term "Lisztomania." "I think I laughed--laughed like an idiot" is how Edvard Grieg described his ecstatic reaction to Liszt's playing. George Eliot's recorded impressions of Liszt come very close to swooning.

Confronted by such a charismatic figure, and in the face of such extraordinary raves, it's not surprising that critics have too frequently overlooked--or even denigrated--the quality of Liszt's mind and nature, the range of his work and influence, his greatness as a composer. Indeed, no other composer of the 19th century has been so copiously written about and so little understood, which is why the final volume of Alan Walker's superb three-volume biography, Franz Liszt: The Final Years, 1861-1886 (Knopf; 594 pages; $50), is so welcome.

What distinguishes Walker from Liszt's dozens of earlier biographers is that he is equally strong on the music and the life. A formidable musicologist with a lively polemical style, he discusses the composer's works with greater understanding and clarity than any previous biographer. And whereas many have recycled the same erroneous, often damaging information, Walker has relied on his own prodigious, globe-trotting research, a project spanning 25 years. The result is a textured portrait of Liszt and his times without rival.

As Walker sees it, one of the biggest obstacles in coming to terms with Liszt is the man's protean nature, which invites the common misapprehension of him as superficial. But as Walker's gripping narrative unfolds throughout the three volumes, the astounding depth as well as breadth of Liszt's legacy emerges. Yes, he was a sensualist, but it was also Liszt, tireless in his charity work, who invented the benefit concert, who realized the piano's vast potential and created the modern piano recital, who became the first modern conductor, concerned with musical lines, color and expression rather than simply beating time. As proselytizer he sped the acceptance of countless composers. As the inspirational teacher of a Burke's Peerage of younger pianists, he originated master classes (and, though his own means were slight, he never accepted a fee). Moreover, it was Liszt, frequently decorated by nobles and heads of state, who broke down the class barriers that had earlier relegated Haydn and Mozart to the status of servants.

And then there are Liszt's equally far-ranging accomplishments as a composer. He invented the symphonic tone poem, dramatically expanded the harmonic vocabulary and, among other prescient ideas, experimented with the whole-tone scale and atonality. Some of his piano pieces, notably Les jeux d'eaux a la Villa d'Este, inspired the Impressionism of Debussy and Ravel. As Walker writes, "Liszt's music, like his life, is filled with contrast and unfolds across a variety of genres. It moves from the sacred to the secular, from the stage to the study, from 'programme' to 'absolute' music, from God to the devil. And these categories are themselves made more complicated by the variety of styles which cut across them. Some of Liszt's works are full-blooded, outgoing, flamboyant. Others are withdrawn, economical, ascetic."

The new volume explores a period of wondrous creativity and tremendous personal anguish: within three years, Liszt suffered the death of a son, 20, and a daughter, 26, which were followed by bouts of severe depression, and later the Lear-like estrangement from his second daughter, Cosima Wagner.

Walker is especially good at sorting out the details of Liszt's spiritual life. The son of a father who had spent two years as a Franciscan novice, Liszt aspired to the priesthood in his youth. Yet from the time he took lower orders to become an abbe in the Catholic Church at 53, skeptics have branded him a religious poseur, a judgment abetted by Liszt's lighthearted description of himself as "half Gypsy, half Franciscan," often solemnly quoted by others to impugn his integrity. But Walker's take is firm: in becoming an abbe, Liszt was, as he believed, "fulfilling all the antecedents of [his] youth" and abiding by his deepest convictions.

As Liszt remarked more than once, "Genie oblige!"--genius has its obligations. We too have an obligation to genius, and it is a debt Walker has paid magnificently.