
                      Franz Liszt, Freemason 

                          by GRACE CLARK 
                      Murray Route, Box 314G 
                     Ardmore, Oklahoma 73401 

   The 19th-century romantic composer, Franz Liszt was born in 
Raiding, Hungary, on October 22, 1811, the year of a great comet. 
His parents were Anna and Adam Liszt. Adam Liszt was employed as 
an accountant for the powerful and wealthy Esterhazy family and 
was also an amateur musician who, before being transferred to 
Raiding, played with the court orchestra under Haydn when the 
regular musicians were on holiday. 

   Franz Liszt was a child prodigy. His first public appearance 
was at the age of nine, and from that day onward, he was a public 
figure. Adam Liszt was granted a leave of absence from his job 
plus a meager yearly income so that he could take the young boy 
to Vienna to pursue the study of music. His teachers in Vienna 
were Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven, and Salieri, the rival of 
Mozart. Franz Liszt was called "the reincarnation of Mozart." 

   After a year, the Liszt family moved on to Paris. Because 
Cherubini, the president of the Paris Conservatory, did not like 
child prodigies, Liszt was refused admittance on the grounds that 
he was a foreigner. Adam Liszt continued with private teachers 
for Franz, including the famous instructors Paer and Reicha. Soon 
Franz was the darling of the Parisian salons. 

   Around the age of thirteen, Liszt's father arranged concert 
tours for Franz to several European cities, including London 
where he played for the Queen. When Franz was sixteen, Adam Liszt 
died unexpectedly, and Franz returned to Paris to live with his 
mother. In order to support her and himself, he gave piano 
lessons. Because of his successful concert tours, he had become 
very well known and was much sought after as a teacher. 

   During the next few years, Liszt met such intellectuals and 
artistic luminaries as Frdric Chopin, Victor Hugo, Alphonse 
Lamartine, George Sand, Hector Berloiz, Nicol Paganini, etc. 
Franz was also an avid reader during this time, and he wrote to a 
friend saying, "Hugo, Chataubriand, Beethoven, Locke, Plato, 
Byron, Homer, Mozart, Weber, Bachthey are all around me! I study 
them, I meditate on them, I devour them with fury." 

   During Franz Liszt's virtuoso years, 1838-1847, often referred 
to as "The Years of Transcendental Execution," Liszt appeared in 
virtually every corner of every country of Europe including 
Spain, Portugal, Turkey, France, Germany, Russia, Rumania, 
Poland, Czechoslavkia, Belgium, England, Austria, Denmark, 
Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Translvania. 

   "Lisztamania" broke out in Europe during the 1840's as women 
would try to cut locks from his hair, tear pieces from his 
clothing, jump on stage to grab a piano string that snapped, 
collect his cigar stubs, and keep the dregs from the coffee he 
drank. Fashionable women wore his picture on cameo brooches. 

   It was against this backdrop that Franz Liszt became a Freema 
son on September 18, 1841, in the Zur Einigkeit Lodge, Frankfurt-
am-Main, Germany. His sponsor was Wilhelm Speyer, a well-known 
composer of songs. On February 22, 1842, he was admitted to the 
Zur Eintracht Lodge, Berlin. On September 23, 1843, he was made 
an honorary member of the Freemasons Lodge in Iserlohn, and on 
July 1845, he joined the Lodge St. Johannes Modestia cum Liberate 
in Zurich. 

   When Liszt was asked what the goal for human beings was, he 
replied Masonically saying that it was to strive as much as 
possible to attain Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Liszt considered 
music a divine gift and not a possession of the artist. 

   Franz Liszt was the first entertainment star of any real 
magnitude before the modern "pop" artists. Significantly, given 
his Masonic background, he was the most generous with his time, 
money, and talent of all the other then popular composers and 
musicians. He gave benefit performances almost everywhere he 
went, and his contributions to charity and worthy causes are very 
well documented. 

   Some of the more interesting ones include the benefit 
performances to raise funds for the restoration of the Cologne 
Cathedral. Liszt also took it upon himself to almost single-
handedly raise the money for the Beethoven Monument which was 
unveiled in Bonn in 1845, and it was Liszt who made Beethoven's 
music popular. 

   After giving a concert for the University of Konigsberg, Liszt 
was given an honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy; and at the 
end of a recital in the National Theater in Budapest in 1838, 
which was given for the theater, a group of Hungarian noblemen 
came on stage and presented Liszt with the Hungarian Sword of 
Honor. Space does not permit listing his many other titles, 
honors, and decorations. 

   Franz Liszt was appointed Court Music Director at Weimar (the 
home of Goethe and Schiller) in 1841 by Maria Pavlovna, sister of 
the Tsar of Russia, but did not take up residence there until 
1848. He held this position from 1842 to 1861. Under his 
leadership, many operas were produced, some for the first time, 
at Weimar including works by Berloiz, Verdi, Rossini, Gluck, 
Beethoven, Mozart, Raff, Cornelius, and Wagner. 

   Throughout his life, Liszt was a collector of pianos, and many 
piano manufacturers felt honored to present him with their finest 
instruments. In addition, Lizst obtained possession of 
pianofortes or pianos owned by Mozart and Beethoven. 

   Franz Liszt was also the most painted, photographed, and 
caricatured musical personality of the 19th Century. Some of the 
more popular paintings of Liszt were done by Layrand, Kulbach, 
Ingres, and Lehmann. In December, 1869, the great American poet 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow commissioned the artist George Healy 
to paint Liszt's portrait when the two men visited Liszt in Rome 
at the Monastary of Santa Francesca Romana. In addition, many 
medallions were struck in his honor, and the Italian sculptor 
Bartolini did a marble bust of Liszt in 1838. 

   After Liszt retired from the concert scene in 1847, he was 
never again paid one penny for playing or conducting. He rarely 
appeared in public, and then only for charity. Nor did he charge 
his students for their lessons. He took only advanced pupils who 
came to him from universities and conservatories from all over 
the globe. 

   Beginning in 1869 until his death in July 1886, Liszt divided 
his time between Budapest, Weimar, and Rome. In 1875 he was 
appointed President of the Budapest Academy of Music, a post he 
held until his death. 

   Although he took only the four minor orders, Liszt became a 
Catholic priest in Rome in 1865, and he even lived in the Vatican 
for a while. Liszt, nevertheless, retained his links with the 
Freemasons. He was elected a Master of the Aur Einibkeit Lodge in 
Budapest in 1870, and after his death in July 1886, the 
Freemasons Journal published an obituary notice which referred to 
"Brother Franz Liszt, on whose grave we deposited the acacia 
branch." 

   Liszt's music was the music of the future. He wrote some 1,400 
hundred songs, 700 of which bear his name, the others being 
transcriptions, but when Liszt finished a transcription, it was 
almost a new piece of music. Some of his compositions include the 
beautiful "Liebestraum, #3," the "Hungarian Rhapsodies," the 
"Transcendental tudes," the "Paganini tudes," and the "Sonata 
in B Minor." 

   He also composed many religious works, including the oratorio 
Christus, in addition to symphonies such as the Dante and Faust 
symphonies. Many claim he invented the symphonic or tone poem and 
atonality. Clearly, he revised the way music was written at that 
time. 

   His contributions to music are only now being recognized, and 
today there are eighteen Liszt socieites around the world. Rarely 
has a composer had so lasting and deep an influence on the world 
of music. There can be no doubt that the influence of Franz Liszt 
lives on today and that the wish he expressed shortly before his 
death in 1886 has come true: "My only remaining ambition is to 
hurl a lance as far as possible into the boundless realm of the 
future." 

-----

Responding to The Journal's January 1990 articles on Mozart, Mrs. 
Clark wrote "Franz Liszt, Freemason" to underline this great 
composer's tie to the Craft and his service to humankind. Mrs. 
Clark's husband became a Master Mason in Chicora Lodge No. 366, 
Charleston, South Carolina, in 1955, and Brother Clark is a 
member of the Charleston Scottish Rite Bodies as well as Omar 
Shrine Temple, Charleston. 

