Liszt, Ferenc (Franz) (1811-86), Hungarian composer, conductor and virtuoso pianist, 6. Raiding in Hungary; studied under Czerny and Salieri in Vienna (1821-3), Paer (1823) and Reicha (1826) in Paris. By this time he had won considerable fame as a pianist in Vienna, Paris and London. During his sojourn in Paris in 1830-2 he came into touch with the romantics (Berlioz, Chopin, George Sand, etc.), and 2 years later he began his liaison with the Countess d;Agoult by whom he had 3 children, including Cosima, who became first Hans von Billow's and then Wagner's wife.

The next few years were spent travelling in Switzerland and Italy, recorded in the Album sun voyageur, L836, 1840; first pub. complete in 1842 (several of the pieces re-appeared in the first book of Annees de pelerinage, 1855). These pieces, the great B minor Sonata (1853) and the2 Concertos, are the finest of his innumerable contributions to pianoforte literature, which include transcriptions of songs and of symphonic works, formidable etudes fantasias on the operas of the day, Hungarian rhapsodies, etc.