Living with Liszt: From the Diary of Carl Lachmund, an American Pupil of Liszt, 1882-1884

2010 | Biography

Carl V. Lachmund (1857-1928) was an American pupil of Liszt; he studied with the Hungarian master in Weimar between the years 1882-1884. During that time he kept a diary which eventually ran to some 700 pages. This document gives one of the most exhaustive accounts of Liszt's keyboard instruction extant. Some time after World War I, and in response to a demand from a number of musicians with an interest in the matter, Lachmund decided to turn his diary into a book about his daily life with Liszt. In order to gather additional background material about a period now long past, he wrote to more than 200 musicians in America and Europe who had had some personal contact with the composer, and invited them to share their personal reminiscences. The book never appeared and his papers came to rest in the New York Public Library, with whose cooperation this book is now being published. The Liszt scholar Alan Walker has undertaken the task of introducing, editing, and annotating the Lachmund papers. He calls the diary an irreplaceable source of firsthand material which throws fresh light on the way Liszt taught the piano. Liszt also emerges from these pages as a great and noble human being.

This book will interest all teachers, performers, and students of the period. It represents a major contribution to nineteenth-century studies.

Alan Walker (Author)