Good book on Liszt

Greetings,

I'd like to get my hands on a good book on Liszt, something perhaps biographical, that explains his impact on the music of that period, his technique, etc.

In either English or French, doesn't matter. Anyone with suggestions?

The 3 volume biography by Walker is very good and very thorough. While it concentrates mainly on his life, there is a good deal of musical analysis (of moderate depth) interspersed though out the books.

The three-volume biography by Alan Walker (a Brit-born Canadian, BTW).

Eminently readable, with rather less musical analysis than is the norm for composer biographies.

(Be sure you have the 2nd edition of vol. 1). The US edition is from Cornell University Press.

Also, Leslie Howard's essays in the Hyperion complete piano music set (57 volumes) are very well done

Obviously the Walker series and other more recent books are more authoritative, but to get a feel for the spirit of Liszt's age, I can recommend Sacheverell Sitwell's biography from 1934 (revised 1955). Sitwell was really an art writer, a member of a famous literary family, but would have known and heard some of Liszt's later pupils, and obviously had a real feel for the composer's music.

I have also enjoyed the 'eyewitness accounts' of Liszt's teaching by Amy Fay ('Music study in Germany' I think is the name of her book) and, earlier, by Wilhelm von Lenz, who met Liszt, Chopin and other luminaries of the piano, but, interestingly, seems to have preferred the music of Henselt.