World Première Recording
Anton Liste (1772-1832)

Anton Liste was born in Hildesheim in Germany on 14 April 1772, the second son of the cathedral organist. Anton’s musical talent showed itself early. He studied first with his father, then in 1789 went to Vienna to complete his composition studies with Georg Albrechtsberger. Reports that he studied with Mozart lack confirmation, however. Three years later, Liste was back in Hildesheim, where he seems to have kept his head above water by giving music lessons. In 1793, he was freed from all monetary worries when Count Clemens August of Westphalia appointed him music teacher to his children. In 1798, Liste married one Louise Fricke. She died in 1801, at which Liste gave his one-year-old son Franz Karl over to his own parents to be raised. In 1804, Liste was appointed to the directorship of the orchestra of the Zurich Music Society, thanks to the recommendation of Hans Georg Nägeli, at the time the most important figure in Zurich musical life. By the end of Liste’s trial period, Nägeli had changed his mind. However, his colleagues had in the meantime convinced themselves of Liste’s qualities, and so he was allowed to stay. He also established himself rapidly as a teacher of piano and singing. When he resigned as orchestra director three years later, he remained in Zurich. He had in the meantime taken a liking to the Swiss countryside, and was fond of wandering in the mountains. In September 1811, he even went on a hiking tour in the Alps with Carl Maria von Weber. Liste also became a keen member of the Zurich Freemasons’ lodge Modestia cum Libertate.

Besides giving music lessons and occasionally playing viola in the Zurich orchestra, Liste founded a choir of his own. He directed performances of oratorios by Handel, Haydn and others, but also of operas, such as Mozart’s Magic Flute and Rossini’s Moses in Egypt. Since there was at the time no theatre in Zurich, this was the only opportunity for the Zurich public to experience opera at all. Several of Liste’s conducting scores were discovered in the attic of the vicarage of the Zurich Cathedral in 1999, and today belong to the Zentralbibliothek Zürich. Liste died in Zurich on 31 July 1832, the cause of death being a ‘chest illness’ according to his friend and biographer Georg Bürkli.

Liste’s oeuvre includes songs, choral works, sonatas for piano solo, a Grande Sonata for piano duet op. 2 and the sonata op. 3 for bassoon and piano. Other works are known to be lost, or have only survived in fragmentary form – such as Liste’s piano concerto. His Bassoon Sonata is recognized today as being the most significant work of its kind of the early 19^th century, and can be heard on GMCD 7154, along with the piano sonatas in E flat and G Major. Liste was obviously fond of experimentation. The Duet Sonata op. 2 to be heard on this CD, for example, ends with a fugue. The influence of Beethoven on Liste is self-evident. Several Beethoven scores from Liste’s own library have survived in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich. And when his fellow Freemason Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee travelled to Vienna in the hope of studying with Beethoven, Liste gave him a copy of one of his sonatas to present to the master. In the person of Hans Georg Nägeli, Liste and Beethoven even had the same publisher.

The Cantata recorded here was composed in 1811 for the reopening of the Masonic Lodge Modestia cum Libertate, which had been closed down twenty years before. The text was penned for the occasion by fellow Mason Heinrich Lavater. For almost a hundred years, most of the important musicians in Zurich were members of Modestia, among them Liste’s contemporary Philipp Christoph Kayser (1755-1823), a friend of Goethes, whose music can be heard on GMCD 7163. The other songs recorded here are taken from a collection that Liste published as his op. 1: ‘Six happy two-part choral songs and canons’. These are dedicated to ‘song-loving youth’, and their simple melodic charm at times makes one think of Franz Schubert.