弗朗兹·李斯特于1811年10月22日生于匈牙利雷定（Raiding, Hungary）。当时匈牙利是奥匈帝国的一部分，李斯特的父亲是匈牙利人，母亲是奥地利的日耳曼族人，因此他有两个名字，分别是匈牙利和德语两种拼法。李斯特从小随母亲说德语，直到晚年才学会用匈牙利语写作。
李斯特六岁起开始学习音乐，并于此后不久移居维也纳，曾先后作为萨里埃里（Antonio Salieri，或译萨列里）、车尔尼(Carl Czerny)、雷哈、巴埃尔的弟子。
1823年，李斯特来到巴黎，受雨果、拉马丁、夏多布里昂等浪漫主义文艺家思想的影响，向往资产阶级革命。在音乐上他主张标题音乐，首创了交响诗体裁，作有《塔索》、《前奏曲》、《匈牙利》等交响诗共十三部。
李斯特还受帕格尼尼的影响，创作了十九首《匈牙利狂想曲》和十二首钢琴练习曲以及超技练习曲。他树立了与学院风气、市民习气相对立的新的浪漫主义原则，并支持阿尔贝尼斯、斯美塔那、肖邦、柏辽兹、瓦格纳等作曲家的创作。
1848年起他常住魏玛（Weimar），担任了魏玛宫廷乐长，并经常来往于罗马（Rome）、布达佩斯（Budapest）之间。1876年他创建了布达佩斯国立音乐院并任院长。
1886年7月31日李斯特因肺炎死于拜罗伊特（Bayreuth）。
Franz Liszt (1811, Raiding, Hungary - 1886, Bayreuth, Germany) was a classical composer and an artist.
Liszt became renowned throughout Europe for his great skill as a performer during the 1800s. He is said to have been the most technically advanced and perhaps greatest pianist of all time. He was also an important and influential composer, a notable piano teacher, a conductor who contributed significantly to the modern development of the art, and a benefactor to other composers and performers, notably Richard Wagner and Hector Berlioz.
As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the “neudeutsche schule” (“New German School”). He left behind a huge and diverse body of work, in which he influenced his forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated some 20th-century ideas and trends. Some of his most notable contributions were the invention of the symphonic poem, developing the concept of thematic transformation as part of his experiments in musical form and making radical departures in harmony.
