Each essay (presentations at the International Liszt Symposium in Stockholm, by leading scholars and specialists) illuminates aspects of the Symposium's theme while encompassing Liszt's evolutionary path from the late middles ages to us. Well-documented revelations about music, the other arts, Liszt's circle, contemporary and modern historical, social, and political events, the parallel evolution of Liszt's compositional reception and of the piano, all intertwine within each essay and among them.