This study is a contribution to reception history and deals with the dissemination of Liszt’s piano music within the framework of the tea ching of music in French methods at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, specifically piano technique, piano methods, treaties on harmony, courses on interpretation and so on. It examines references to Liszt’s scores and their circulation and explores what might be termed the archaeology of readings of his piano output. It is not limited, however, to a presentation of the different sta ges in the reception of Liszt’s music but is accompanied by an account of the cultural, institutional and social contexts on the basis of a criti cal analysis of the material that seeks to establish a relationship betwe en the traces that have been uncovered and the conditions under which they existed at the time. It is concerned, in short, with piecing together the ways in which Liszt’s works were adapted and borrowed in the con text of the expectations and new forms of legitimacy within the fra mework of piano teaching in France.