Liszt and the Arts
An International Interdisciplinary Conference
on the Bicentenary of the Birth of Ferenc Liszt
organised by the Institute for
Musicology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
and the Liszt Ferenc Memorial
Museum and Research Centre
of the Liszt Ferenc University
of Music
Budapest, 18–20 November 2011
(H-1014 Budapest, Táncsics Mihály u. 7.)
Program Committee:
Detlef Altenburg, Rossana Dalmonte, Márta Grabócz, Mihály Szegedy-Maszák, Tibor Tallián
Scholarly Secretary:
Mária Eckhardt
Program and Abstracts
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17 November, Thursday |
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2 p.m. – 5 p.m. |
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Bartók Hall |
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Open session of the
working group of the international UNESCO project Liszt’s Concerts in European Countries Report on current
progress of the project Participants: Detlef
Altenburg, Mária Eckhardt, Malou Haine, Tamás Klenjánszky, Péter Scholz,
Károly Sziklavári, Miklós Török, Liudmyla Volska |
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7:30 p.m. |
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Bartók Hall |
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Piano recital by Valerie TRYON BARTÓK: Suite, op. 14 DOHNÁNYI: Rhapsody in C major, op.
11, no. 3 LISZT: Two Etudes de Concert, LW A
118/2, 3 La leggierezza Un sospiro LISZT: Venezia e Napoli (Années de
pèlerinage, Italie, Supplement), LW A 197 Gondoliera Canzona Tarantella Alfred GRÜNFELD: Concert Paraphrase Soirées de Vienne |
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18 November, Friday |
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9 a.m. – 11 a.m. |
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Bartók Hall |
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Chair:
Tibor
Tallián |
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Alan Walker: Liszt as the Cultural
Ambassador of the 19th Century |
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Mihály Szegedy-Maszák: The Literary
Canon of F. Liszt |
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Rena
Charnin Mueller:
Prepositions, Prefaces, and Pericopes: Liszt’s Extra-Musical Looking Glass |
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Coffee break |
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11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. |
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Session A Bartók Hall |
Session B Kodály Hall |
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Chair: Helmut Loos |
Chair: Klára Hamburger |
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Jonathan Kregor: Forging “Paganinis of the
Piano”: Nineteenth-Century Traditions of Artistic Mimesis |
Stéphane Lelièvre: Quand Franz
Liszt fait de George Sand l’héritière d’E.T.A. Hoffmann |
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Imre Kovács: Homage to Beethoven in
Danhauser’s painting Erinnerung an
Liszt |
Giuseppe Montemagno: Les Fleurs du Mal: Franz Liszt et M. d’Agoult, sources
d’inspiration pour George Sand |
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Michael Stegemann & Christina M. Stahl: ‘Hexenmeister’ und
‘Titan’ – Franz Liszt und Ludwig van Beethoven: Eine vergleichende
Ikonographie |
Lajos Gracza:
Daniel
Sterns Abschiedsgedicht an Franz Liszt |
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2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. |
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Bartók Hall |
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Chair: Mária Eckhardt |
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Serge Gut: Des Harmonies poétiques et religieuses de Lamartine à celles
de Franz Liszt |
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Detlef Altenburg: Liszt and the Spirit
of Weimar |
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Coffee break |
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4 p.m. – 6 p.m. |
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Session A Bartók Hall |
Session B Kodály Hall |
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Chair: Mihály
Szegedy-Maszák |
Chair: Malou Haine |
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Kaczmarczyk Adrienne: The Chant of the
Anchorites (To the sources of Ce qu’on
entend sur la montagne) |
Brussee, Albert: The Mazeppa-sketch from
Sketchbook N6 of Franz Liszt |
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Winkler, Gerhard: Tasso-Mirrors: Byron
– Goethe – Liszt |
Bloom, Peter: Berlioz and Liszt “in the Locker Room” |
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Fallon-Ludwig, Sandra: Narrative Inspiration
in Liszt’s Symphonic Poems: The Cases of Hunnenschlacht
and Tasso, lamento e trionfo |
Reynaud, Cécile: Présentation d’une édition
critique du texte de Liszt: Berlioz et
sa symphonie Harold |
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Liu,
Yen-Ling: Listening as Gazing:
Synaesthesia and the Double Apotheosis in Franz Liszt’s Hunnenschlacht |
Le Diagon-Jacquin, Laurence: Le texte sur « Le Persée
de Benvenuto Cellini » de Liszt: un manifeste artistique? |
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7:30 p.m. |
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Matthias Church |
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Recital by Csaba KIRÁLY (organ) and Ádám BANDA (violin) LISZT Introitus, LW E 41 St
François d’Assise: la prédication aux oiseaux, LW A 219/1 (transcription
by Csaba Király) Consolation in D-flat Major, LW E
22,2 Hosannah (Alleluja del Cantico
del Sol), LW F 2 Ave Maria (Arcadelt), LW E 14 Chor der jüngeren Pilger (Wagner:
Tannhäuser), LW E 10 Offertorium & Benedictus from Ungarische
Krönungsmesse, LW F 3 Praeludium und Fuge über den
Namen B–A–C–H, LW E 3 |
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19 November,
Saturday |
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3 p.m.– 4:30 p.m. |
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Bartók Hall |
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Chair: Rena Charnin Mueller |
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Rossana Dalmonte: Rethinking the Influence
of Italian Poetry and Music on the Young Liszt |
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Dorothea Redepenning: Liszt und die
bildende Kunst – systematische Überlegungen |
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Richard Taruskin: Liszt and Bad Taste |
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Coffee break |
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5 p.m.– 7 p.m. |
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Session A Bartók Hall |
Session B Kodály Hall |
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Chair: Márta Grabócz |
Chair: László Vikárius |
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Zsuzsanna Domokos: Gretchen’s Figure in Liszt’s Musical Interpretation |
Juan José PASTOR
Comín: Revisiting Petrarch’s Sonnets: Franz Liszt’s Hermeneutical Readings |
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Bruno Moysan: Liszt, lecteur antimoderne de Faust |
Lucia Navarrini dell’Atti & Annarosa Vannoni: L’œuvre de Dante Alighieri: une source d’inspiration pour Augusta Holmès et Franz Liszt |
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Nicolas Dufetel: „Qu’est-ce que l’Art ?”
Nouvel essai esthétique. Liszt, la marquise de Blocqueville et le traité esthétique
inédit de la princesse Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein |
Evangelia Mitsopoulou: Liszt’s Dante Symphony: A “Multimedia” Innovative Work and Genelli’s Paintings |
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Mara Lacchè:
„L’esprit de la statue me parlait.” La dimension
apollonienne de la sculpture dans l’imaginaire musical Lisztien |
Katalin GELLÉR: L’histoire d’un dessin dédié à Ferenc Liszt |
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Anna Baranyi: Fülöp Ö. Beck’s Liszt Interpretation in his 1911 Series of Plaquettes |
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20 November, Sunday |
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9:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. |
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Bartók Hall |
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Chair: Detlef Altenburg |
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Klára Hamburger:
Trois odes funèbres |
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Márta Grabócz:
The Two Faces of the « mal du siècle » in the 19th Century
Literature and Their Double Influence on the Piano Music of F. Liszt |
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10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. |
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Session A Bartók Hall |
Session B Kodály Hall |
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Chair: Katalin Komlós |
Chair: Rossana Dalmonte |
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Paul Merrick:
“Christ’s
Mighty Shrine above His Martyr’s Tomb.” Byron, and Liszt’s Journey to Rome |
Grace YU:
Intermediality and Liszt’s Il Pensieroso |
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David
Butler Cannata: Acolyte
& Rubrician: Liszt and the Art of Liturgy |
Anne Vester:
„Der Himmel weiß! in welchem Geistesstall er sein nächstes Steckenpferd
finden wird“ – Liszts Interesse an den Schönen Künsten mit den Augen Heines gesehen |
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Coffee break |
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Dolores Pesce: The “Individual” in Johann
Friedrich Overbeck’s and Franz Liszt’s Seven
Sacraments |
Mariateresa Storino:
The Never-ending Story: Jeanne
d'Arc au bûcher |
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Ágnes Watzatka: Puszta, Hussaren und
Zigeunermusik: Franz Liszt und das Heimatbild von Nikolaus Lenau |
Joanne Cormac:
A New Perspective on Liszt’s Hamlet |
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Rhoda Dullea: Populism and Nationalism in Liszt’s Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie |
Patrick Boenke:
Collapse and Dismantlement: On Form and Dramaturgy in Liszt’s Late Symphonic
Poem From the Cradle to the Grave |
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3 p.m. – 4 p.m. |
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Bartók Hall |
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Chair: Serge Gut |
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Malou Haine:
L’éducation par l’art selon Liszt (basé sur les lettres de Liszt à Marie
von Sayn-Wittgenstein) |
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Helmut Loos:
Liszt, Mendelssohn und die Künste (im Spiegel der Briefe Mendelssohns) |
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4:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. |
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Session A Bartók Hall |
Session B Kodály Hall |
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Chair: David Butler Cannata |
Chair: Jonathan Kregor |
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Suzanne Francis: Liszt at the Piano: The
Impact of Iconography on mid-Nineteenth Century Musicology |
Ida Zicari: Liszt’s Music Interpreted by
Choreographers |
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Geraldine
Keeling: Liszt at the Piano: Two American Pianos and Two American Artists (2
paintings: Chickering/Healy 1868, Steinway/Johansen 1919) |
Ákos Károly Windhager:
Cine-fantasies on Liebestraum Nr. 3 |
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5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m. |
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Bartók Hall |
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Mária ECKHARDT: Closing Words |
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Liszt’s Wandering in his Homeland A presentation of
students of the Folk Music Department of the Liszt Ferenc University of Music
with József BALOGH (piano) |
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Abstracts
Franz Liszt and the Spirit of Weimar
As a stranger in the French society of Paris in the 1830s Franz Liszt felt
a strong aspiration for a renewal of the French musical life, for an
open-minded exchange between musicians and for a new holistic concept, a
synthesis of the arts. In his early Weimar years the revival of similar ideas
met with the deep desire of Maria Pawlowna and the young Carl Alexander for a
renewal of the Golden Era of Goethe and Schiller. The constellation could not
have been better; in modern terms, one would speak of a win-win-situation.
Goethe had more than fifty years to create the myth of Weimar. Liszt did the
same within not more than twelve years. Goethe was a young and talented writer
when he came to Weimar. Liszt, on the other hand, was one of the best known
artists of his time when he settled in Weimar. Interesting enough, Liszt did
not stay in Weimar until his death as Goethe did. Indeed, in a certain sense he
remained a stranger also in Weimar just as in France. For the public of Weimar
he was at the same time the leading figure of the New Weimar as he was a
problematic protagonist of the court. The paper tries to explain the background
for the complicated situation Liszt met in Weimar.
Fülöp Ö. Beck’s Liszt Interpretation in his 1911
Series of Plaquettes
During his
lifetime hundreds of portraits were made of Ferenc Liszt in a great diversity
of genres by foreign and Hungarian artists alike. The best known are the works
by Antoine Bovy (1837, 1840), Conrad Lange (1846), and Carl Radnitzky (1873).
The Hungarian art of the medal began to unfold in the late 19th century; hence
the first medals of the composer were only made after his death.
In 1911, on the centenary of Liszt’s birth
Hungarian medallists also commemorated the great composer. It was, however, one
single artist – Fülöp Ö. Beck (1873–1945) – who had been preparing for the
festivities with great artistic devotion and created an outstanding work of art
on several counts. In 1911 Fülöp Ö. Beck was on the apex of his creative
energies as an internationally renowned medallist. He had studied in Budapest
and Paris. He got acquainted with the Jugend movement in Munich. After a study
trip to Italy, he sojourned in Munich where he was in touch with Hildebrand’s
circle. With his medals presented in the Museum of Applied Arts in 1898 he
launched the Hungarian medal art on its course.
He had been working on a Liszt plaquette for
years. The starting inspiration was the Liszt mask he had received from the
aging sculptor Alajos Stróbl personally. Beck was intent on creating something
worthy of that mask, so he only settled down to modelling the plaquette after
long preparations and lots of reverse designs. The deeply symbolic work implies
the favourite theme of secessionist art, life and death. Oddly enough, the
obverse of the plaquette in commemoration of Liszt’s birth features his dead
portrait expressing finiteness, permanence, death. In the compositions meant
for the reverse, by contrast, he evoked life, animation, motion. The series of
the reverse variations – itself a work of art in its own right – is also
significant because Beck’s aim was not to seek an allegory about Liszt’s figure
or create symbols for his compositions as was customary in medal art, but to
grasp the essence of music, of the infinity of music. These compositions are
not directly related to any specific piece of music, although they were
certainly conceived under the influence of Liszt’s music. In Hungarian art
history, Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch (1863–1920) adopted a similar intellectual
stance to create his fresco The Fountain
of Art (1907) adorning the first-floor lounge in the Music Academy (today
Liszt Ferenc University of Music) built in 1904–7 in secessionist style. Fülöp
Ö. Beck’s symbolic-secessionist Liszt plaquette is an outstanding work not only
of the Hungarian but also of the international art of the medal.
Berlioz and Liszt “in the Locker Room”
Of the many studies of the friendship between Berlioz and Liszt, few dwell
upon the underlying reasons for the unadulterated understanding the two men
enjoyed for more than twenty years – until the Wagnerian earthquake shook their
amity.
In the course of preparing a new critical edition
of Berlioz’s Mémoires, I have come to
believe that Liszt played a constructive role in the composition of Berlioz’s
most celebrated book – constructive, that is, in the sense of having served as
a concealed and privileged reader of the accounts and anecdotes that comprise
the story of Berlioz’s life. In this regard Liszt’s role was tantamount for
Berlioz to that of Richard Wagner, who has been seen, in a seminal article by
Katherine Kolb, as the person to whom Berlioz covertly addressed the collection
of essays that became À travers
chants.
Evidence for my hypothesis comes from a close
reading of the Mémoires and from a
consideration of the handling of the autograph manuscript itself, which Berlioz
once sent to Liszt for safe keeping, and whose further history I shall recount.
Stronger evidence comes from the astonishing fact that it was to Liszt that
Berlioz confided, three days after his marriage to Harriet Smithson, that his
new bride had been a virgin. What does it mean for a man nearly thirty years
old to confide to a friend eight years younger than he this most intimate
detail? How is it that relating such a confidence, on the part of the woman in
question, is something we find almost unthinkable? To today’s observer,
unfortunately deprived of the woman’s perspective in this case as in so many
others, Berlioz’s behavior appears discourteous, to say the least. But at the
time, his missive represented one remark among many in what was surely an
ongoing conversation about the virtues and vices of Harriet Smithson in
particular, and about the virtues of vices of women in general. This is the
kind of conversation that men carry out, for better or worse, “in the locker
room.”
In this twenty-minute paper I shall place
Berlioz’s epistolary indiscretion into the larger context of his and Liszt’s
attitudes to women at the time of their initial friendship, in the early eighteen-thirties.
This means rehearsing what we know of Berlioz’s experiences, as the son of a
free-thinking doctor whose attitudes towards female sexuality were nonetheless
antediluvian, and of Liszt’s, as the son of an ambitious father whose sudden death
left the boy in need of guidance greater than that his mother could provide.
Berlioz, at the time a winner of Prix de Rome and the composer of the Symphonie fantastique, had lately been
in the thrall of two femmes, Harriet
Smithson and Camille Moke, who were fatales
for very different reasons. To the best of our knowledge, by the time of his
marriage in 1833, he had been intimate with only two other women, whom I shall
identify.
Liszt, the religiously inclined virtuoso prodigy
who might conceivably have seen Smithson in London, at Drury Lane, in June
1827, and who would encounter Moke, as Madame Pleyel, a few years later, was
now, in 1833, resuming his life and professional career. Joseph d’Ortigue, in
the first published biography of Liszt, has the twelve-year-old boy flattered
and “caressed” by his admirers, already inspiring their passions and
attentions. On Liszt’s intimacies with Caroline de Saint-Cricq, modern
specialists have been reluctant to rule, although the malaise Liszt suffered on
being banned from her aristocratic household (the evidence does not support the
notion of a “nervous breakdown”) suggests that possibility that what the young
man missed most was not the young lady’s pianism. He was “cured” of his
depression, it has been suggested, by making the acquaintances of the leading
artists of his day, among them Berlioz, and by cultivating friendships among
the Saint-Simonians, of whom some, extending the official doctrine regarding
the emancipation of women, may have appeared to be advocates of “free love.” Be
this as it may, in 1830, Liszt entered upon what Alan Walker calls “his first
extended love affair” with the Comtesse Adèle de Laprunarède.
Serge Gut and Jacqueline Bellas mention the possibility of a number of other
encounters as Liszt became “la coqueluche des dames les plus en vue.” It
remains to be proven whether he met Marie d’Agoult at the residence of the
Marquise de Le Vayer, in December 1832, or at Berlioz’s concert of 9 December
1832, which they both attended. By coincidence, their liaison, cerebral before
it was carnal (Berlioz was apprised of it from the beginning), seems to have
been consummated around the time of Berlioz’s marriage, in October of the
following year.
With what we know of the two artists’ experience
in mind, and mindful both of Marie’s need to maintain discretion as a married
woman and of Harriet’s desire to preserve her professional career and
concomitantly her physical health, for which abstinence was at the time a
shield, we are in a better position to comment on the two men’s discourse of
sexuality: on the larger meaning, that is, of what Berlioz communicated to
Liszt, and especially of what he expected Liszt to find, in that unceremonious
post-nuptial letter of 6 October 1833: “Vierge, tout ce qu’il y a de plus
vierge.”
Collapse and Dismantlement: On Form and Dramaturgy in Liszt’s Late
Symphonic Poem From the Cradle to the Grave
If for no other reason, Liszt’s late
symphonic poem From the Cradle to the Grave (“Von der Wiege bis zum
Grabe”) (1881/82) deserves its special status among Liszt’s symphonic works
because he wrote it after a long break as part of his series of symphonic poems
from his Weimar period. The composition was inspired by a drawing by the Hungarian
painter Mihály Zichy, which explores the eternal circle of life. Many aspects
of Liszt’s musical response to this drawing contrast with his Weimar tonal
poems. The first noticeable differences are the strikingly simple compositional
style and the thin instrumentation that often does not exceed chamber music
scope. Furthermore, in this work, Liszt forgoes the expansive musical gestures
that are among the most pronounced features of his earlier symphonic style.
Liszt also abandons the formal and dramaturgical norms and conventions he
established with his symphonic creations in the Weimar period. Specifically, in
the place of the differentiated concept of form, “a multi-movement form within
a single movement,” Liszt chooses a notably simple three-part structure for his
last symphonic poem, in which each movement is dedicated to one of the stages
of life: birth (“cradle”), life (“fight for existence”), and death (“to the
grave: the cradle of future life”), in the style of a musical triptych. The
final movement in this three-part form arrangement functions as a
recapitulation of the theme in the sense of a greatly simplified
“double-function form,” but one which is no longer staged as an emphatic
breakthrough, as in earlier works, but rather as a process of dismantlement
preceded by a collapse of Mahler-like dimensions at the end of the second
movement. In my talk, I present this process from an analytic perspective and
then discuss the poetic implications of this solution to the conclusion. I
thereby argue that the demonstrative break with the concept of a final
apotheosis relates back not only to the source of inspiration for the work,
i.e., Mihály Zichy’s drawing, but also to a transformation in the aged
composer’s aesthetic viewpoint, which also left its mark on other late works.
The
Mazeppa-sketch from Sketchbook N6 of Franz Liszt
This Mazeppa-sketch, written on pp. 20–18 of Liszt’s Sketchbook N6, is
composed considerable time before the well-known Mazeppa study (1840; 1851). In
the past Rudolf Kókai and Dieter Torkewitz have written a few words about this
composition. However, neither Kókai nor Torkewitz did understand that the
sketch, after a lengthy deletion, continues on the preceding pages 19 and 18.
All in all there are around 40 bars of this work, enough to reconstruct it. The
result is a quite interesting, wild ‘Galop’, most probably composed on ‘31
If this is right, this means that the
Mazeppa sketch stems from 1832, for Liszt stayed from 8 May until shortly after
25 June
Acolyte & Rubrician: Liszt and the Art of
Liturgy
As Pius IX sought spiritual proxy for the loss of his temporal power, a
renewed emphasis on the Liturgy of the Mass (in essence, the public face of the
Church) was reckoned an effective counterbalance in mitigating the divisive
edicts of Vatican I (1869–70). Without question, the 19th-century Mass enjoyed
considerable personal and regional variance, but Pius left no doubt that ritual
was part and parcel of his authority – to wit, the watershed publication of his
Rex cæremoniarum, Pio
Martinucci whose Manuale Sacrarum
Cæremoniarum (Rome, 1869–72) codified papal expectations.
Already set on the cursus honorum with his hasty induction through Minor Orders in
1865, Liszt, the musician and the religious professional, was ever wary of
anything that circumscribed both his worship as a believer and his duty as an
artist. While most of his liturgical works fall in line with Martinucci’s
rubrics, Liszt’s two organ masses, the Missa
pro Organo (1879) and the Requiem für
Orgel (1883), put forward the composer’s unique liturgical stance: in both
he assumes a simultaneous duality, multitasking equally as acolyte (in line
with his ecclesiastical appointment) and as rubrician (a curious pose for a
musician, as we find compositional impulse prevailing over clerical design).
The two titles espouse Liszt’s personal
contemplative microcosm. Both bring together the musical and the liturgical
arts into an elegant and personal synthesis, all-the-while maintaining their
distinct profiles within the Liszt catalog: the first to enhance his
contemporaneous ecclesiastical promotion; the second, yet another lament for
the recently deceased Richard Wagner?
A New Perspective on Liszt’s Hamlet
This paper presents a new perspective on the influence of the famous Polish
actor Bogumil Dawison on Liszt’s symphonic poem, Hamlet, and subsequently re-evaluates the genre, programme, and
form of the piece. It demonstrates that Dawison’s oft-cited influence on the
symphonic poem is less straightforward than hitherto believed, for contrary to
received wisdom, it can be demonstrated that Liszt did not actually see
Dawison’s Hamlet in the theatre. The paper accordingly offers a revised
view of the interaction between the two artists, drawing on unpublished letters
from Dawison to Liszt.
An initial meeting in Weimar marked the beginning
of a close friendship between the two men. Despite that fact that Liszt was not
present for Dawison’s actual theatrical performances, he seems to have
discussed the salient elements of Dawison’s characterisation of Hamlet with the
actor, and perhaps witnessed him performing excerpts from the role in private.
The paper traces the influence of this on the symphonic poem, with reference to
several contemporary reviews of Dawison’s Hamlet interpretation usually ignored
by Liszt scholars. It thereby both utilises and contributes to the growing
field of interdisciplinary studies on 19th century music.
Liszt’s perception of the genre of the piece is
also more problematic than it might first appear, given that Hamlet was composed several years after
the composer supposedly abandoned the designation “overture” in favour of
“symphonic poem”. Yet Hamlet was
originally labelled a ‘Vorspiel’, and it was only later, after some musical
revision, that it was retitled ‘Symphonische Dichtung’. This paper will attempt
to explain these changes by discussing the piece in its original performance
context. It will analyse extant manuscripts, chronicling the revisions made, in
the transformation from ‘Vorspiel’ to ‘Symphonische Dichtung’. Although many
scholars believe that the substantial revisions Liszt made to several of his
orchestral works were prompted by considerations of genre, this paper will argue
on the contrary that Liszt used the terms ‘symphonic poem’ and ‘overture’
interchangeably for much longer than is often asserted.
Rethinking the Influence of Italian Poetry and
Music on the Young Liszt
Liszt’s first Italian journey 1837–1839 has been investigated in every
detail by keen biographers, who do not need to be quoted. Other scholars
studied his writings for the Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris and L’Artiste in order to bring out the
image that Liszt had of himself or wanted to show to his readers (Suttoni
1989). There are studies that tried to detect the influence of Italian art and
music on Liszt (Zenck 2001, Dalmonte 2008). Anna Harwell Celenza (2006, 3)
gives an interesting insight in a recent essay: “Liszt was escaping more than
mere gossip when he left Paris. He was on a quest to discover his creative
essence, a new artistic identity. […] he planned on ‘distinguishing himself’ in
intellectual pursuits that were accorded more prestige than mere performing –
namely composition and literature.”
In this presentation I try to look further into an
aspect of Harwell Celenza’s essay that has yet to be fully explored. In
particular I focus my analysis on one of the three Petrarca Sonnets (Benedetto
sia il giorno). After having briefly discussed the different dating (Ramann
1880, 538; Eckhardt-Charnin Müller 2000, 854), and the musicological literature
on Liszt’s Petrarca Sonnets
(particularly Giani 2005), I concentrate on some important points:
1) in choosing Petrarca’s poem, Liszt was aware of
facing a difficult task, because the metrical structure of a sonnet was never
felt suitable for composing a Lied (Dürr 1984, 148). In this genre, almost new
for him, Liszt also demonstrates his desire to open new ways in music
composition;
2) in setting Benedetto
sia il giorno to music, Liszt followed neither its literary form, nor any
of the well tested German Lied forms, but he tried to test new possibilities,
in which Schubert’s model and Italian operatic tradition found a novel and
unexpected balance;
3) the building principle of the piece is not only
the “architectonic” or “proportional” relation of the whole to its parts, but
also the unfolding process of small melodic units in a series of repetitions
and sequences.
The very modern and highly original features of
this piece possess an important characteristic, found only in the works of
great masters: the synthesis of tradition and renewal.
Gretchen’s Figure in Liszt’s Musical
Interpretation
Analysing Liszt’s Faust Symphony
Gretchen’s salvation role embodying the “das ewig Weibliche” has been already
mentioned by several scholars, the characterization, for which Liszt found the
most direct models in Wagner’s operas. This statement can be made more
differentiated in the view of an other musical citation in Liszt’s Gretchen
movement. It would be interesting to go further on the base of concrete musical
analogies, following the genesis of the composition and Liszt’s writings how
much is Goethe’s Gretchen preserved in Liszt’s work, what are the influences of
the Gretchen’s musical characterizations of the time known by Liszt, related to
his own work, and what are the connections of Gretchen in the Faust symphony
with Liszt’s other women characters in his works.
« Qu’est-ce que
l’Art ? Nouvel essai esthétique » : Liszt, la marquise de
Blocqueville et le traité esthétique inédit de la princesse Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein
Pendant de longues années, la princesse Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein fut
à la fois la muse, la secrétaire et l’amanuensis de Franz Liszt. Le rôle primordial qu’elle a joué dans
la rédaction de ses écrits pendant la période de Weimar est considérable et ne
peut être sous-estimé. Une étude d’envergure de ses écrits publiés reste
à mener, car la connaissance de sa pensée est primordiale pour les
études lisztiennes : elle offre un vaste champ d’études pour l’avenir.
Liszt et la princesse Wittgenstein avaient en commun la passion de l’art et
avaient réuni à Weimar une vaste collection qu’on peut aujourd’hui en
partie reconstituer. Leurs discussions esthétiques furent nombreuses à
l’Altenburg, même après la période weimarienne. Nul doute que
leurs vues convergeaient parfois, mais qu’elles divergeaient aussi.
À Rome, la princesse a écrit un traité
d’esthétique, Qu’est-ce que l’Art ?
Nouvel essai esthétique qui n’a, à notre connaissance, jamais encore
été étudié. Écrit en français, il est dédié à la marquise de
Blocqueville, qui a inspiré à Liszt en 1868 sa pièce pour piano
intitulée La marquise de Blocqueville. Un
portrait en musique.
La présente communication propose de présenter le Traité esthétique inédit de la princesse
Wittgenstein et, plus particulièrement, ses longues pages consacrées
à la musique. Y retrouve-t-on les idées de Liszt ? Le compositeur
est-il en toile de fonds ? Il est coutume de rappeler que la princesse a
inspiré Liszt dans ses écrits, mais, inversement, il est évident qu’un chapitre
sur la musique écrit par elle peut avoir des échos de la pensée lisztienne.
Populism and Nationalism in Liszt’s Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie
Liszt’s 1859 book on Hungarian Gypsy music, Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie, was his most
comprehensive literary work, the culmination of a nineteen-year ‘Hungarian’ project
that included the creation of what he termed his ‘National Epic’, the
painstaking arrangement and publication of the first fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies between 1840 and
1853 (Liszt was to take up the project again in the early 1880s, publishing a revised
edition of Des Bohémiens in 1881 and
writing four more Rhapsodies in
following years).
Liszt intended Des
Bohémiens both as a Rousseauian tribute to the apparently ‘natural’
musicality of Gypsy musicians and as a gift to Hungarian people; nonetheless,
the book prompted widespread disapprobation from the very outset, and has been
followed by controversy ever since. A longstanding question-mark over the
authenticity of Liszt’s authorship of this book (and similarly several other
tracts by him) generated the suspicion that Liszt’s consort, Carolyne von
Sayn-Wittgenstein, not only may have ghost-written Des Bohémiens to a large extent, but was very likely responsible
for the inflammatory anti-Semitism that infused the work. On the other hand,
Hungarian nationalists accused Liszt of displaying a total lack of
understanding of Hungarian culture in his assertion of the original ‘Gypsy’
character of the Hungarian-Gypsy musical genre that formed the focus of the
book. Moreover, a multitude of editions and revisions (significantly, the 1881
second edition was demonstrably altered by Carolyne) has contributed to the
uneasy reception and distrust of the work by Liszt scholars to the present day.
Bypassing the better-known but authorially
inconsistent 1881 edition of Des
Bohémiens and returning to the 1859 original, this paper seeks to
demonstrate that Des Bohémiens, while
idiosyncratic in its execution, nonetheless may be shown to be an ideologically
cohesive and authentic encapsulation of Liszt’s populist leanings and Christian
socialist beliefs, forged by a significant early encounter with Saint-Simonism
and the writings of the radical excommunicate, Félicité de Lamennais. For
Liszt, the Gypsy musician represented an exemplar of politically disinterested
artistry and folk musicianship combined (in diametric opposition with Wagner’s
‘corrupt’ Jewish musician in Das
Judenthum in der Musik, which Liszt invokes by contrast here), and on this
basis, Liszt wished to consolidate the Gypsy musician’s position – at whatever cost,
ideologically speaking – as a politically neutral national icon for the
Hungarian people. Indeed, Liszt may have knowingly twisted facts to suit this
hypothesis.
In conjunction with Liszt’s overt pacifism and
uneasy stance towards the violence of the 1848 uprisings, as demonstrated in
his correspondence, Des Bohémiens,
when examined with care, may be taken as a valid position paper, revelatory of
Liszt’s deepest held (if controversial) views on nationalism, populism and the
role of the artist in society.
FALLON-LUDWIG,
Sandra
Narrative Inspiration in Liszt’s Symphonic Poems:
The Cases of Hunnenschlacht and
Tasso, lamento e trionfo
It is no secret that many of Liszt’s symphonic poems were inspired by works
of literature, poetry and painting. Hunnenschlacht was inspired by
Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s painting of the same name; Ce qu’on entend sur la
montagne and Mazeppa were inspired by the poetry of Victor Hugo; Die
Ideale was inspired by the poetry of Friedrich Schiller; and Hamlet by
William Shakespeare’s play. Even Tasso, lamento e trionfo, a symphonic
poem that takes its name from the 16th-century Italian poet, was influenced by
the poetry of Lord Byron and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Liszt specifically
cites these sources in his preface to the work. However, Liszt’s resulting
symphonic poems are not mere replicas of the inspirational source. He does not
attempt to depict specific language or replicate an exact image. Rather, Liszt
concentrates on themes gleaned from these sources, themes of importance to
himself, and uses these ideas to create a musical narrative.
In this paper, I explore two distinct narratives
in two of Liszt’s symphonic poems and discuss their relationship to the initial
work of inspiration. I begin with the “conflict and resolution” narrative in Hunnenschlacht
and its relationship to Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s original work of art. From
Kaulbach’s painting, Liszt draws on the image of the cross, symbolic of
Christianity as a whole, but also symbolic of Christ’s crucifixion and
resurrection. As a Catholic, these ideas would be important to Liszt, and so he
made them the focus of his composition. Using the chorale Crux fidelis as the embodiment of Christianity, Liszt creates a
narrative in which the Christian idea gradually overtakes all themes of
conflict. In this paper, I examine the compositional techniques that make this
narrative possible: Liszt’s use of topoi, his construction and placement of
themes, the increasing importance of a single theme, and the gradual
progression towards apotheosis. Through these techniques, Liszt transforms a
visual work of art into a musical composition about religion and the triumph of
Christianity.
Next, I discuss the “suffering and redemption”
narrative evident in Tasso, lament e trionfo. Rather than attempt a
chronological representation of Tasso’s life, Liszt highlights three periods
from Tasso’s history and reorders them so as to more easily illustrate a
progression from suffering to triumph. In this work, Liszt utilizes three topoi
– lament, courtly life and triumph – to illustrate the three periods of Tasso’s
history noted in the program – Venice, Ferrara and Rome. In this paper, I
identify these topoi and the thematic transformation evident throughout the
work. I then examine how Liszt uses these techniques to organize and enhance
his narrative.
In previous scholarship, the study of Liszt’s
symphonic poems and its programmatic sources often results in an emphasis on
direct text setting; that is, aligning verses of poetry with specific sections
of music. However, Liszt’s symphonic poems are not meant to be detailed
replicas of another work of art. Liszt might think in these terms early on in
his compositional process, but would then step back to contemplate larger
concepts before putting his ideas into a musical framework. This framework
would undoubtedly be influenced by programmatic ideas, but it would still
follow a musical logic and syntax that could not be possible if one tried to
describe individual lines of poetry in musical phrases.
In my approach to these works, I realize that such
a direct comparison between text and music is unproductive. Literature has the
power to express meaning in a way that is far more specific than the meaning
expressed through music. Instead, I focus on the larger concepts that inspired
Liszt and the resulting musical narrative. Whether Liszt begins from a work of
art as in Hunnenshclacht, or from literary works, as is the case with Tasso,
lamento e trionfo, he follows the same procedure. Liszt looks for subjects
that interest him, subjects consistent with his own philosophy, and creates a
narrative that will highlight those subjects in his symphonic poem.
Liszt at the Piano: The Impact
of Iconography on mid-Nineteenth Century Musicology
By
the time of his death in 1827, the image of Beethoven as we recognise him today
was firmly fixed in the minds of his contemporaries, and the career of Liszt
was beginning to flower into that of the virtuosic performer he would be
recognised as by the end of the 1830s.
By
analysing the seminal artwork Liszt at
the Piano of 1840 by Josef Danhauser, we can see how a seemingly
unremarkable head-and-shoulders bust of Beethoven in fact holds the key to
unlocking the layers of commentary on both Liszt and Beethoven beneath the
surface of the image. Taking the analysis by Alessandra Comini as a starting
point, I will look deeper into the subtle connections discernible between the
protagonists of the picture. These reveal how the collective identities of the
artist and his painted assembly contribute directly to Beethoven’s already
iconic status within music history around 1840 and reflect the reception of
Liszt at this time. Set against the background of Romanticism predominant in
the social and cultural contexts of the mid 1800s, it becomes apparent that it
is no longer enough to look at a picture of a composer or performer in
isolation to understand its impact on the construction of an overall identity.
Each image must be viewed in relation to those that preceded and came after it
to gain the maximum benefit from what it can tell us. Thus I will demonstrate
how such nineteenth-century artistic commemoration is more important to our
reception of figures such as Liszt and Beethoven in modern academia than we
often credit it as being.
Mihály Zichy, peintre hongrois des tsars offrit
à Liszt, qui avait enseigné le piano à sa fille Sophie, un dessin
à la plume intitulé Du berceau
jusqu'au tombe. Liszt s’en inspira pour créer un poème symphonique.
Zichy travailla à nouveau sur ce thème, en élargissant la
scène à un nombre important de personnages : on peut y
compter cent trente quatre figures, parmi lesquelles également Liszt. En
juxtaposant les parties indépendantes du dessin qui représentent par exemple de
différentes scènes de la vie des musiciens, la fixité spatial des parties
change en un déploiment temporel comme dans les rotuli.
The Two Faces of the “mal du siècle” in
19th-Century Literature and Their Double Influence on the Piano Music of F.
Liszt
Recent publications on the 19th-century literature
(Béatrice Didier on Senancour and Obermann;
Albert Thibaudet on the French literature after 1789, etc.) shed a new light on
the interpretation of the “spleen,” of the “mal du siècle” which can be detected
from Chateaubriand, Senancour, Lamennais, Saint-Beuve to Lamartine and beyond
In his first great piano works (and cycles) Liszt innovated at the same time
the structure (it’s mono-thematic way of organizing), and the harmonic
component, the tonal structure of his pieces. A thorough examination of
features in literary influences can help us to distinguish the two different
types of “spleen” which probably incited Liszt to revolutionize harmonic
thinking and structural thinking within the same pieces.
GRACZA Lajos
Daniel Sterns Abschiedsgedicht an Franz Liszt
Es wird über das an ihren langjährigen Lebensgefährten, Franz Liszt,
gerichtete Abschiedsgedicht von Marie d’Agoult (literarischer Pseudonym: Daniel
Stern) aus dem Jahre 1843 (1844?) berichtet, und versucht, die
Entstehungsgeschichte zu rekonstruieren, bzw. den Versbau auf Formebene,
Stilebene und Inhaltsebene zu analysieren, und schließlich in der romantischen
Lyrik nach einem literarischen Vorbild zu suchen.
Des Harmonies
poétiques et religieuses de Lamartine à celles de Franz Liszt
Les rapports entre le recueil poétique de Lamartine intitulé Harmonies poétiques et religieuses et le
cycle pianistique du même nom de Franz Liszt sont fort complexes et
même, parfois, énigmatiques. Toutefois, en raison des grands
progrès accomplis ces dernières années en ce qui concerne la
sinueuse genèse du cycle lisztien – qui s’étend sur vingt ans – il est
désormais possible d’apporter certaines précisions sur les influences plus ou
moins importantes exercées par certaines poésies de Lamartine sur les
pièces correspondantes de Liszt. Chaque morceau des trois recueils
successifs du cycle pianistique lisztien sera examiné en fonction d’une quelconque
influence due au recueil du même nom de Lamartine. Puis un bilan global
sera dressé, permettant d’apprécier le rôle réel que Lamartine a pu avoir sur
Liszt.
L’éducation par l’art selon Liszt
Liszt a suivi l’éducation de ses propres enfants par courriers interposés.
Tout au contraire est l’éducation donnée à Marie de Sayn-Wittgenstein
que sa mère Carolyne emmène avec elle à Weimar pour y
vivre avec Liszt. La jeune princesse est encouragée à la lecture des
classiques et des modernes et à l’écriture : elle traduit en
allemand des pièces de théâtre écrites en français. La mythologie
grecque tient une place de choix dans cette formation. Des professeurs privés
lui enseignent le dessin, l’histoire et l’histoire de l’art. La jeune fille
part en voyage avec sa mère à Berlin et à Paris afin de
visiter des ateliers d’artistes et des galeries d’art. Liszt leur fournit une
liste de personnalités qu’il faut aller saluer. Ces séjours à l’étranger
sont également mis à profit pour acheter des gravures et des tableaux
à ces artistes. Des commandes spécifiques de portraits leur sont
quelquefois passées : la jeune princesse pose
volontiers pour certains de ces peintres. La princesse Carolyne possède
une collection personnelle d’œuvres d’art, et l’on offre à la jeune
Marie des gravures, lithographies et dessins afin qu’elle puisse elle aussi se
constituer une collection privée.
Trois odes funèbres
(Three Funeral Odes)
Sources, antecedents, intertextual analysis and evaluation of a series of
works by Liszt, each piece of which is related to another art. Related to
Félicité de Lamennais, to the tombstones by Michelangelo in the Cappella
Medicea, and to the figure of Torquato Tasso respectively. I had to take into
consideration the dissertation by David Henning Plylar published not long ago,
and the recently released CD of the orchestral versions by Hyperion.
The Chant of the Anchorites
It is a matter of common knowledge that Liszt’s first symphonic poem, Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne was
written after Victor Hugo’s poem. But after a remark dropped by the old Liszt,
the middle and final section (Andante
religioso) of the composition was inspired not by Hugo’s poem, but by “the
chant of the anchorites.” What this allusion refers to is, as I suppose, not a
musical composition, but a work of literature and another one of fine arts. The
one of them is the fresco called Storie
di Anacoreti or Gli anacoreti nella
Tebaide, painted by an unknown master in the Campo Santo of Pisa, the other
one is the final scene of Goethe's Faust
(II. 11844–12111. “Bergschluchten”). In my paper I will examine what Liszt
meant by “the chant of the anchorites.”
Liszt at the Piano: Two American Pianos and Two
American Artists
The image of Liszt at the piano has been a favorite with artists. This
paper will examine two paintings – an 1868 painting of Liszt at a Chickering by
G.P.A. Healy and a 1919 painting of Liszt at a Steinway by John C. Johansen.
Due to recent publications, the Chickering painting and its story are fairly
well-known. In contrast, the Steinway painting is almost unknown.
Steinway and Chickering were the two most
important American pianos in the 19th century. Both makers presented Liszt with
two pianos. The two Chickering pianos can be seen today at the Liszt Museum in
Budapest. The fate of Liszt’s first Steinway is unknown but his second Steinway
is at the Museo Teatrale alla Scala.
The two paintings were made by the foremost
American portrait painters of their generations – George Peter Alexander Healy
(1813–1894) and John Christen Johansen (1876–1964). The list of illustrious personages
painted by them is long and includes numerous American presidents. The 1868
painting by Healy was given by the artist to the Newberry Library in Chicago in
1889. It currently hangs in the second floor reading room. The 1919 Johansen
painting can be seen in the “Hall of Fame” showroom at Steinway and Sons in
London.
We will now turn to details of the two paintings.
Liszt received his first Chickering piano at Santa Francesca Romana in Rome in
December, 1867. By December of 1868 Healy had completed his Liszt’s portrait.
Healy was visited at this time by the American poet H.W. Longfellow, who
greatly admired the portrait that he saw in Healy’s studio. The piano in the
painting displays the name “Chickering” on the fallboard. But is the piano in
the painting really Liszt’s Chickering? A comparison of the painting with
Liszt’s Chickering in Budapest would say no. In particular the music desk of
the two instruments is completely different. It would appear that Healy brought
a different instrument to his studio, where Liszt spent many hours sitting and
playing for him. But because of the immense popularity of Liszt’s new
Chickering, Healy painted the name “Chickering” on the piano’s fallboard.
In contrast, Johansen never knew Liszt and most
certainly never saw Liszt’s Steinway. The painting was commissioned by Steinway
as part of their collection of paintings showing famous pianists and composers
“at their Steinway”. These paintings were eventually featured in color
advertisements in various national magazines and newspapers in the 1920’s.
Liszt’s portrait appeared in The Musician
(November 1923).
And so where did Johansen get his inspiration? I
think that it was from Healy’s painting. Johansen grew up in Chicago and
studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. He certainly must have seen Liszt’s
portrait at the Newberry Library. Both paintings show Liszt in a similar pose
at the piano. Healy paints Liszt at the age he sees him. In Johansen’s
painting, Liszt appears to be the same age. Both paintings show the same hair
style, same clerical dress, and similar facial angle and expression. Johansen’s
painting show two candles behind the piano. Healy’s painting shows no candles,
but his famous 1869 portrait of Liszt (now at the H.W Longfellow National
Historic Site in Cambridge, Massachusetts) shows Liszt carrying a candle as he
greets Healy and Longfellow at the vestibule of Santa Francesca Romana.
Johansen may have seen that painting in the Longfellow home.
I am indebted to the late Henry Z. Steinway for
providing me with a negative of the Johansen painting and knowledge of its
existence.
Homage to Beethoven in Danhauser’s painting Erinnerung an Liszt
The topic of the lecture is a painting painted in 1840 by the prominent Biedermeier
painter Josef Danhauser: Erinnerung an
Liszt. The figure of Liszt playing the piano is in the centre of the
painting. His music calls forth the apparition of Beethoven as if in a vision.
The audience consists of Liszt’s circle of notable Romantic friends in Paris.
They look with devotion at the bust of Beethoven, the position of which is
twofold: on the one hand, it stands on a bundle of sheet music, while on the
other it is part of the background scenery of black clouds just before the
breaking out of a storm. Liszt’s piano connects the two worlds of the painting,
the borderline of which is indicated by the drawn apart curtains.
Iconographically, the painting may be classified as an homage painting, a type
of group portrait. It is a kind of profane icon, an art-religion painting making use of the tools of traditional
religious painting, where the object of devotion is the bust of Beethoven
representing the constancy of the heroic grandeur of the art genius.
The painting is a unique documentation of the
Romantic generation’s cult relationship and collective memory surrounding the
virtually holy predecessor. It demonstrates the Beethoven reverence of (1) the
commissioner Conrad Graf – piano maker – who gave a piano to Beethoven, (2) the
painter Danhauser – who took the death mask of the German composer, and (3)
Liszt – who considered himself the artistic heir to Beethoven.
The painting by Danhauser is well known among
musicologists due to its references to Beethoven and Liszt. Its emblematic, age
documenting character predestined it as a front-page illustration of many
publications. The 2002 international exhibition on the Beethoven reception of
Liszt, and a recent collection of studies entitled Liszt und Europa both made use of the visual associations provided
by the painting. It is also a favourite cover image for CDs and sheets of
music.
Although it is a well-known and thoroughly
researched painting, its re-examination is still worthwhile. Putting cultural
historical aspects in the centre, the contemporary reception of the painting
should be reconsidered from a synthesizing point of view utilizing the results
of art historical iconography, musicology and aesthetics. As a kind of cultural study, the lecture attempts to
demonstrate the background and motives that lead to the creation of the
painting. I shall place the painting in the wider context of the history of
ideas which is represented by the art-religious
experience Liszt and his Paris companions gained from Beethoven’s music. An
evaluation of the narrower, historical background – the Beethoven-cult
triggered by the piano concerts given by Liszt in Vienna in 1839–40 – will also
be included.
The interpretation of the stormy landscape
requires deeper study. I wish to express in my lecture that this landscape is a
visual topos of the sublime, the
aesthetic concept that romanticism saw embodied – among others – in the figure
and music of Beethoven. The concept of connecting the figure of Beethoven with
a stormy landscape can be seen in other romantic portraits of the German
composer as well.
The lecture will also touch upon the circumstances
of the commissioning of the painting, that is the advertising aspect it bore
upon itself. Liszt is playing a Graf
piano in the painting. It is possible that the piano is the visual
representation of the piano the pianist-composer actually played in Vienna.
Commissioning the painting Conrad Graf seems to have wished to popularize his
pianos by making use of the well-known image of Europe’s greatest pianist.
Forging “Paganinis of the Piano”:
Nineteenth-Century Traditions of Artistic Mimesis
La Mara’s
edition of Franz Liszt’s letters begins with one of his most famous. Reeling from
his first encounter with the phenomenal violinist Niccolò Paganini on 20
April 1832, Liszt made a pledge to Pierre Wolff two weeks later: “You will find
an artist in me! Yes, an artist of the kind you want, of the kind that is
required today!” Liszt’s ambitious musical response served to realize his
prediction: Suddenly awoken from a fallow period of composition and
concertizing, with two years he produced the Grande fantaisie di bravura sur
Paganini’s influence looms large in the formation
of Liszt’s early technique and aesthetics. Liszt himself had noted in his
obituary of the violinist from 1840 that Paganini’s extraordinary success
throughout Europe prompted critics to dub promising musical talents the
“Paganinis of the piano, Paganinis of the contrabass, Paganinis of the guitar,
and so on,” and while he did not explicitly identify himself as one such
“Paganini of the piano,” the term has proved irresistible to his biographers.
Although there is in fact much truth to this nickname, it inadvertently
disregards the number of other musical artists – especially pianists – who
sought to learn and profit from Paganini’s phenomenal style and success; in
short, denying the tradition of artistic fraternity surrounding Paganini that
was well established by the time of Liszt's 1832 revelation.
This paper provides contexts for this wide-ranging
tradition by focusing on a number of compositions that sought to bring Paganini
to the piano. Of the many precursors to Liszt's Clochette Fantasy (1834)
and Études d’exécution transcendante, those by Carl Czerny, Johann
Nepomuk Hummel, and Ignaz Moscheles stand out. Czerny’s Grandes Variations brilliants, op. 170, offers variations on the
famous “
This tradition also suggests a philosophical
dimension. For while these works reproduce Paganini’s music to one degree or
another, each tries to establish the medium of mimesis as artistically valid,
effectively challenging the Kantian and pre-empting the Hegelian notions of
genius that would pervade the century and still clings to modern definitions of
the artist. Liszt argued that this type of orientation was indispensable for
the “artist of the future,” in which “virtuosity is a means, not an end.”
Somewhat paradoxically then, after his death Paganini becomes the benchmark by
which the transcendent artistry of composer-pianists is measured, and a
baseline for further artistic experimentation. Thus Liszt’s return to Paganini
in the 1840s (Clochette et Carnaval de Venise) and 1850s (Grandes
Études) constitutes an ongoing effort to refine virtuosity in order to
bring about artistic unification among musicians, regardless of instrumental
specialty. Prompted by his pianistic predecessors, Liszt deepened the tradition
of transforming Paganini for the piano, his model in turn stimulating further
refinements and new directions by Johannes Brahms, Ferruccio Busoni, Alfred
Cortot, Sergei Rachmaninov, August Stradal, and others during the long
nineteenth century.
« … l’esprit de la statue me parlait » :
La dimension apollinienne de la sculpture dans l’imaginaire musicale Lisztien
« […] Apollon, le dieu de toutes les formes
plastiques, est en même temps le dieu prophétique.
Lui qui d’après la racine de son nom est le
“brillant”, la divinité de lumière,
règne aussi sur la belle apparence du monde
intérieur de l’imagination ».
F. Nietzsche, La naissance de la tragédie (1872)
Lors de son pèlerinage artistique, Liszt manifesta en différentes
manières son amour pour le beau, caractérisant ce « pays privilégié »
qu’est l’Italie :
« Le sentiment et la réflexion me pénétraient
chaque jour davantage de la relation cachée qui unit les œuvres du génie.
Raphaël et Michel-Ange me faisaient mieux comprendre Mozart et Beethoven ;
Jean de Pise, Fra Beato, Francia m’expliquaient Allegri, Marcello,
Palestrina ; Titien et Rossini m’apparaissaient comme deux astres de
rayons semblables. Le Colisée et le Campo Santo ne son pas si étrangers qu’on
pense à
En écrivant à Hector Berlioz en octobre
1839, proposait ainsi une conception de l’art, considéré dans son
« universalité » et dans son « unité ». Toutefois, cette
forme d’“admiration créatrice” souleva chez le compositeur, de plus en plus
préoccupé par son rôle d’artiste agissant dans la société, des questions
concernant l’approche de la musique de la part du public. Parmi les arts, la sculpture,
l’art de Phidias et de Michel-Ange, par sa dimension apollinienne, lui permit
de réfléchir autour de l’altérité des arts, reposant sur deux principes,
« la réalité et l’idéalité » :
« L’idéalité n’est sensible qu’aux
intelligences cultivées ; la réalité de la statuaire est sensible à
tous ; elle a son type dans la figure humaine que tous connaissent. […].
Il n’en pas ainsi pour la musique ; elle n’a pour ainsi dire point de
réalité ; elle n’imite pas, elle exprime. La musique est à la fois
une science comme l’algèbre, et un langage psychologique auquel les
habitudes poétiques peuvent seules faire trouver un sens. Or, comme science, et
comme art, elle reste presque entièrement à la foule ».
A travers l’analyse des écrits théoriques, des
partitions inspirées de la statuaire de
Liszt’s
Text: Le Persée de Benvenuto Cellini:
An Artistic Manifesto?
In his text: Le Persée de Benvenuto Cellini, Liszt is
more interested in the problems of the artist in the society and of the
specificities of the statuary on the music, than in Benvenuto Cellini’s statue
itself. So he establishes a “parallel”, according to his own words, between
Cellini and Berlioz, indentifying both to the antic hero previously mentioned.
Moreover, he tries to establish and to underline “the hidden relationships
between works of genius” (Letter from Liszt to Berlioz). The differences and
common points between arts are evoked too: “All the arts are based on two
principles: reality and ideality. Ideality is perceptible only to cultivated
minds but the reality of the sculptor can be perceived by everyone because its
prototype is the human form, familiar to all. [...] This, however, is not the
case with music: it has no reality, so to speak; it does not imitate, it
expresses.” (trans. Suttoni)
He gives here a similar element as the one presented in
his Lettre sur
Besides, the text gives information concerning Liszt too:
his functioning – his “synaesthetic imagination” always here – his
convictions... Finally, it is a tribute to the genius men. Associated to other
texts, it could maybe appear like a real artistic manifesto...
Quand Franz Liszt fait de George Sand
l’héritière d’E. T. A. Hoffmann
Hoffmann, Liszt et Sand ont pour une large part contribué à définir la
personne de l’artiste romantique dans la première moitié du XIXe
siècle. Or leurs théories ou convictions artistiques se recoupent
maintes fois sur plusieurs points essentiels : la mission assignée
à l’art, le rôle de l’artiste dans la société, les définitions ou
tentatives de définitions de l’art musical, sa spécificité par rapport aux
autres langages artistiques, les liens qu’il entretient avec les autres arts
(poésie, peinture), etc.
L’objet de la communication consiste à
montrer comment Hoffmann, Liszt et Sand, au-delà de leurs différences –
un Allemand écrivain mais aussi musicien, un Hongrois musicien mais aussi
écrivain, une Française romancière et mélomane – forment une triade
donnant corps au concept de « frères en art » cher à
Hoffmann, et de montrer également, plus particulièrement, comment Liszt,
qui fit découvrir à Sand l’œuvre de Hoffmann, constitue en quelque
sorte le maillon essentiel dans la chaîne reliant Hoffmann à Sand, le
vecteur permettant à la romancière française de connaître et de
faire siennes les idées du conteur allemand.
Afin que l’intervention corresponde au format
attendu, nous nous proposons de travailler essentiellement à partir de
trois textes : les Kreisleriana
de Hoffmann ; les Lettres d’un
bachelier ès musique de Liszt ; Consuelo de Sand.
Listening as Gazing: Synaesthesia and the Double
Apotheosis in Franz Liszt’s Hunnenschlacht
Among Franz Liszt’s symphonic poems, Hunnenschlacht
(“The Battle of the Huns,” 1857) and Von
der Wiege bis zum Grabe (“From the Cradle to the Grave,” 1883) were
inspired by the visual arts. With these works, Liszt attempted to translate
painterly figurations into music; this intention is particularly embodied in
his symphonic transformation of Wilhelm Kaulbach’s monumental fresco, Hunnenschlacht. Liszt was attracted by
the idea of religious devotion and at the same time identified himself with the
Huns. In a letter of 1855 to the Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, he
wrote: “And I, too, sometimes feel that I am a Hun, to the very marrow of my
bones. When my bones are broken, and reduced to dust or decay, my spirit will
breathe in the combat, the valour and—your love.” This
paper considers the ways in which Liszt expressed the narrative plot and imitated
the visual qualities of the Hunnenschlacht
fresco by deploying innovative instrumental techniques and a progressive
formal structure. This work illustrates Liszt’s interest in combining different
art forms, and the prominent use of an apotheosis is an expression of the
Beethovenian symphonic model.
Liszt shared with early-nineteenth-century
Romantics such as E. T. A. Hoffmann an interest in synaesthesia, associating
colors with sounds. In Hunnenschlacht,
Liszt used the graphic illustration of the fresco as his primary source, yet he
also attempted to convey the various tone colors associated with the figures.
This interpretative process is explained in his preface to the score, in which
Liszt describes the lights and colors associated with the Huns, the Romans, and
the Cross. The peculiar treatment of instrumentation, including the use of
wooden and sponge drum sticks, organ, unusual combinations of instruments, and
an audacious treatment of dynamics, vibrantly depict the distinct colors or
lights that envelop the principal figures in the painting.
Most importantly, Liszt highlighted the primary
physical movements which are only implied by the painting. These actions
include the battle rising from the ground to the air, the gradual elevation of
the Cross, and the final conversion of the Huns to the Christian faith. The
process of the battle is particularly important for Liszt: he intended his
listeners to “gaze” on the battle and be “terrified” and “dazzled.” By
depicting and imitating these implied visual movements, Liszt transformed the
static picture, which contains simultaneous and multiple actions, into the
process of a battle unfolding in distinct stages.
These physical depictions are linked to the work’s
apotheosis. In Kaulbach’s fresco, the raised Cross and its radiant light
constitute the primary apotheosis, a symbol of the triumph of Christianity. Yet
Liszt placed this moment in the middle of the symphonic poem. The entire
statement of the hymn (the Crux fidelis theme) and the repeated alternation of the full
orchestra and the organ form the musical realization of this apotheosis. Liszt
created a second apotheosis at the end of the work, what he described as a
“finale.” This second apotheosis is a result of the concurrence of the
painting’s narrative and the Beethovenian model of the symphonic finale. It at
once foregrounds the unification of the opposing forces within the “plot” and
presents the grand, triumphant gesture traditionally associated with the
monumental or heroic style. The use of a double
apotheosis is analogous to the “finale problem” (Finaleproblem) as defined by Paul Bekker, which concerns the status
of the symphonic poem as a genre. The presence of the central apotheosis
creates the challenge of composing a finale that may surpass or at least equal
this first climax. Whereas previous studies of Hunnenschlacht
have focused on the conventional use of the concluding apotheosis, this
paper examines the problem of the double apotheosis as it relates to the
depiction of physical movement in the symphonic poem.
Liszt und Mendelssohn (im Spiegel der Briefe
Mendelssohns)
Paris war Anfang der 1830er Jahre Treffpunkt junger Komponisten,
Mendelssohn befreundete sich eng mit Frédéric Chopin und Ferdinand Hiller, die
ein fröhliches Trio bildeten. Auch zu anderen Musikerkollegen bestand sehr
freundschaftlicher Kontakt, insbesondere zu Franz Liszt. Im gemeinsamen
Musizieren und Feiern tauschten sich die jungen Leute aus und schärften ihre
Individualität. Die Briefe Mendelssohns sind von einer hellsichtigen
Beobachtungsgabe geprägt, die ungewöhnliche Perspektiven und
Charakterisierungen bietet. Das Verhältnis trübte sich später ein, die
gegenseitige Hochachtung aber blieb erhalten. Die Briefe erlauben eine
abgrenzende Charakteristik beider Persönlichkeiten und ihrer Musik.
“Christ’s mighty shrine above His martyr’s tomb”: Byron, and Liszt’s journey to Rome
The influence of Byron on Liszt was enormous, as is generally acknowledged.
In particular the First Book of the Années
de Pèlerinage shows the poet’s influence in its choice of Byron
epigraphs in English for four of the set of nine pieces. In his years of travel
as a virtuoso pianist Liszt often referred to “mon byronisme”.
The work by Byron that most affected Liszt is the
long narrative poem Childe Harold’s
Pilgrimage which was translated into many languages, including French, in
which language Liszt seems to have read the longer works of Byron. In the
Preface to the NLE Supplements to Works for Solo Piano volume 5 [Budapest 2007]
which contains Album d’un Voyageur,
the editor Adrienne Kaczmarczyk says of Childe
Harold: “This powerfully influential work published between 1812 and 1818
may have provided the direct inspiration for the title of Années de pèlerinage. Many of Liszt’s letters, works and
compositional plans show that he felt Byron’s poetry and personality to be akin
to his own.” [p.XXVIII] If this is the case, then the word “pèlerinage”
that replaced “voyageur” is a Byronic identity in Liszt’s thinking.
Pèlerinage, or pilgrimage, is not a poetic
idea, it is a religious idea, but Byron is not thought of generally as a
religious poet or a religious man. Indeed, in his own day he had the reputation
of being a kind of demon, the idea of the “Byronic” being linked to other 19th
century literary personae with a
dark, brooding, dangerous flavour. This, however, is evidently not how Liszt
saw Byron. Indeed, the Byronic hero as Liszt saw him and imitated him in for
example Mazeppa and Tasso is a figure who represented a
positive force, suffering and perhaps a revolutionary, but definitely not a
public enemy.
Liszt’s life, viewed as a musical pilgrimage, led
of course to Rome. Is it possible that Byron even influenced him in this
direction? The question of Byron and the church has not been much written about
and Liszt himself surely knew nothing about it. But between the two men there
existed an empathy of personality felt through their art, expressed in Liszt’s
case by a posthumous transfer from literature to music. Does the Byronic Liszt,
we might ask, match the Lisztian Byron? If Liszt was like Byron, was Byron like
Liszt?
In this paper I try to give a portrait of the real
Byron that hides behind the poseur of
his literary works, and suggest that what drew Liszt to the English poet was
precisely the man whom he sensed behind the artistic mask. Byron was not
musical, but he was religious – as emerges from his life and his letters, a
life which caused scandal to his English contemporaries. But today we can see
that part of the youthful genius of the rebel Byron was his boldness in the
face of hypocrisy and compromise – his heroism was simply to be true. In this we
can I think see a parallel with the Liszt who left the piano and composed Christus. What look like
incompatibilities are simply the connection between action and contemplation –
between the journey and the goal. Byron, in fact, can help us follow the ligne intérieure which Liszt talked
about in the 1830s – and which the Hungarian musicologist György Króo talked
about in the last International Liszt Centenary Conference in Budapest held in
1986.
Liszt’s Dante
Symphony, a “multimedia” innovative work and Genelli’s paintings
Dante’s Divine Comedy
disseminated through the centuries and continues to be diffused, capturing the
fantasy of many artists from the Medieval era until today. Paintings,
sculptures, music compositions, literary critics, translations in all
languages, novels, cinema films, and cartoons have been inspired by Dante’s
poem.
Franz Liszt, one of the famous composers of the
19th century, was inspired by the Divine
Comedy and composed the so-called Dante
Symphony in 1857. According to Liszt’s correspondence, the composer had in
mind to make a “multimedia” performance of this piece. He ordered paintings on Divine Comedy to his German friend and
painter Giovanni Bonavetura Genelli that would be presented as a diorama during
the performance of the Symphony. The use of the term “multimedia” here aims to
reveal what Liszt desired to do but never realized throughout his life;·among
his plans were to combine literature, art, music and the use of his time’s
technology by the construction of a special machine that would produce air
symbolizing in that way Dante’s Hell atmosphere
and the desperate screams of the damned souls. The public at Liszt’s times
would have been witness to a unique presentation of this work, if Liszt’s
innovative ideas were realized.
Although Genelli prepared 36 paintings on Dante’s Divine Comedy which were published
approximately in 1852 – six years before the Dante Symphony was composed –, the diorama has never been presented
at Dante Symphony’s performance. The paintings are quite
unknown to the researchers. They came to light through the first worldwide
performance – according to my research − of Dante Symphony along with Genelli’s diorama in
Liszt’s correspondence reveals his ideas and
sketches on the Symphony and how important Wagner’s opinion was on the final
form of the piece. All the above are examined carefully and presented so that
new elements, concerning Liszt’s Dante
Symphony, come to the light.
Les Fleurs du Mal : Franz Liszt et Marie d’Agoult sources d’inspiration pour George Sand
« Les êtres qui nous inspirent
le plus d’affection
ne sont pas toujours ceux que nous
estimons le plus. »
George Sand,
Horace, 1841
« J’ai entendu Franz parler de vous et je vous ai vue. Je crois que
d’après cela, je puis sans folie vous dire que je vous aime. »
Ainsi s’adresse George Sand à Marie d’Agoult, le 26 novembre 1838,
évoquant les prémices d’une amitié apparemment indissoluble. Car Marie est pour
George, dès le début, bien plus qu’une amie : elle incarne la
« princesse fugitive, le véritable type de la princesse fantastique comme
les filles de roi aux temps poétiques ». La comtesse a tout pour séduire
l’écrivaine : la passion pour la musique et la littérature, mais surtout
son « collage » avec Franz Liszt, capable de braver ouvertement les
convenances bourgeoises. Dans un premier temps George Sand vampirise la vie de
ce couple idéal, le rejoignant en Suisse en août 1836 : dans la
dixième de ses Lettres d’un
voyageur elle décrit non sans ironie leur équipée dans les Alpes. Retour
à Paris, fin octobre, les deux femmes se retrouveront à l’Hôtel
de France, où – selon la description retenue dans Histoire de ma vie – « Mme d’Agoult recevait beaucoup de
littérateurs, d’artistes et quelques homme de monde. C’est chez elle ou par
elle que je fis connaissance avec Eugène Sue, Chopin, Mickiewicz,
Nourrit. » L’année suivante George Sand regagne la maison paternelle de
Nohant, dans l’Indre, où elle accueille « sa sœur », son
compagnon et la petite Blandine pour deux longs séjour. Mais l’idylle
s’achève bientôt, car la complicité entre George et Franz et la liberté
de mœurs dont on jouit à Nohant troublent visiblement Marie, vite
consciente que leur amitié touche à son terme.
Disparus de la vie de George Sand, Franz Liszt et
Marie d’Agoult se transforment rapidement en images littéraires, fantômes qui
hantent l’imaginaire créatif de l’écrivaine pour devenir personnages fictifs.
Deux romans, Béatrix (1839) d’Honoré
de Balzac, puis Horace (1841), par
Sand elle-même, verront le jour, s’inspirant librement de Liszt et
d’Agoult. Le contexte d’élaboration des deux textes et, surtout, les
métamorphoses des personnages tirés de Liszt, d’Agoult et Sand forment l’objet
principal de cette recherche.
En mars 1838, en effet, George Sand, a Nohant,
avait raconté à Balzac sa version de l’amour qui liait Liszt à la
comtesse d’Agoult, attachés l’un à l’autre non par la passion, mais par
la réprobation qui pesait sur eux. C’est à partir de ces confessions que
Balzac élabore un roman à clé, Béatrix,
dans lequel trouvent place les trois protagonistes de l’histoire : sous
les traits de l’altière Béatrix de Rochefide se cache Mme d’Agoult,
fiancée du musicien italien Gennaro Conti, inspiré par Liszt ; comme
Aurore Dudevant, alias George Sand,
la protagoniste, Félicité des Touches, est une écrivaine et musicienne
déjà célèbre sous le pseudonyme de Camille Maupin. Elle tient les
files de l’action et fait bouger les personnages sur un échiquier de sentiments
qui constitue l’une des plus attachantes expressions du romantisme balzacien.
Après avoir publié une première version du roman en avril-mai
1839, Balzac décidera de l’inclure dans le tome III de
Mais seulement deux ans
plus tard, peut-être suite à un compte-rendu anonyme qui critique
très sévèrement son Compagnon
du Tour de France, George Sand décide d’attaquer publiquement ses ex-amis.
Ainsi, dans Horace, la
romancière puise à pleines mains dans sa vie et dans celle de ses
intimes, afin d’ancrer la création romanesque à la description de ce
Paris de 1830, qu’elle avait si bien connu. Plusieurs protagonistes de la vie
culturelle de la capitale – d’Emmanuel Arago à Alfred de Musset –
crurent se reconnaître sous les traits d’Horace, jeune étudiant en droit – une
voie de laquelle il « ne cherche qu’à s’en sortir » – au
charme fashion, nourri d’« un
tel besoin de paraître avec tous ses avantages, qu’il était toujours habillé,
paré, reluisant, au moral comme au physique ». Né du savant mélange
d’hommes connus intimement par la romancière, Horace a une aventure avec
une femme du monde,
Loin d’être deux
récits fantaisistes de la liaison entre Liszt et d’Agoult, ces deux romans ont
exercé une fascination considérable sur toute une génération, qui à
travers ces pages empruntera sa vision de la vie de l’artiste et de sa fonction
sociale. C’est à Jean Prévost, d’ailleurs, que l’on doit la preuve de
l’influence envoûtante que la prose balzacienne aurait exercée sur
Baudelaire : à tel point que ses Fleurs du Mal auraient pu naître d’une expression employée par un
personnage de Béatrix, séduite par
les charmes irrésistibles des ces « fleures vénéneuses ».
Liszt, lecteur antimoderne
de Faust
Après avoir défini, dans un premier temps, le concept
d’antimodernité, en particulier à partir du livre du Professeur Antoine
Compagnon (Collège de France) Les
antimodernes, de Joseph de Maistre à Roland Barthes, Paris,
Gallimard, 2005, et rappelé brièvement le rôle essentiel de la
sociabilité mondaine aristocratique revenue d’émigration, et de la culture
esthétique du légitimisme politique, dans l’acclimatation du romantisme
allemand en France durant l’Empire,
Dans un deuxième temps, une étude de
l’esthétique de la négativité, et de ses implications musicales, qui traverse
les œuvres faustiennes de Liszt (Eine
Faust-Symphonie, Zwei Episoden aus
Lenaus Faust et ultimes Mephisto-valses,
Mephisto-polka) montrera que Liszt
s’éloigne du « modernisme naïf, zélateur du progrès »
(Antoine Compagnon) de bien de ses contemporains en même temps qu’il se
rapproche de la flamboyante esthétique de
Ainsi apparaîtra, un rapport de Liszt au mythe et
au personnage de Faust beaucoup plus complexe et ambigu que celui proposé par
les lectures habituelles, notamment françaises, qui ont tendance à
associer systématiquement, et de manière simpliste, le regard de Liszt
sur la liberté faustienne au processus moderne et libéral d’émancipation de l’individu.
Prepositions, Prefaces, and
Pericopes: Liszt’s Extra-Musical Looking Glass
Liszt’s use of Prefaces, Pre-positions, and
Pericopes in his music reveals how the composer looked at extra-musical
associations. From his very early sketch- and draftbooks to his last complete
compositions, both the written word and selective, suggestive musical quotation
gave the performer and then the listener an added dimension with which to
contend, a dimension that went beyond title and musical content. Some of these
elements are so subtle as to be virtually indistinguishable from the body of
the music; others stand out because of their physical placement as bold-face
explanations of what the composer was thinking. By examining several
representative compositions from the symphonic poems (Les Préludes, Orpheus),
works for piano with orchestra (Totentanz), and solo piano (the Consolations,
the First Ballade, and Les Jeux d’eaux à
NAVARRINI DELL’ATTI, Lucia & VANNONI, Annarosa
L’oeuvre de Dante Alighieri: une source d’inspiration
pour Augusta Holmès et Franz Liszt
Le comte Angelo De Gubernatis a commandé à la compositrice
très célébré et fameuse tout au long de sa vie, Augusta Holmès
(1847–1903), l’oeuvre Inno alla Pace en
l’honneur de Béatrice de Dante qui a été réalisé le 15 mai 1890 dans le théâtre
Politeama de Florence, sous la direction de Contrucci, pendant l’ Exposition
Beatrice. Le texte et la musique, comme son usage, sont à
Franz Liszt avait écrit à Augusta
Holmès pendant son séjour à Weimar, précisément le 18 août
1872, grâce à un contact du gendre Émile Ollivier, en lui montrant son
admiration pour ses compositions. En considération des liens entre De
Gubernatis, Ollivier, Wagner, etc., nous semble important comparer combien
l’oeuvre de Dante Alighieri ait inspiré Liszt pour
Revisiting Petrarch’s Sonnets: Franz Liszt’s
Hermeneutical Readings
It is well-known that Liszt not satisfied with the early soprano and piano
version of his Petrarch’s sonnets (sonetto 47, 123 & 104, written in
1838–9, but published in 1847), continued to rework them for over two decades
(piano transcription published in 1846; revisions as Nos. 4–6 of the Années de Pèlerinage: Deuxième
Année: Italie, published in 1858; and final revision for baritone and
piano, completed in 1861 but published in 1883). Critics have studied the
various settings of the Petrarch’s sonnets from different analytical
perspectives and, obviously, the use of several methods not integrated in a
general frame yields a variety of results, maybe contradictory, accordant or
different in kind. Nevertheless, none of the studies we have examined –even if
they discover relevant facts in the field of the relationships between Music
and Literature− attempt successfully a comprehensive study of these three
sonetti through the use of a methodology able to integrate the historical
background, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic process, musical and textual
representations and, overall, the concept key of “horizon of expectations”
introduced by Jauss in order to reveal the way in which the text interacts with
the reader’s interpretation.
The musical features we can find in each setting
are motivated by a composer acting as dynamic reader whose responses – in this
case, musical compositions − can be analyzed in the context of Reception
Theory postulated both by in its historical dimensions by Jauss and in its
phenomenological intentions articulated by Iser. Liszt’s different readings of
Petrarch’s Sonnets are a kind of meaningful literary hermeneutic that plays a
role in the concretization of the meaning of literary works, transforming with
this compositions the aesthetic canon (i.e. Petrarch’s reception in 19th
century), and creating new models and attitudes in the field of setting text to
music (even when words disappear, presents as a paratextual element in addition
with other iconographical elements).
In this paper every textual decision – dynamic and
expression markings, harmonic and textural features − present in each
different setting of Petrarch’s sonnets by Liszt will be analyzed as a critical
element in the ever-changing “horizons of the interpretations and
expectations”. Finally the different readings of the same poems displayed by
Liszt will be compared: to examine the artistic dimension of Liszt’s Petrarch’s
sonnets revisions the composer is considered as part of a literary process, a
reader whose musical compositions as responses incorporate both the
prestructuring of the potential meaning by the text, and the reader’s
actualization of this potential through the reading and compositional process.
The “Individual” in Johann
Friedrich Overbeck’s and Franz Liszt’s Seven Sacraments
In the preface to his Septem sacramenta (1878), Franz Liszt
acknowledged its stimulus, the drawings completed in 1862 by the German painter
Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789–1869), though at the same time he claimed his
treatment was “diametrically opposed” to the artist’s. This paper attempts to
explain why Liszt acknowledged a connection to Overbeck’s sacrament cycle and
examines how the composer approached a work that he very much wanted to win the
Catholic Church’s approval.
The paper first traces connections between
Overbeck and Liszt, including their direct contact and similarities in their
public personae. Overbeck was a member of the Nazarenes, a small group of
artists who in 1810 settled in a Franciscan convent in Rome in order to lead a
holy life dedicated to producing sacred art. Overbeck came to be known as the
“monk-artist,” a profile he continued to cultivate even after the group
disbanded. Liszt adopted his own pious image, that of abbé in clerical robes,
justified by his having taken Catholic minor orders. Both artist and composer
shared a belief that they could contribute meaningfully to the religious art of
their times. Both enjoyed papal favor.
The second part of the paper turns to reception of
Overbeck’s and Liszt’s Seven Sacraments. Throughout the ten years
Overbeck spent on his work, visitors flocked to his studio every Sunday to view
the cycle and hear his explanations. When the Dresden printmaker August Gaber
advertised the cycle’s reproduction in photography and wood engraving, he
promised to provide Overbeck’s own 45-page explanation. An explanation was
necessary, because, although the basic structure of the drawings is clear – a
central Scriptural image framed by borders largely devoted to additional validating
images from the Old and New Testaments – its interpretation is not. Where most
of his predecessors had simply illustrated the ritual act, Overbeck wanted to
establish the Scriptures as the foundation of the sacraments, a task he
approached as one of subjective exegesis. Because the drawings required such
intense reflection on the viewer’s part to fill in gaps within the iconography,
Gaber’s reproductions did not sell. With respect to the Church hierarchy,
although Overbeck’s emphasis on the sanctifying nature of the sacraments
followed current dogma, his highly individualized approach was problematic. In
the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions and subsequent challenges to papal
authority, the Church strove to promote communal understanding, rather than Enlightenment
individuality.
In 1885 the official publishing arm of the Church,
Pustet in Regensburg, rejected Liszt’s Septem sacramenta, along with two
other large works, Via crucis and Rosario, with the excuse that
the “framing” of these works would exceed that of what the firm usually
published. Pustet may have been reacting to the unusual genres, because during
those years the firm was primarily publishing Masses, Office items, and some
prayers. In the preface to Septem sacramenta, Liszt stated his intention
to have the music performed shortly before or during the administering of the
Holy Sacraments. This presumption alone likely put off Pustet, given that
traditionally the sacraments were assigned plainchant, but not treated to
newly-composed music. But Liszt also wrote: “I intended to give expression to
the feelings by which the Christian takes part in the graces that lift him out
of earthly life and make him aspire to the divine atmosphere of heaven.” By
focusing on the individual’s emotions, Liszt stood at odds with the Church’s
insistence on the sanctifying rather than moral or psychological effect of the
sacraments’ grace. We thus understand what Liszt meant by his approach being
“diametrically opposed” to Overbeck’s, whose rather cerebral drawings did not
capture nor elicit an emotional response.
But they shared a conviction that their respective
highly individual creations were worthy of the Church, inviting rejection by a
hierarchy that thought otherwise.
The final section of the paper examines Liszt’s
setting of Penance and Ordination to reveal how he projected a relevant
emotional experience. Penance shows his use of subtle harmonic and melodic
inflections to elicit a sense of underlying anxiety. Liszt may have attempted
to infuse Ordination with Christological resonance: a tightly controlled
melodic unfolding highlights the notes of the “Cross” motive that he used in a
number of works to symbolize a path to God, to redemption. Its implication,
“Take up the Cross and follow me,” ties the ordinand, instructed to “go out and
teach all men,” to Christ and redemption. Liszt’s triumphant setting clearly
suggests that he supports the apostolic mission. Interestingly, Overbeck’s
similar politics are revealed when he injected Peter, the “rock” upon whom
Christ built His Church, into the central Ordination scene showing Saul and
Barnabas sent forth by the Holy Spirit as missionaries. Overbeck thus signifies
his belief in apostolic succession and papal authority prior to the
proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870, whereas Liszt composed his work
after that date.
Although Liszt was not drawn to the complicated
exegesis that lies at the heart of Overbeck’s Seven Sacraments, he would
have appreciated its meditative intent and the artist’s deep-seated commitment
to the Church. Without irony, Liszt could acknowledge in his preface Overbeck’s
creative stimulus: the very individuality of Overbeck’s treatment seemed to
have stimulated his own. True to his generous nature, Liszt, whose individual
voice was often unappreciated, publicly recognized an equally individual voice
in the service of the Church.
Liszt und die bildende Kunst – systematische
Überlegungen
Die Frage, wie bildende Kunst Musik rezipiert, ist Gegenstand zahlreicher
Untersuchungen. Die umgekehrte Frage, wie Musik bildende Kunst rezipiert, blieb
bislang wenig beachtet (2011 erschien dazu ein Kongressbericht, hrsg. v. Lukas
Christensen und Monika Fink, der die Thematik erstmals breiter in den Blick
nimmt). Franz Liszt ist vermutlich der erste, der sich von Werken der bildenden
Kunst für Kompositionen anregen ließ. Ausgangspunkt war die Begegnung mit
italienischer Kunst (Sposalizio und Il Penseroso in Années de pèlerinage II), später folgten Symphonischen
Dichtungen (Hunnenschlacht nach
Kaulbach, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe
nach Zichy); der Totentanz für
Klavier und Orchester ist von Orcagna und Holbein inspiriert. Liszt geht
es prinzipiell um poetische Grundlagen der Musik, um die Verschmelzung der
Künste, wobei sich Musik theoretisch mit jeder Kunst, nicht nur mit Literatur,
verbinden kann. Wenn sie sich mit Literatur verbindet, reagiert sie auf
literarische Formen und Strukturen. Die Frage lautet also, ob das für Werke der
bildenden Kunst ebenso gilt. Komponiert Liszt gleichsam eine „Geschichte“ zum
Bild oder greift er auch Strukturen der Malerei auf? Und wie haben diese Werke
auf spätere Komponisten ausgestrahlt?
Présentation d’une édition critique du texte de
Liszt Berlioz et sa symphonie Harold
On connaît les importantes relations amicales, artistiques, intellectuelles
qui unissent Franz Liszt et Hector Berlioz. Ces relations se constituent au
cours de rencontres, d’organisation de concerts – en particulier des semaines
Berlioz à Weimar sous la direction de Liszt. On sait aussi que le
pianiste a écrit plusieurs textes littéraires sur l’œuvre de son ami.
Je voudrais dans cette communication présenter le
texte écrit par Liszt sur Harold en
Italie, à la lumière des sources conservées au département de
la musique de
STEGEMANN, Michael & STAHL, Christina
»Hexenmeister« und »Titan« – Franz Liszt
und Ludwig van Beethoven: Eine vergleichende Ikonographie
Ludwig van
Beethoven und Franz Liszt gehören zweifellos zu den am häufigsten porträtierten
Musiker-Persönlichkeiten des 19. Jahrhunderts. Zum Teil waren es sogar dieselben
Künstler (z.B. Max Klinger), die ihr Bild geprägt haben. Bei beiden reicht das
Spektrum vom realitätsnahen Porträt (als Gemälde, Zeichnung oder Plastik) über
Karikaturen und Paraphrasen bis hin zu verklärenden und idealisierenden
Darstellungen, die viel über ihr jeweiliges Bild in der (Musik)Geschichte
verraten. Deutlich zeigt sich dabei, dass beide Komponisten weit über ihre rein
musikhistorische Bedeutung hinaus gewissermaßen als »Archetypen« eines
bestimmten Künstler-Klischees stilisiert wurden: Auf den einen Seite der
»Titan« Beethoven – ein der irdischen Welt entrückter Olympier, dessen Lebens-
und Schaffensweg per aspera ad astra durch Kampf und Leiden zum Sieg
führt; auf der anderen Seite der »Hexenmeister« Liszt – ein mit allen Teufeln
und Dämonen der Unterwelt verbündeter Hyper-Virtuose, den selbst noch im Gewand
des Abbés der Schwefelduft des Mephistopheles umgibt. Aufschlussreich sind
insbesondere auch die Karikaturen in ihrer spezifischen Mischung aus
ästhetischer Ablehnung und faszinierter Bewunderung. Und in einem scheinen
beide gleichermaßen die Phantasie der Künstler inspiriert zu haben: Sowohl von
Beethoven als auch von Liszt gibt es (aus dem frühen 20. Jahrhundert)
Phantasie-Porträts, die aus den Körpern nackter Frauen zusammengefügt wurden...
The
Never-ending Story: Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher
Liszt’s interest towards the figure of Jeanne d’Arc accompanied the
composer long his life. He chose a poem by Alexandre Dumas père as text of
the “Romance dramatique” Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher. After the first
version for voice and piano published in 1846, the composer asked August
Conradi for instrumental arrangement. This orchestral version, held at the
Goethe und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar with other unpublished scores of the same
work, exists in two copies, one of them with Liszt’s corrections [GSA 60/B 21].
In 1858 Liszt planned a stage work on the subject of Jeanne d’Arc, but he
didn’t realize this idea and confined himself to revise the romance [GSA 60/B
23]. This unpublished setting of Dumas’ text is followed by an unpublished
version for voice, piano and harmonium preserved at the Liszt Museum of
Budapest [Ms. mus. L 80], and by a rewriting in 1874 for voice and piano or
orchestral accompaniment, both published by Schott in 1876. According to the
catalogues of Liszt’s works, the musical material is completed from another
unpublished and undated orchestral version held at the Bibliothèque
Nationale de France [Ms 152].
The list of multiple settings is not yet complete.
Some years ago the Istituto Liszt (Bologna) bought an autograph manuscript for
organ [I-Bil M12-13] not cited in Liszt’s catalogue of works. The manuscript
consists of two pages titled “Orgel part zu Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher”;
it is not dated, but some cues as symbols of sections’ and pages’ numbers
permit us to suppose that the manuscript refers to an orchestral score. The
autograph is part of a double folio that presents also an unknown version for
organ of the accompaniment for Elegy n. 2. On the basis of the date
written at the end of the Elegy (“für das Kirchen Conzert in Jena, 12
Juli 78”), it is very likely that Jeanne d’Arc with organ accompaniment
was performed on the same occasion. This is only one of the hypotheses that this
study will verify.
The aim of this research is to construct by the
analysis of the scores a compelling testimony to the impact of the history of
Jeanne d’Arc on Liszt’s imagination and work. The relationship between Dumas
and Liszt will be a natural point of departure in order to know the meaning
that the figure of Jeanne d’Arc had for them. The French heroin was expression
of religious and patriotic sentiments, both characterizing Liszt, the man and
his music. Liszt identified strongly with the saint creating a complete human
and musical drama.
The Literary Canon of F.
Liszt
How can a literary historian qualify the choice of
texts made by Liszt? Two contradictory hypotheses merit some consideration. On
the one hand, the composer accepted Goethe’s idea of a Weltliteratur and sought to rely on the masterpieces of an
international canon; on the other hand, it cannot be denied that some of the
texts he set to music were written for minds and ears conditioned differently
to ours. The main strength of Liszt’s approach to literature is
internationalism, but literary canons are as changeable as musical repertoires,
and one might well argue that a text begins to lose its literary value the
moment it is appropriated by a composer. Regarding the relationship between
text and music, one can distinguish four types. The difference between vocal
music and instrumental works inspired by literature is clear-cut. Scores headed
by a text represent a third type. The three Petrarca
sonnets of the Deuxième Année
of Années de Pèlerinage may
represent a fourth type, which could be called the instrumental transcription
of vocal music. My tentative conclusion is that in all these cases one should
avoid the temptation to regard the music as an “addition” to the text. The
function of music is not “to do justice to poetry”. It is misleading to speak
about elements that are “alien to the text” or “incompatible with the poem”.
The text has to be deconstructed by the composer. Inspiration cannot be
ignored, but the aesthetic quality of the music does not depend on the artistic
value of the poem used by the composer.
Liszt and Bad Taste
Everyone will probably agree that no great musician
has been as frequently accused of bad taste as Liszt. And everyone will
probably also agree that these accusations have had no effect on his stature as
a great musician, even among the accusers. So what is bad taste, then, if it is
so easily separable from artistic stature? It is a concept that has been poorly
historicized or contextualized, if at all. This paper is an attempt to start
the process, using Liszt as bellwether.
„Der Himmel weiß! in welchem
Geistesstall er sein nächstes Steckenpferd finden wird“
Liszts Interesse an den
Schönen Künsten mit den Augen Heines gesehen
Heinrich Heine gilt in der deutschen Literatur
gemeinhin als einer der Mitbegründer des musikalischen Feuilletons, ein Genre, das
er zu höchster Meisterschaft entwickelte mit den Mitteln der Ironie und Satire.
Seine Musikberichte wurden in verschiedenen Organen der zeitgenössischen Presse
nachgedruckt und besprochen. In diesen Artikeln diskutierte er wiederholt (und
im Laufe der 1840er Jahre mit immer schärfer werdender Polemik) viele seiner
musikalischen Zeitgenossen – vor allem solche, deren Werke in Paris zur
Aufführung kamen. Führenden Komponisten seiner Zeit wie Mendelssohn-Bartholdy,
Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Chopin, Wagner und Liszt begegnete Heine persönlich. Dass
das Verhältnis zwischen Heine und Liszt, die sich 1831 in Paris kennenlernten,
nicht unproblematisch war, ist ein Gemeinplatz. Schon in Heines erster
Erwähnung Liszts in den Florentinischen
Nächten (1836) „verbinden sich Anerkennung und Unbehagen miteinander und
lassen eine Ambivalenz erkennen, ohne die die spätere Kritik Heines an Liszt
nicht verständlich ist.“ (Rainer Kleinertz) In meiner Präsentation möchte ich
mich, motiviert durch dieses Moment der Ambivalenz in Heines musikalischen
Urteilen, seiner Liszt-Kritik widmen, wobei weniger der Aspekt der Virtuosität
beleuchtet werden soll, als vielmehr überprüft, inwiefern wir Liszts Interesse
an den Schönen Künsten kritisch in Augenschein nehmen sollten. Gibt es Widersprüche
und Inkonsistenzen in Liszts Nachdenken über Kunst und Musik, die eine solche
ambivalente Haltung seitens Heines rechtfertigten?
Im Zentrum der Betrachtung soll der zehnte
Brief aus Über die Französische Bühne.
Vertraute Briefe an August Lewald (1837) stehen, erschienen in Lewalds Allgemeiner Theaterrevue, anschließend
in der Revue et Gazette musicale de Paris
am 4. Februar
Puszta, Hussaren und Zigeunermusik: Franz Liszt
und das Heimatbild von Nikolaus Lenau
Der berühmte österreichischer Dichter, Nikolaus Niembsch, Edler von
Strehlenau (auf seinem Pseudonym Lenau), war ein Landsmann Liszts: er wurde
Franz Liszt verbrachte die wichtigen Jahren seiner
Jugend in Paris, und lebte seit
Obwohl Liszts Budapester und Weimarer Bibliothek
keine Ausgabe der Gedichten Lenaus enthalten, es ist sicher, dass Liszt sich
nach dem Werk seines Landsmannes nicht wenig interessierte, da er mehrere
Gedichte Lenaus vertonte: Zwei Episoden
aus Lenaus Faust (1857–61), Der
traurige Mönch (1860), Die drei
Zigeuner (1860), und Puszta Wehmut
(1871). Es ist auffallend, das Liszt sich besonders um das Jahr 1860 mit
Lenau’s Gedichten befasste.
Mein Referat möchte die Einflüsse der Ideen Lenaus
auf Liszts Auffassung von Ungarn und Ungartum erweisen, wie sie sich in Liszts
Schrift: Die Zigeuner und ihre Musik in
Ungarn (Paris 1859; Pest 1861), und in seinen von Lenaus Gedichten
inspirierten Werke, besonders Die drei
Zigeuner und Puszta Wehmut,
widerspiegeln.
Cine-fantasies on Liebestraum Nr. 3.
Lisztomania
– a virtuosic toccata of pure,
flagrant
cinematic technique and style
(Ross Care)
The
aim of the study
In my lecture I am speaking about Liszt’s best
known love song, the Liebestraum Nr.3.,
its big career in the cinema, and its feedback to the image of its creator. I
am analyzing the images of Liszt’s life in the Liszt-movies, the reception of
Liszt’s music in the movies, and mainly an artistic cine-fantasy on Liszt’s
life and oeuvre.
Images of Liszt in movies
All Liszt-movies represent only four images of him: the “piano virtuoso”,
“Don Juan”, the “abbot”, and the “Man of gipsy music”, or the collecting image
of “rhapsody man”. So, from the very early movie of Franz Liszt (1925), through the television comedy of Victor Borge
and Mike Wallace (1962), till the Chopin-movie of Impromptu (1991), the same images belong to Liszt.
The cine-fantasy of
Lisztomania
The only exception, which creates a new world around Liszt, is the Lisztomania (1975) by Ken Russell. It is
true, that Liszt’s “leitmotif” is the Liebestraum,
but as the figure of Liszt, also the love song could avoid the usual
clichés. The movie was interpreted by critics as a kind of “cinematic
psychodrama”, or as a “documentary musical fantasy”. Even representing the
usual Liszt-images Russell creates new ones like “Liszt as Hungarian hussar”,
“Liszt as the first pop superstar” and “Liszt as the savour of the world, alias
Flash Gordon”. Parallel to it the Liebestraum
Nr. 3. is reinterpreted as the hymn of life, melody of heaven or as march
of “Amor vincit omnia”.
WINKLER, Gerhard
Tasso-Mirrors: Byron – Goethe – Liszt
The Symphonic Poem Tasso
represents one of the works by Liszt that do not emerge from a consistent
conception but look back on a long history of changing formation wherein a wide
range of conceptual, esthetical and musical aspects are crossing each other.
Originally composed as an incidental overture for Goethe’s play Torquato Tasso on the occasion of the
centenary festivity of the birth of the Weimar poet, and finally re-worked and
extended to a Symphonic Poem in 1854 the piece is put together of musical
sections which were composed in the years from 1840 to 1854 that are held
together through their thematic material and the technique of “thematic
transformation”.
The paper has the aim to throw a spotlight on the
crossing field of conceptions from the side of the literary “sujet” Tasso and
Liszt’s different “sources” of it: Lord Byron’s The Lament of Tasso and Goethe to whose play Liszt’s musical piece
is related. How does Liszt’s conception of “Tasso” work within the different esthetical
functions of an incidental overture and a Symphonic Poem? How does the
“programme” change shifting from the first to the latter? How does Liszt reflex
the myth of the artist within the musical creation of his Byronesque “lament of
Tasso”? In which way the final Symphonic Poem does “assimilate” a masterwork of
literature “into music” in the case of Goethe’s play? How is Goethe’s and
Liszt’s Weimar reflected in the Ferrara of Goethe’s play and the
Ferrara-section of Liszt’s musical piece?
Intermediality and Liszt’s Il Pensieroso
Liszt’s Il Pensieroso presents an
intricate sample for a case study of intermediality,
a concept that relates to the sign system that explains the textual use of one medium
as represented in another medium, and the parallel properties between the
different media. The concept stresses the notion of not giving preference to
one media over another in the reconstruction of musical meaning, which is
applicable to Liszt’s works inspired by artworks, and/or by literature, e.g.
Raphael’s Sposalizio, and Sonnetti di Petrarca.
The sculpture Il
Pensieroso is a representation of Duke of Urbino, one of three Michelangelo
sculptures on the tomb of Lorenzo de Medici II. The sculpture is accompanied by
Michelangelo’s poem titled “Speech of the Night” that appears on a plate
beneath the statue.
Liszt’s musical topic as reflected in his choices
of tempo, register, and rhythmic gestures articulate the locale and the
function of the statue. Liszt captures the speech rhythm, the word inflection,
the spatial, and the interpretive meaning of Michelangelo’s poetic lines.
Liszt’s own subjectivity adds to his conscious choice of the subject of
representation his own emotional states.
ZICARI, Ida
Liszt
and the Dance: A Writing that Dictates the Choreography – Frederick Ashton and Dante
Sonata
Background
If we exclude the early work Don Sanche ou le Château d’Amour that includes danced parts, Liszt never composed
music for choreographic ends. During the years of the achievement of the
romantic ballet, Liszt expresses critical remarks about dance theatre: focal
point of the ballet of those years was the widespread disregard of music
devoted to choreography. But from the twentieth century Lisztian music gives
interesting material to choreographers and dancers, offering them opportunities
for expression of personal conceptions of dance.
Subject
My paper will focus on a Lisztian choreographic interpretation by Frederick
Ashton: Dante Sonata on Dante Sonat
Aim
of presentation
With Ashton’s choreographies, the Lisztian writing
confirms itself to be able to express and communicate a content through its
particular formal aspects. My study shows like the dance succeeds in giving
evidence to the Lisztian score in all its inner articulations and its
contextual references.
Sponsored
by
Hungarofest Nonprofit Ltd.
Hungarian Ferenc Liszt Society
Hungarian National Commission
for UNESCO