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The salvation role of Gretchen, embodying the “Ewig-Weibliche,” has already been mentioned by several scholars analyzing Liszt’s “Faust” Symphony. According to them, Liszt found the most direct models to the characterization of the female protagonist of his work in Wagner’s operas. This interpretation can be made more differentiated in the view of another musical quotation of the “Gretchen” movement of the Symphony. I would like to go further on the basis of some concrete musical analogies, following the genesis of the composition and Liszt’s writings. I seek to answer the following questions: How much is Goethe’s Gretchen preserved in Liszt’s work? What are the influences of Gretchen’s contemporary musical characterizations known by Liszt, related to his own work? Last but not least, what kind of connections do exist between the Gretchen of the “Faust” Symphony and the other female characters in Liszt’s works?
Liszt’s activities and aesthetic ideas during the Weimar period were comprehensively inspired by the Golden Era of German literature and the parallel musical traditions. Not only the performances of Wagner, Schumann, and Berlioz, but also his literary publications and musical compositions pursued the idea of presenting a new type of synthesis of poetry and music. The key to his new aesthetic concept of instrumental music was his idea to create equivalents to the different types of poetry. Liszt’s ideas would have remained mere speculation without the Weimar traditions of memorial culture and the activities of his “Fortschrittspartei.” As fruitful as Liszt’s regeneration of the spirit of Weimar was, there was no bridge between the mental confrontation of two different worlds: between the European Franz Liszt and the keepers of the holy Grail of the past.
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. The word “pèlerinage” that replaced “voyageur” is a Byronic identity in Liszt’s thinking. 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? 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 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.
The image of Liszt at the piano has been a favorite with artists. This article examines two paintings: an 1868 painting of Liszt at a Chickering piano by G. P. A. Healy and a 1919 painting of Liszt at a Steinway piano 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. Healy’s portrait (1868) was done in his studio in Rome as Liszt sat playing for him. While Healy had seen Liszt’s Chickering piano, the instrument in his studio was not that piano and, despite the name “Chickering” on the fallboard, the painting does not faithfully convey the details of Liszt’s Chickering. Johansen’s portrait (1919) was done by an artist who had never met Liszt and almost certainly had never seen his Steinway piano. Because of the Chicago connection, this article proposes that Johansen took his inspiration from Healy.
The article aims to clarify some intricate points about the interpretation of Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnet Benedetto sia ‘l giorno throughout its many settings (manuscripts and prints). The author discusses first the problem of Liszt’s knowledge of the Italian language and metric norms, usually taken for granted; then that of the dates — of composition, of revision(s), of publication(s) — which has been covered much more widely in the literature than that of the language, but that still presents uncertainties. Taking the correspondence between the rhythm of the poem and that of the music as a means of analysis, the author suggests the cooperation of external hands in the setting of the words. Discussing the form of the piece, the paper tries to confute the various commonplaces of the literature; the difficulties inherent in the meter (the hendecasyllable) and the various ways in which its rhythm is interrupted — through repetitions, pauses and vocalizations etc. — are examined. The conclusion is that in Benedetto sia ‘l giorno the relationship between music and poetry does not reflect any particular model of lied nor of opera aria; the piece instead hints slightly to the old Italian madrigal. Benedetto is not the occurrence of a known musical form, but an example of the crisis of the form.
The life and works of Mozart are central to a due understanding of Liszt’s development as pianist, composer, and conductor. Yet, this fact receives inadequate attention in scholarly studies. Liszt readily acknowledged that he ‘owed the greater part of what he was as a musician to Mozart’ and found identity and goal as he sought, as pianist and composer, to emulate the endeavors of the Viennese master. Like Mozart, he was a ‘pioneer of progress’ who refused ‘to be bound by accepted modes of expression.’ Like Mozart, ‘he pushed virtuosity to utmost limits.’ Like Mozart, he was seen by many as an iconic figure of German nationalism. In later life, Liszt took comfort from the fact that Mozart, his illustrious role-model, was not spared bitter experiences. ‘As with every great genius,’ both endured ‘pain and suffering’ in order to accomplish their task. In so many areas of musical activity and experience, Liszt mirrored his great Viennese master. Throughout Liszt’s life, he remained devoted to the scrupulous study and execution of Mozart’s music and played an important part in promoting a better understanding of both man and music via podium and press before, during, and after the Mozart Centenary Celebrations in Vienna in January 1856.
This documentary contains 16 Liszt-letters preserved at the Goethe-Schiller- Archiv (GSA) in Weimar and further 14 items from the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek (SLUB) in Dresden. The Weimar letters include those in which Liszt addressed (in French) Ignaz Moscheles and Julius Benedict, both German musicians living in London, about his 1840 concert tour in England. Also, he wrote in French to singer Pauline Viardot-Garcìa, Madame Érard, and his Neapolitan pupil Luisa Cognetti. His letters in German to Hermann Levi deal with Richard Wagner. In another letter Liszt is asking the Vienna Home Secretary Baron Alexander von Bach, to have his Gran Mass published at the state administration’s expense. His letters to Count Sándor Teleki and Ede Reményi concern Hungarian musical life. Liszt is giving instructions for the publishing of his work Hymne de l’enfant à son réveil to his Hungarian publisher Nándor Táborszky and writing a dry refusal to his former Hungarian pupil Sándor Bertha. The envelope of a letter to Madame Munkácsy has a mistake in the orthography of the family name. The documents from Dresden include an Albumblatt Liszt wrote for Clara Schumann, a recommendation for Heinrich Ehrlich, the composer of the first Lento-theme of Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody no 2. Further letters were written to Laura Kahrer (one of them having been published in a slightly altered manner by La Mara) and a series of eight letters to Liszt’s Swiss disciple Bertrand Roth.
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.
The closest of friends in the early eighteen-thirties, Berlioz and Liszt shared artistic aspirations (especially around the latter’s reworkings of the former’s Symphonie fantastique and its sequel, Le Retour à la vie) and personal adventures (especially around the former’s irrational passion for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson and the latter’s efforts at counsel and consolation). These matters are discussed in the context of Berlioz’s private (and I believe insensitive) announcement, in a letter to Liszt sent four days after the marriage, that his new wife had been a virgin.
In the preface to his Septem sacramenta (1878–1884), Franz Liszt acknowledged its stimulus — drawings completed in 1862 by the German painter J. F. Overbeck (1789–1869). This essay explores what Liszt likely meant by his and Overbeck’s “diametrically opposed” approaches and speculates on why the composer nonetheless acknowledged the artist’s work. Each man adopted an individualized treatment of the sacraments, neither in line with the Church’s neo-Thomistic philosophy. Whereas the Church insisted on the sanctifying effects of the sacraments’ graces, Overbeck emphasized the sacraments as a means for moral edification, and Liszt expressed their emotional effects on the receiver. Furthermore, Overbeck embedded within his work an overt polemical message in response to the contested position of the pope in the latter half of the nineteenth century. For many in Catholic circles, he went too far. Both works experienced a problematic reception. Yet, despite their works’ reception, both Overbeck and Liszt believed they had contributed to the sacred art of their time. The very individuality of Overbeck’s treatment seems to have stimulated Liszt. True to his generous nature, Liszt, whose individual voice often went unappreciated, publicly recognized an equally individual voice in the service of the Church.
