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In this paper I present a history of friendship between Franz Liszt and a Silesian prince, Felix Lichnowsky, from their first meeting (beginning of 1840s) until the death of the prince in September 1848. During this period Liszt and Lichnowsky spent much time together (e.g. holidays in 1841 on the German island Nonnenwerth). Lichnowsky accompanied Liszt during his European tournées (in 1841 and 1842). The composer stayed at Lichnowsky’s estates in Krzyżanowice, Racibórz and Hradec nad Moravicí. These stays occurred between his concerts in 1843 and 1846. Liszt set to music a poem by Lichnowsky – in his Lied Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth, which became a tribute to Marie d’Agoult. In his last years the composer revised many of his works among which was his Elegy, a piano transcription of his Lied from 1841 Die Zelle in Nonnenwerth. This time it seems to be written as a posthumous homage to Lichnowsky, Marie d’Agoult, and other loved people who had passed away prematurely.

The first part of the article is devoted to the history of the genre “opera paraphrase” as it appears in the contemporary theoretical literature and in particular in Czerny’s treatises. The analysis of Réminiscences de Boccanegra is done in three stages: 1) the finding out of the thematic material chosen by Liszt from the Verdian score; 2) the analytical survey of Liszt’s arrangement of the chosen material; 3) the general form of the “new” piece and its narrative content. The analytical method follows the principles of Schenkerian theory.

The author aims to make an “analysis for a virtual performance” in order to be prepared for Riccardo Risaliti’s real performance, so that her discussion can be labelled under the category of “analysis for listening”.

The paper is devoted to a reconstruction of Simon Boccanegra’s image in Liszt’s Réminiscences on the basis of musical topoi well known to the audience, who is able to identify them and interpret them in a coherent plot. The musical topoi capable of connecting together the three main episodes of Liszt’s piece are: the rhythm of the funeral march, the recitativo on the same pitch and the “figure of death”, present in Verdi’s opera but transformed by Liszt in a new light. The similarities and the differences between Verdi’s score and Liszt’s paraphrase are described and interpreted in order to sketch the “new” image of the protagonist.

The relation between Liszt and Verdi is very long, but not continuous. Here a survey is proposed, where, in fact, a strong caesura emerges in the very middle: the paraphrases from Jerusalem to Rigoletto maintain the virtuoso imprint, which is strongly rooted in the cultural practice of the bourgeois concert. After a long rest the late Lisztian compositions on Verdi’s music follow opposite objectives and ideas. At the end of this course the Réminiscences de Boccanegra represent a diversion, not a logical conclusion, not only (or not mainly) on a technical-compositional level but in the ideal and spiritual contents.

With a superimposition of forms and conceptions, in Réminiscences de Boccanegra Liszt realizes an individual comment on Verdi’s laical spirituality, anticipated by the two previous piano transcriptions from Aida and Agnus Dei. The Doge’s blessing in the last scene of the opera is Verdi’s voice addressing a new Italy already torn by contrasts between Catholics and Liberals; Liszt clearly realizes this is the Hohepunkt of the whole drama and gives it the same central position in his Réminiscences. But while Verdi’s opera ends with this scene’s dark and ambiguous sound, Liszt repeats the opening theme at the end with an emphatic fortissimo and in the main key, achieving ideas of harmony and completeness wholly opposite to those of Verdi. Therefore with his Réminiscences the late abbé completely (and deliberately) overturns the forms and contents of the late anti-clerical Verdi and overturns his pessimistic disillusion.

The distance between the two men (not only two composers) thus becomes a symptom of a wider debate. Since this perspective is not strictly analytical, it is open to criticism as being too conservative or “continental”; but it is nevertheless worth the risk.

The article is a detailed account of the thoughts of the author during the study of the piece. The first step was to compare Verdi’s and Liszt’s text in order to check their structural differences; then the analysis tried to identify the impact of the single difference on the general meaning of each episode – chosen by Liszt for his paraphrase – in itself and in comparison with the whole opera. The author pays particular attention to the sequence of the episodes and to Liszt’s apparently groundless expansions of the Verdi’s themes. Decisions for performance regarding tempo, dynamics, phrasing and touch derive from this comparison, enriched thanks to the information given by the lyrics of the libretto.

Many other suggestions arise from observations regarding several aspects of Liszt’s Réminiscences de Boccanegra compared with the whole repertory of the réminiscences of Liszt. As a conclusion of his analysis the performer has to find out the sound properties able to underline Liszt’s design for the personality of Boccanegra partially different from that emerging from Verdi’s opera.

This essay explores Liszt’s late style in order to reconstruct the context in which the composer transcribed Verdi’s Réminiscences de Boccanegra. According to Straus, the common aesthetic theory on the late style does not fully grasp the characteristic features of a composer’s final output; this point of view is compared with Liszt’s idea about the stylistic development of a composer. By focusing on the last six years of Liszt’s life and works for piano solo, some distinguishing features are exemplified by means of two works: Tarantella de Cui and the symphonic poem Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe. Close reading of these works reveals the two complementary faces of Liszt’s late style – anachronistic and prophetic. This double nature allows us to identify Liszt’s late works as an expression of Spätstil, without excluding the indomitable will, in the composer’s autumn season, to impact on his own time.

Music analysis was exclusively conceived as the analysis of a score until computer science technology allowed us to fix in wave form images also the fleeting sounds of a performance. The first and most important principle in this context was to study the systematic deviations that each performer intuitively and more often unconsciously introduced in the graphic conventions of a score. For piano notation they particularly implied a great amount of nuances introduced in tempo and dynamics. Studies like these produced the tradition of computer expressive simulation in piano performance; its results, however, immediately introduced another even more important issue: why were deviations necessary? What were their aims? What was the proper meaning of “expressivity”? Musicological and cognitive sciences are trying to give answers to such questions. First of all a new historical branch of musicology arose in the last decades: the history of music performance, based on collections of a huge number of recordings and more recently of internet documents. But much more important were the studies on the very contents of expression: in music there are aspects, which can be scientifically studied, such as emotions, expectations, movements linked to performance and also to rhythmic and metrical structures, images linked to “intertextual” and “topical” conventions. The task of a performer, like that of an actor who reads a written text, is to highlight by means of particular expressive “deviations” and to give sense to the different aspects of implicit emotions, expectations, movements, images that moment by moment pass and flow in the time of the piece. The case of Liszt’s Réminiscences de Boccanegra is even more complex because of the historical, psychological and cultural relationships between two musicians that had different backgrounds and were active in different musical genres.

29 marzo 2015 – calendario della giornata, download

Liszt Prize 2014

The three members of the examining board (Mario Baroni, Azio Corghi, Fabrizio Ottaviucci) met on 17 February 2014 to discuss the awarding of the prize. Their verdict on the works, discussed in order of arrival, was as follows:

Candidate n. 1
The piece starts with a glissato effect on the black keys of the piano and subsequently makes further (quite extensive) use of the contrast between white and black keys. On the whole, though, it does not show any significant inventiveness.

Candidate n. 2
The piano part is based on a pointillistic shower that is not so easy to perform, but the piece is at times quite interesting especially when it manages to create a good integration between the recorded sounds of the piano and the part to be played live.

Candidate n. 3
The starting point for this piece is an explicit reference to a Lisztian model of a funeral march, while the electronics part uses “granulators” that create a low and gloomy aura. However, it is somewhat blemished from a creative point of view as it is not always able to hold the attention of the listener.

 Candidate n. 4
The piano writing is complex and varied, and the electronics part exploits quite sophisticated informatic tools, so from a technical point of view the piece is interesting. But the sounds tend to be rather constant and risk creating a certain monotony, even though at times compensated by an element of meditative charm.

Candidate n.5
The piano part relies on the phrasing produced by the computer, but the electronics remains prudently in the background and adapts itself to the brilliant and almost Lisztian gestures of the performer. In general the piece is built on the basis of expectations that are formally quite well organized.

Candidate n. 6
The idea of transforming Liszt’s Campanella into a piece of House music is curious, but the outcome is devoid of any particularly interesting or meaningful musical invention.

Candidate n. 7
Although the work may present some interesting compositional aspects, it cannot be considered because it is signed on the first page of the score and thus contravenes the anonymity required by the rules of the competition.

Candidate n. 8
This work too was consigned with the name of the composer and in addition the electronics part is incomplete while the piano part appears to be only sketched. It was not included among the pieces to be considered.

On the basis of the above mentioned considerations the following classification was produced:

first place n. 5

second place n.4

third place shared by nn. 3 & 2

fourth place n. 1

fifth place n.6

The other two pieces were not taken into account since they contravened the rules of the competition.

The envelopes containing the details of the participants were then opened and the numbers were matched to the corresponding names.

At the end of their deliberations the board decided to award the Premio Liszt 2014 to:

Dimitri Maronidis

LISZT PRIZE 2014

The past five editions have helped to increase the number of Lisztian scholars (not only in Italy) although we don’t consider we have exausted our initial task. In this edition we wish to experiment by moving our target to the world of music creation.

Liszt was not only a great piano composer: his skill and creativity were also expressed in vocal (solo and choral) and symphonic music.

The challenge launched by the present contest consists in imagining how the composer would have expressed himself if, in addition to the piano, he had had access to current technological devices and in particular to electronic instruments.

Competition Announcement

for a Composition for Piano and Electronics inspired by Franz Liszt

Liszt  Prize 2014
€ 1000

Rules

1. The Liszt Institute Foundation NPO will award a prize for the best composition for piano and electronics inspired by Franz Liszt.
2. The competition is open to musicians and music students of all nationalities.
3. The prize consists of 1000 Euros.
4. Each competitor may only submit one work.
5. The work must be submitted in triplicate.
6. The competitor is requested to send to the Jury the following material: a piano score written with FINALE or an equivalent software, accompanied by an audio recording on digital media of the electronics and a description of the techniques adopted. Multichannel audio is permitted. To help the evaluation, it may be useful to include an audio or video performance of the composition (piano and electronics).
7. The work must be presented anonymously. Personal details should be sent in a sealed envelope – attached to the work – that will only be opened after the verdict.
8. The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2014.
9. Works should be addressed to: Segreteria della Fondazione Istituto Liszt Onlus, Via Righi, 30, 40126 Bologna.
10. The jury will consist of: an expert in composition, an expert in electronic music, a member of the Foundation’s Board of Directors.
11. The jury’s decisions will be by majority vote and shall be final.
12. The verdict will be announced by May 31, 2015.
13. The prize will be awarded during one of the concerts of the season 2015-16. On that occasion the winning composition will be performed. For the electronics the Foundationguarantees only a sterophonic sound system.
14. The winning composition will be showcased on the Foundation’s website, subject to the composers’ approval. The other compositions will be conserved in the Foundation’s archives.
15. Participation in the competition implies full acceptance of the above rules

Prize Liszt 2014. Download the printable version