INDEX OF THE VOLUME
Les élèves de Liszt: Figures connues et inconnues. Actes du colloque tenu du 19 au 21 juin 2008 à Angers. Edités par Malou Haine, Nicolas Dufetel & Cécile Reynaud
SERGE GUT, Comment se passait une «master class» avec Liszt à Weimar dans les années 1880?
MALOU HAINE, Le roman à clef d’un élève de Liszt à Weimar: Miss Träumerei de l’Américain Albert Morris Bagby
RICHARD ZIMDARS, Les œuvres pour piano d’Arthur Bird après sa rencontre avec Franz Liszt
RENA CHARNIN MUELLER, Qui était Arma Senkrah?
DAVID BUTLER CANNATA, Adele aus der Ohe (Tchaïkovsky & Rachmaninoff)
RAINER SCHMUSCH, Franz Liszt et Eduard Lassen. Aspects d’une inspiration réciproque
RYSZARD DANIEL GOLIANEK, En imitant le maître: la Grande Fantaisie de Jules Zarembski
BRUNO MOYSAN, Le testament d’un privilègié: le legs de Moriz Rosenthal, héritier de Liszt et de Chopin
MÁRIA ECKHARDT, István Thomán, élève et successeur de Franz Liszt à l’Académie de Musique de Budapest
MONTSERRAT BERGADÀ, Franz Liszt et les pianistes espagnols
ANNA TEDESCO, Une élève napolitaine: Luisa Cognetti (1857-1952)
WILLIAM WRIGHT, Frédéric Lamond en Écosse (1940-1948)
CÉCILE REYNAUD, Liszt dans les enseignements et concours du Conservatoire de musique de Paris
ABSTRACTS
Les élèves de Liszt: Figures connues et inconnues. Actes du colloque tenu du 19 au 21 juin 2008 à Angers. Edités par Malou Haine, Nicolas Dufetel & Cécile Reynaud
SERGE GUT, Comment se passait une «master class» avec Liszt à Weimar dans les années 1880?
A brief description of the framework in which Liszt’s classes took place in Weimar is followed by as faithful an account as possible of the course of one such lesson. The atmosphere is recreated with the help of statements by his pupils, in particular Carl Lachmund, who is often very precise in what he has to say. The problems associated with rhythm and tempo are examined in detail as Liszt attached great importance to these.
Albert Morris Bagby spent the summer of 1885 in Weimar, where he attended Liszt’s classes. On his return to the United States he published two articles about his experiences in Germany. One dealt with his stay in Weimar, the other with Liszt’s pupils. The notes that he made in his diary and these two articles encouraged him to write a romantic novel in which several of Liszt’s pupils and other members of Liszt’s entourage are mentioned by name, while the two heroes and various other characters appear pseudonymously. In the guise of a light-hearted autobiographical novel, this romantic tale reveals the characters of several real-life individuals who were part of Liszt’s circle, some of whom are practically unknown today. Largely ignored hitherto, Bagby’s novel could be called ‘The Daily Lives of Liszt’s Pupils in Weimar’, so plentiful are the details that it contains concerning the classes given by Liszt, together with the various parties that they organized, the comings and goings of some of the characters and the intrigues typical of a small provincial town.
RICHARD ZIMDARS, Les œuvres pour piano d’Arthur Bird après sa rencontre avec Franz Liszt
Arthur Bird (1856-1923) began his compositional career chiefly as an orchestral composer. His first attendance at Liszt’s master classes took place in Weimar in the summer of 1883. From 1886 to 1890, Bird’s compositions were written almost exclusively for piano solo or for one piano, four-hands. After his contact with Liszt, Bird wrote waltzes, a waltz cycle, mazurkas, eleven sets of character pieces, and a theme and variations for piano. During the past decade, Bird’s chamber music for wind instruments has been revived in performance and been recorded. However, his solo and four-hand piano music, published by reputable companies in his lifetime, is no longer heard today or available in modern editions. This article will examine Bird’s piano music composed from 1886-1890 and feature excerpts from several dance pieces, character pieces, and the theme and variations.
RENA CHARNIN MUELLER, Qui était Arma Senkrah?
Liszt’s American pupil of the middle 1880s, Arma Senkrah (1864-1900), whose real name was given variously as Anna Leoretta or Mary Harkness, was one of many notable violinists with whom the composer associated over the course of his long career. But Senkrah’s story is one of tragedy, a brilliant virtuoso career cut short by an unhappy marriage and her subsequent suicide at age 36. As a prelude to a discussion of Senkrah’s relatively brief tenure in Europe, this article examines the careers of several important predecessors and teachers of Senkrah, with whom Liszt performed and collaborated, presenting a number interesting reviews of her playing and analyzing some rare photographs taken both before and after she was with Liszt in Weimar.
DAVID BUTLER CANNATA, Adele aus der Ohe (Tchaïkovsky & Rachmaninoff)
If indeed Liszt enjoined Adele Aus der Ohe, «You must show the world what Liszt has taught you», he could not have been more prophetic: he thereby entrusted her, and his other pupils, to transmit his technical instruction and artistic vision beyond Rome, Budapest and Weimar –and to subsequent generations. This was never so apparent in the late 19th century as with that landmark of technical virtuosity, Tschaikovsky’s Concerto in B flat, Op. 23 (1875). Bülow’s Boston première of the work notwithstanding, of the 11 public performances Tschaikovsky conducted (1888-1893), all were with Liszt pupils or grand-pupils at the keyboard. This article examines the reception history of the Tschaikovsky work with the Liszt pupils as soloists. Garnering evidence from the contemporary press, and reviewing the work through its three readings (1875, 1879 and 1889), a picture of musical expertise evolves, a picture that would have delighted Liszt himself: not only did his young wards do him proud as executants, but they also had an integral role in shaping the piano text of what remains a landmark in the virtuoso repertoire.
RAINER SCHMUSCH, Franz Liszt et Eduard Lassen. Aspects d’une inspiration réciproque
Eduard Lassen was twenty-eight when, in 1858, he succeeded Liszt as Court Kapellmeister in Weimar. He retained the post until 1895, a representative of the New German School who was widely respected, even though he was never a pupil of Liszt in the accepted sense of the term. As a composer, Lassen was clearly influenced by Liszt, especially in terms of the musical painting of characters, less so in respect of the development of new forms. But even if his works did not enjoy any lasting success, there is no doubt that they inspired Liszt. This reciprocal inspiration may be demonstrated by means of a number of examples taken from the incidental music that Lassen wrote for plays by Goethe, Hebbel and Calderón, all of which came to Liszt’s attention, either inspiring virtuoso transcriptions or encouraging him to develop them beyond what their composer had initially intended.
RYSZARD DANIEL GOLIANEK, En imitant le maître: la Grande Fantaisie de Jules Zarembski
Jules Zarembski (1854–85) was a Polish pianist and composer who completed his studies at the Vienna Conservatory in 1872 before electing to continue working with Liszt in Rome and Weimar between 1874 and 1876. He studied Liszt’s piano technique and also turned his hand to composition, writing works in a recognizably Lisztian style. During this period he wrote only piano pieces, including a Grande fantaisie (1876) that is undoubtedly the most interesting of these works. It was thought that Zarembski had destroyed the manuscript and that the work was lost, but in 2001 the present writer discovered the autograph in the Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv in Weimar, where it is headed “Un pezzo agitato con un intermezzo amoroso”. It was clear from our earlier research that this heading is a subtitle for the Grande fantaisie. It is interesting to analyze the piece within the context of Liszt’s own musical creativity. In attempting to write an impressively large-scale, virtuoso work, the young Zarembski imitated some of his mentor’s ideas with regard to sonority. The present article sets out to analyze some of the musical elements of the Grande fantaisie and to identify those aspects that bear witness to Liszt’s direct influence.
From 1872 Moriz Rosenthal (1862–1946) studied with Karol Mikuli, the great pupil of Chopin, and, from 1878, with Liszt, with whom he worked in both Weimar and Rome. He also studied with Rafael Joseffy, who had himself studied with both Liszt and Tausig. Rosenthal has left a number of valuable accounts of Liszt’s teaching methods in the form of an autobiographical article, recordings and compositions, including his two potpourris of Strauss waltzes, and a collection of exercises written in collaboration with the Danish pianist Ludvig Schytte and published in around 1890 under the title Schule des höheren Klavierspiels. To these accounts may be added the one left by Rosenthal’s pupil, Charles Rosen. Together they help to shed light on what was so special about Liszt, especially when they are placed in perspective and examined in the context of the recordings and writings of another of Mikuli’s pupils who never worked with Liszt: Raoul Koczalski.
This article aims to provide an insight into the studies that István Thomán (1862–1940) undertook with Liszt. It is based on Thomán’s own reminiscences and also deals with his activity as a teacher at the Budapest Academy of Music (cf. his teaching materials and teaching methods), his publications, his followers and the tradition that he established, a tradition that continues to flourish to this day at the Budapest Academy of Music.
MONTSERRAT BERGADÀ, Franz Liszt et les pianistes espagnols
Luisa Cognetti was born in Naples on 20 July 1857, the daughter of upper middle-class parents, and grew up in a stimulating cultural environment. Her father, Salvatore, was a lawyer and journalist, and her brother, Goffredo, a playwright. She began attending Liszt’s piano classes in Rome in November 1876 and gave her first concert on 23 January 1877, an event marking the start of a career that would take her all over Europe but which ended in 1891 when she married Carlo Michon. Only after her husband’s death in 1921 did she take up teaching for a number of years. She died in Livorno on 7 July 1952. She left accounts of her time with Liszt and of her career as a pianist in her unpublished memoirs, which were compiled by one of her nieces. These memoirs make interesting reading for what they tell us about Liszt and for their lively description of the musical world that Luisa Cognetti inhabited. But their greatest merit lies in their account of the daily round of a nineteenth-century concert pianist and of the early history of concert life in Italy, which was still associated with an aristocratic, ‘private’ milieu. Thanks to these memoirs and other documents, we are able to reconstruct Luisa Cognetti’s career and repertory within the context of the concert life of the period and the role of women at that time.
ANNA TEDESCO, Une élève napolitaine: Luisa Cognetti (1857-1952)
Luisa Cognetti was born in Naples on 20 July 1857, the daughter of upper middle-class parents, and grew up in a stimulating cultural environment. Her father, Salvatore, was a lawyer and journalist, and her brother, Goffredo, a playwright. She began attending Liszt’s piano classes in Rome in November 1876 and gave her first concert on 23 January 1877, an event marking the start of a career that would take her all over Europe but which ended in 1891 when she married Carlo Michon. Only after her husband’s death in 1921 did she take up teaching for a number of years. She died in Livorno on 7 July 1952. She left accounts of her time with Liszt and of her career as a pianist in her unpublished memoirs, which were compiled by one of her nieces. These memoirs make interesting reading for what they tell us about Liszt and for their lively description of the musical world that Luisa Cognetti inhabited. But their greatest merit lies in their account of the daily round of a nineteenth-century concert pianist and of the early history of concert life in Italy, which was still associated with an aristocratic, ‘private’ milieu. Thanks to these memoirs and other documents, we are able to reconstruct Luisa Cognetti’s career and repertory within the context of the concert life of the period and the role of women at that time.
WILLIAM WRIGHT, Frédéric Lamond en Écosse (1940-1948)
All who enter The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, either as visitor, member of staff, student, or entrant for the triennial Scottish International Piano Competition, cannot fail to notice the treasured bronze bust of Frederic Lamond, one of the city’s celebrated sons, one who attained world-wide renown as pianist and achieved further distinction, when, like Fritz Kreisler and Ignacy Jan Paderewski, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at the University of Glasgow. Yet, despite this public esteem, few have ventured to express in print the important and generous work Lamond undertook as pianist and pedagogue during his final years in Scotland. The Memoirs of Frederic Lamond briefly reveal his feeling of ‘isolation’ on hearing of the death of his friend and colleague, Moriz Rosenthal. In September 1946, still nothing about Lamond’s performances or other activities during the 1940 to ‘48 period is recorded. Not until Gwilym Beechey’s excellent three-page piece on the pianist composer, published in 1979, does information on Lamond’s musical endeavors during the 1940’s filter through into academe. Granted, Beechey provides valuable new material, nevertheless major areas of investigation are left unexplored; compelling evidence for a more informed record of this important chapter of Lamond’s life and a rescue of relevant memorabilia from the mists of time.
CÉCILE REYNAU, Liszt dans les enseignements et concours du Conservatoire de musique de Paris
This study is a contribution to reception history and deals with the dissemination of Liszt’s piano music within the framework of the teaching of music in French methods at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, specifically piano technique, piano methods, treaties on harmony, courses on interpretation and so on. It examines references to Liszt’s scores and their circulation and explores what might be termed the archaeology of readings of his piano output. It is not limited, however, to a presentation of the different stages in the reception of Liszt’s music but is accompanied by an account of the cultural, institutional and social contexts on the basis of a critical analysis of the material that seeks to establish a relationship between the traces that have been uncovered and the conditions under which they existed at the time. It is concerned, in short, with piecing together the ways in which Liszt’s works were adapted and borrowed in the context of the expectations and new forms of legitimacy within the framework of piano teaching in France.