INDEX OF THE VOLUME
MARCO BEGHELLI, Lettere di Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein a Nadine Helbig
ANDREA ESTERO, Retorica dell’improvvisazione e inganni formali: una proposta di analisi delle fantasie su motivi d’opera di Liszt
CARLO BANCHI, Franz Liszt. Per un linguaggio di transizione
BERTRAND OTT, Marie Jaëll et Franz Liszt, creuset d’une ambiguité musicale et pianistique
LAURENCE WUIDAR, Liszt et Fétis: 40 ans d’échanges multiples
MARIATERESA STORINO, Discografia lisztiana degli interpreti italiani (1997-2003)
ABSTRACTS
MARCO BEGHELLI, Lettere di Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein a Nadine Helbig
The present essay continues the exploration of documents kept by the heirs of Nadine Helbig, who was one of Liszt’s pupils and a friend of Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein during the last twenty-five years of her life.
Among the relics, the collection contains about sixty letters from Princess Wittgenstein to Madame Helbig. These letters tell us about the everyday life of two noblewomen at the end of 19th century and shed light on some of their private aspects that fascinated the composer Liszt.
The letters present some difficulties of interpretation because of notorious illegibility of Princess Carolyne’s and the linguistic peculiarities of the texts, in which French, the primary language, is often sprinkled with German, Italian, English, Russian and Latin verbal expressions. Moreover, many letters are undated, badly preserved, and with lacunae. The lack of dates prohibits a reconstruction of their chronological order as well as identification of some of the narrated events or other references.
This essay presents a thematic voyage via a series of citations in order to sketch the personality of Princess Wittgenstein. The lines related to Liszt, the man as well as his art, are transcribed in their entirety.
In his first compositional period, Liszt created a group of fantasies on famous operatic themes. The fantasies often derived from improvisations on the piano that sought to exert different emotional effects on listeners through the so-called “rhetoric of improvisation” as practised in the early 19th century. In order to understand the form of the genre, an analysis of fantasy cannot dismiss its improvisational origins and aims. Fantasy presents itself as a drama with a succession of different scenes. Liszt’s Réminiscences des Puritains and his Fantaisie sur des motifs de l’opéra La Sonnambula are exemplary models of this theoretic hypothesis. Moreover, their analysis with regard to the rhetoric of improvisation not only explains a series of formal ambiguities but reveals structural innovations that Liszt would later develop distinctly in his symphonic compositions.
CARLO BANCHI, Franz Liszt. Per un linguaggio di transizione
In the second half of the 19th century, the history of European music is characterized by a general tendency to symmetry. In order to realize symmetric structure, the composers experimented with different harmonic solutions. In particular, the choice by the German school (Wagner, Mahler and Bruckner) of hypertrophy of the function of the dominant contrasted with the Lisztian “dominant avoidance”, based on relations of thirds. By means of dominant avoidance, linked to Eastern musical culture, and by exploitation of the timbre, Liszt created octatonic relations in his works. Analytical treatises have often ignored the octatonic sequences in Lisztian compositions because the octatonic scales hide their elements in traditional triadic sequences. The present essay reveals the employment of the octatonism already in some of Liszt’s works composed before the Weimar period, thus establishing an element of continuity in his compositional processes.
BERTRAND OTT, Marie Jaëll et Franz Liszt, creuset d’une ambiguité musicale et pianistique
A full appreciation, in contemporary terms, of the importance of Marie Jaëll (1846-1925) to the understanding and propagation of Liszt’s piano technique requires a vigorous re-examination of the complex personality of this pianist, composer, teacher, writer, and friend of Liszt. Because of her own ability to capture the magic of Liszt’s playing, Marie Jaëll wanted to transmit this pianistic miracle and the way of teaching it to generations to come. For this reason the pedagogical side of her personality has taken on more and more importance as time has gone by. Accepting as a personal crusade the proving of the essential integrity and the artistic truth of Lisztian technique, in her work she called on the scientific methods and analyses of Positivism in her work. Her approach can sometimes be obscure, especially for those who find themselves in more pragmatic times. The purpose of this article is therefore to distinguish between the essential and the secondary in the writings of Marie Jaëll so as to better understand and appreciate the exceptional revelations that she offers.
LAURENCE WUIDAR, Liszt et Fétis: 40 ans d’échanges multiples
The aim of this article is to report on the relationship between Liszt and Fétis via their letters, their articles and Fétis’ theoretical works and notes. Evidence of their relationship spread over 40 years shows different junctures (and disjunctures) between them. Reviews, organizations of concerts, advice on their respective opuses, discussions on musical theories or on ancient and religious music… they share quite a varied level of interest. The article envisages the various aspects of their relationship. The exchanges between the two men concerned by the main questions of their time (often as avant-garde thinkers) shows how rich can be the collaboration between a musicologist and a composer.
MARIATERESA STORINO, Discografia lisztiana degli interpreti italiani (1997-2003)
The present discography focuses on the recordings of Liszt’s works played by Italian performers between 1997-2003.
This selection comes from the need to investigate both the attention reserved to Liszt’s works by Italian musicians and the influence of the renaissance movement of Liszt as composer, promoted by musicologists in the last years. A first glimpse underlines the egemonic rule of piano works in the recordings but at the same time the rising of interest for unknown works as the transcriptions for 4 hands of sacred music and compositions for violin and piano.
The works are listed on the basis of numbers of Searle’s catalogue revised and expanded by Leslie Howard and Michael Short. The Searle’s catalogue is nowadays a reference for musicologists and performers.