INDEX OF THE VOLUME
MARIATERESA STORINO, «Chère Illustre»: Franz Liszt ad Augusta Holmès
IDA ZICARI, Marguerite and Armand: una coreografia sulla Sonata in si minore di Liszt
ROSSANA DALMONTE, Meditazioni su un Preludio (S164c)
MARIA CHIARA MAZZI – ANDREA PARISINI, Una massima in musica
AUTOGRAFI
IRENE COMISSO, Due lettere di Riccardo Zandonai
RECENSIONI
ABSTRACTS
MARIATERESA STORINO, «Chère Illustre»: Franz Liszt ad Augusta Holmès
Franz Liszt and Augusta Holmès met for the first time in Munich in 1869 during the general rehearsal of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. Holmès was a young and ambitious woman who aspired to become composer; Liszt was the abbé Liszt, the virtuoso transformed in composer, teacher and religious man.
The name of Augusta Holmès is rarely cited in Lisztian studies but she was greatly estemeed by Liszt. The correspondence between Liszt and Holmès covers only four years (from November 1869 to March 1873). Six letters by Liszt are located, two of them published in the present essay for the first time; the existence of letters by Holmès is only attested but they are mentioned at their chronological place in order to show the relationship between the two musicians.
Liszt’s letters, all transcribed from the original manuscripts, show us his attention for the music by the young woman and his active involvement in the promotion of her works.
IDA ZICARI, Marguerite and Armand: una coreografia sulla Sonata in si minore di Liszt
This paper describes one of the most important works by Liszt and one of the most revolutionary in the whole literature for the piano – the Sonata in B minor – by way of the ballet Marguerite and Armand by Frederick Ashton.
Ashton created the coreography of the ballet on the basis of the Sonata’s form. The emotional content and the specific musical imagery of the Sonata are connected with a famous dramatic novel: La dame aux camelias by Alexandre Dumas fils.
The ballet was created in 1962 and first performed in 1963 at the Royal Opera House. It consists of a Prologue and four scenes. The first performers were Margot Fonteyn as Marguerite and Rudolf Nureyev as Armand. In the ballet the scenes are not derived from those of the novel, but based on Marguerite’s memories. The author claims that the very musical coreography becames a powerful means for understanding the structure of the music: the gestures of the dancers are strikingly similar in rhythm and in affective content to the music of Liszt.
ROSSANA DALMONTE, Meditazioni su un Preludio (S164c)
«An improvised introduction was, for hundreds of years, a sign of musical good manners and a chance for the player to frame appropriately the pieces in his program. It was also an opportunity to give the audience a gentle reminder that the player too was a creative artist» [Hamilton 2008, 101]. Liszt not only wrote a whole piece entitled Preludio with the tempo indication «presto» (S139/1) but also a draft (S164c), possibly in a book of memoirs (due to the pink colour of the paper), that is first published and commented on here.
The analysis of the document shows Liszt’s pleasure for linguistic experiments in an epoch (1840) in which he seems just interested in winning fame as a virtuoso piano player. There is a particular use of descending diminished seventh chords, that realises the total chromatic series, and a particular melodic sequence in the bass voice that introduces a cadence in F# Major.
The author of this article tries to guess from the morphology of the little Preludio its possible connection with other more important pieces, in which the same harmonic devices (diminished sevenths, chromatic gamut, non-diatonic scale) are present. The analysis shows interesting links between this little Preludio and some passages in the Dante Sonata (first version as Paralipomènes) and in the Faust Symphony. Moreover the author maintains that the same “improvised” music may have introduced the third piece of Venezia e Napoli during one of the concerts of the tournée in England.
MARIA CHIARA MAZZI – ANDREA PARISINI, Una massima in musica
The article describes a recent acquisition of the Liszt Institute in Bologna (Italy), consisting of a manuscript score by Carl Czerny for voice and, presumably, piano, dedicated to a certain Mr. Grabner-Hoffmann. The text, a citation from Schiller’s Wallenstein that was very popular in Germany in the Nineteenth century, is a source of inspiration for Czerny to develop a non-trivial short melody (eight bars in all) written in a choral style and with an interesting harmonic structure that seems to be intended to match and connect with the Schiller’s reference to the importance and beauty of a wise and thoughtful lifestyle. Dated 1856, the manuscript belongs to the last years of Czerny’s activity; due to its style and cultural reference, this brief composition significantly contribut to our understanding of a musician who is far too often almost only known for his didactic activity.
AUTOGRAFI
IRENE COMISSO, Due lettere di Riccardo Zandonai
The first document is a card (possibly) to the composer Franco Alfano, here indicated without his first name. Zandonai thanks his correspondent, who lent him a piano. He is glad for Alfano’s recovery and promises to write a composition dedicated to him.
The second document is a letter to the musician Cesare Nordio, which gives plenty of information about the relationship between Zandonai and the managing of the Teatro Comunale of Bologna about the performance of two opera by Zandonai, Giuliano and Francesca da Rimini. The two documents (and especially the second one) shed a new light in the story of the reception of Zandonai’s works during his life.
RECENSIONI
Péter Bozó
Saffle Michael, Franz Liszt: A research and information guide, Routledge, New York, 2009
Rossana Dalmonte
Hamilton Kenneth, After the Golden Age. Romantic pianism and modern performance, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008
Moysan Bruno, Liszt virtuose subversif, Symétrie, Lyon, 2009
Mario Baroni
Gut Serge, Les éléments du langage musical, Zurfluh, Orthez, 2008