INDEX OF THE VOLUME
BERTRAND OTT, La Sonate en Si mineur: un sphinx lisztien
WATARU FUKUDA, A little-known version of Liszt’s song Angiolin dal biondo crin. A study based on an autograph discovered in Tokyo
GIULIANO SIMIONATO, Antonio Fanna. Un pianista nella Venezia Romantica
SHAY LOYA, The mystery of the seventeenth Hungarian Rhapsody
ROHAN H. STEWARD-MAC DONALD, “Lisztian” elements in the Symphonies of Charles Villiers Stanford: Programmaticism, cyclicism and thematic transformation
SAVERIO LAMACCHIA, Una lettera inedita di Liszt a Sophie Menter (con un accenno a Maria Giuli)
AUTOGRAFI
ADALBERTO MARIA RIVA, Adolfo Fumagalli, All’amica lontana, pensiero patetico op. 16
RECENSIONI
ABSTRACTS
BERTRAND OTT, La Sonate en Si mineur: un sphinx lisztien
For a long time Liszt’s Sonata in B minor has kept its secret about its formal structure and possible program. It was like a sphinx riddle in the Lisztian repertoire. The structure of the Sonata – in the classical meaning of the word – was the first purpose of our research. However, as a result of strict comparisons between the first and the third parts of this sonata, we discovered the presence of two Sonatas with supporting evidence, and not the form of only one. This hidden evidence now gives rise to a question: why is the title of the score in the singular? Moreover, how does this new clarity about the Sonata’s structure allow better inferences on the presence of an underlying and symbolic program? All this is analysed and resolved in this study.
Concerning the precise literary program, the professor and pianist Tibor Szász has drawn an irrefutable conclusion about the Sonata as a symbolic score on divine and satanic concepts; to illustrate these concepts a literary reference used by Liszt is disclosed: Paradise Lost, the biblical epic by John Milton. Our work takes the enlightening conclusions of Szász rigorously into consideration. In the Sonata in B minor, expressive persuasion is indeed taken to its extreme to the point that the composer most likely felt that a programmatic explanation was useless. At the same time the discovery of an underlying program paradoxically offers a rare opportunity to explore more closely the treasures of a complex and sophisticated music.
WWATARU FUKUDA, A little-known version of Liszt’s song Angiolin dal biondo crin. A study based on an autograph discovered in Tokyo
This article describes in a critical manner all the sources of the song Angiolin dal biondo crin, two of which were newly discovered by the author. Very important too is the description of the order of composition of the whole set of the sources. Liszt used to revise some of his compositions many times, and the different versions of the same piece reflect his attitude to composition. According to the results of this research, the data on this song in the principal Liszt catalogues should be modified.
GIULIANO SIMIONATAO, Antonio Fanna. Un pianista nella Venezia Romantica
The output of Antonio Fanna, important pianist, teacher and music promoter in Venice in the early nineteenth century, effectively sums up, as a first example in Italy, the instrumental meeting between Classicism and Romanticism. Highly esteemed by leading musicians and performers of his time, Liszt in particular, Fanna composed works which, although marked by the brilliant style and suggestions of melodrama, pursue the demands of art, revealing the composer as one of the most interesting in the development of taste and the perfection of technique. His story intertwines with the Venetian culture and patriotic fervors of Daniele Manin, with whom he associated.
SHAY LOYA, The mystery of the seventeenth Hungarian Rhapsody
Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 17 is a puzzling miniature written towards the end of the composer’s life: much of its idiomatic material, as well as the traditional slow-fast pairing, is represented in a highly abstract way that defies generic listening. The work’s largely euphonious harmony and ambiguous genre perhaps explain why it has not fitted well into received narratives and discourses on Liszt’s late music: but it is precisely its harmonic and anti-generic aspects that deserve closer attention.
This article therefore begins by contextualizing the work as a Rhapsody and then proceeds to examine salient ways in which Liszt creates a quasi-“distancing effect” that denies listeners the pleasure of immersing themselves in exoticism, nationalism and virtuosity. The second part looks more closely at how this work avoids the affirmative affective route expected in a Rhapsody, and instead continuously transforms three idiomatic (and extremely simple) motifs in order to create something closer to a dreamlike psychological drama or even a nightmare – unlike any other Rhapsody ending in a fast tempo.
The final part examines the role tonality plays in creating this dream world; more specifically, Liszt’s cryptic key signatures and note spellings, some of which seem to go against a more intuitive perception of harmony. Two contradictory readings, employing both Neo-Riemannian and prolongational perspectives, highlight this riddle. The first demonstrates that, notwithstanding Liszt’s D minor-to-major key signatures, the work can be heard as tonally coherent when B-flat is considered to be the central sonority against a largely chromatic background. The second reading takes Liszt’s key signatures and spellings seriously and presents a tonal process that is only a fragment of a greater, imperceptible whole, much like other elements in this fascinating work.
ROHAN H. STEWARD-MAC DONALD, “Lisztian” elements in the Symphonies of Charles Villiers Stanford: Programmaticism, cyclicism and thematic transformation
In his account of the «second age of the symphony» James Hepokoski (2002) classifies the orchestral compositions of British composers Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry as «nationalistic» works that exoticise, but otherwise uphold, Austro-German models. This perpetuates the traditional view of a nineteenth-century British symphonic tradition failing to uphold the criterion of originality central to nationalism and to the symphony’s «second age» generally. Closer scrutiny of the symphonies of Stanford and Parry reveals complex syntheses of traditionalistic and modernistic strains: both composers negotiated the conflicting imperatives of experimentation, originality and linguistic approachability that confronted the full range of symphonists of all nations – including Franz Liszt. Several of Stanford’s symphonies contain programmatic elements and inter-movemental, “cyclical” processes that evoke the compositions of Liszt. The limited and controversial dissemination of Liszt’s orchestral music in later nineteenth-century Britain, coupled with blatant differences in stylistic orientation, obscures any path of influence running directly from Liszt to Stanford. Nonetheless, comparisons between Liszt and Stanford’s Fourth Symphony (originally prefaced by lines from Goethe’s Faust) and Sixth Symphony (a response to paintings and sculptures by George Frederick Watts) indicate that “modern” techniques inhered in works traditionally seen in a “reactionary” light. Such comparisons also point towards Liszt’s partial acceptance of traditional structuring principles, even in such apparently iconoclastic works as the Faust Symphony.
SAVERIO LAMACCHIA, Una lettera inedita di Liszt a Sophie Menter (con un accenno a Maria Giuli)
The paper presents an unpublished letter of Liszt to his best student, Sophie Menter, probably dating back to January 16, 1881, and reconstructs the context. In the paper are cited the well-known librarian and musicologist Francesco Florimo, Liberato Aureli, Liszt’s waiter, and Maria Giuli, another pupil of Liszt and niece of Giovanni Pacini, about whom the author has already published unknown documents in this same journal (2013).
AUTOGRAFI
ADALBERTO MARIA RIVA, Adolfo Fumagalli, All’amica lontana, pensiero patetico op. 16
We publish here the manuscript of All’amica lontana, pensiero patetico op. 16 by Adolfo Fumagalli kept in the archive of the Fondazione Istituto Liszt. The piece was composed in March 1848 in Turin, where the pianist was living for a while in Maestro Fabbrica’s house, after finishing his studies at the Milan Conservatory the year before. At the end of March of the same year he was back in Milan, and in August he decided to go once again to Turin and then to Paris, where he arrived only one year later, in March 1849. There, after a very hard start, he was finally acclaimed as «the Paganini of the piano» some years after. In this small salon piece we find all of Fumagalli’s technical skills, including a clever way to avoid the risk of repetitions in the ABA form basically constructed of phrases of 4 measures long.
RECENSIONI
COSTANTINO CATENA
Lina Ramann (cur.), Liszt Pädagogium. Composizioni pianistiche di Franz Liszt con varianti, aggiunte e cadenze tratte dall’insegnamento del maestro e notate da Lina Ramann, traduzione italiana a cura di Rossana Dalmonte, Bologna, Fondazione Istituto Liszt Onlus/Libreria Musicale Italiana, Lucca, 2011
ROBERTO CALABRETTO
Luigi Verdi, Franz Liszt e la sua musica nel cinema, LIM, Lucca, 2014
PIERO MIOLI
Luca Sala (ed.), «Grandeur et finesse»: Chopin, Liszt and the Parisian musical scene, Brepols, Turnhout, 2013
Fulvia Morabito (ed.), «En pèlerinage avec Liszt». Virtuosos, repertoire and performing venues in 19thcentury Europe, Brepols, Turnhout, 2014
NOTIZIE DALL’ISTITUTO LISZT, a cura di Rossana Dalmonte
“Grand Galop Chromatique. Franz Liszt, viaggiatore e musicista a Firenze 1838/1886”. Mostra, febbraio – marzo 2014
Premio Liszt 2014
Terzo e quarto seminario Fondazione Istituto Liszt – GATM. Bologna, 12-13 aprile 2014
Franz da Bologna: la Fondazione Istituto Liszt nella rassegna Musichepagine
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