INDEX OF THE VOLUME
ANNA QUARANTA, La bella contessa e il dio greco. Thalberg e Liszt di fronte a Verdi
LAURENCE LE DIAGON-JACQUIN, Isoldens Liebestod, Mort… ou Transfiguration?
ROSSANA DALMONTE, Trascrizione come interpretazione
MARCO BEGHELLI, Un autografo ritrovato: il Weihnachtslied R 535
CARLOS GALLARDO, Un esperado culto a lo macabro
Bertrand Ott, L’art du piano selon Liszt. Exigences instrumentales pour une liberation musicale
BERTRAND OTT, L’art du piano selon Liszt. Exigences instrumentales pour une liberation musicalee
INTERVENTI
MAURIZIO GIANI, Recensione a Lisztiana I e II
GRUPPO DI STUDIO “Liszt e i Lieder”, Introduzione ai Lieder corali di Liszt
ABSTRACTS
ANNA QUARANTA, La bella contessa e il dio greco. Thalberg e Liszt di fronte a Verdi
A comparative analysis of Liszt’s and Thalberg’s operatic paraphrases and/or fantasies has been rarely attempted hitherto in the secondary literature. The present essay focuses on the piano arrangements by both composers from Verdi’s Il Trovatore and Rigoletto. A methodological approach seeks to evaluate the four compositions according to criteria deriving from the pieces themselves. As a result a substantially different view of the two operas emerges in Liszt’s and Thalberg’s paraphrases. Liszt concentrates his work on a single scene (Miserere from Trovatore, the celebrated Quartet from Rigoletto), interpreting it as the focal point of the whole opera and trying to render by purely musical means a strong idea of the plot’s dramatic kernel, while Thalberg’s compositions are based on favourite themes from the operas, and follow the traditional three-part structure described by Czerny in his Systematische Anleitung zum Fantasieren auf dem Pianoforte (1829). While Liszt translates theatrical immediacy to the keyboard, Thalberg offers in both cases a well-articulated and accurate reading of the whole, according to compositional strategies one is tempted to label as “narrative”.
LAURENCE LE DIAGON-JACQUIN, Isoldens Liebestod, Mort… ou Transfiguration?
Liszt consistently promoted Wagner’s work through more or less faithful transcriptions of it. One such piece, Isoldens Liebestod, is problematic: Liszt follows the Wagnerian model by and large but changes the title. Wagner had entitled his orchestral prelude Isoldes Verklärung (Transfiguration). Why did Liszt not keep Wagner’s title? By calling the finale of Act III Transfiguration Wagner shows that Isolde symbolises for him the passage to the “Nirvana” of Buddhist tradition, while for a Christian, the only possible transfiguration is that of Christ. Thus Liszt cannot consider Isolde’s death as transfiguration. However, both artistic conceptions ultimately have the lovers reunited, in Nirvana for Wagner and in Paradise for Liszt.
ROSSANA DALMONTE, Trascrizione come interpretazione
This paper is divided into 7 sections, each discussing several topics.
1. Problem definition. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that a piano transcription of an orchestral score represents a particular kind of interpretation. Franz Liszt’s score and his piano transcriptions (for one and for two pianos) of the 2nd movement of the Faust Symphony are studied.
2. Textual resources. Description of the three scores analysed in the paper. Its compositional history.
3. Theoretical hypothesis. Not all trascriptions have the same epistemological status. The composer’s transcription as a means of expressing the final image of a musical idea.
4. Analysis of “Gretchen”. Orchestral and piano scores. Catalogue of the differences: pianistic changes, non-structural changes, structural changes.
5. Evaluation of the differences between the three “Gretchen” scores.
6. Further approaches. Directions added to the piano scores. An historic testimony (Lina Ramann)
7. Conclusions. Structural hierarchy of the elements of the composition. Performance directions for conductors and pianists.
MARCO BEGHELLI, Un autografo ritrovato: il Weihnachtslied R 535
Among the Lisztian relics found by Helbig’s heirs (see Quaderni dell’Istituto Liszt, n.1, 1998, pp. 7-8) the most precious is the autograph of Weihnachtslied “O heilige Nacht” for tenor, female chorus and organ and one part of the chorus used during the first performance (December 25, 1881), with corrections in the author’s hand. What Nadine Helbig tells about the origin of the composition and the reading of the manuscript (that was considered lost) permits us to correct the date given for this piece in the major catalogues. Moreover we can now state that this motet is not a transcription of the second piece of Weihnachtsbaum, as believed previously, but that the piano piece derives from the vocal score. Since both works – Weihnachtsbaum and Weinachtslied – were published 1882, the latter was possibly composed at the end of 1881 or at the beginning of 1882. The Liszt autograph, given in facsimile, reveals the inner creative process, especially at the coda, which Liszt rewrote four times.
CARLOS GALLARDO, Un esperado culto a lo macabro
Bertrand Ott, L’art du piano selon Liszt. Exigences instrumentales pour une liberation musicale
No account of Liszt’s activity in Paris during the Thirties would be complete without passing mention of the anecdotes arising around him from the very beginning of his career. This short article is about a curious fact first published in two Parisian journals La Gazette médicale and Le Pianiste. On the basis of the effect made by Liszt’s piano playing on a neurotic woman, he was credited to have invented… music therapy.
BERTRAND OTT, L’art du piano selon Liszt. Exigences instrumentales pour une liberation musicale
The author describes how Liszt conceived the relation between the pianist and the pedagogical books by Marie Jaël (one of Liszt’s pupils) and some iconographic sources. The main idea is that Liszt used his hand as it were pliers being the thumb placed in opposite place to the others fingers: Liszt’s fingers did not beat the keys, but they took or caught or caressed them. Finger’s action, hand’s retropulsion, arm’s suspensive lightening are discussed in detail. Some preliminary exercices by Liszt and a particular fingering for scales and arpeggios are proposed at the end of the article.
INTERVENTI
MAURIZIO GIANI, Recensione a Lisztiana I e II
GRUPPO DI STUDIO “Liszt e i Lieder”, Introduzione ai Lieder corali di Liszt
The article does not take into account Liszt’s entire choral output for choir, but only the secular songs for male chorus, thus excluding masses, psalms and other religious pieces. The repertoire briefly analysed in this article has been very much neglected by critics, who often cannot find the original scores, since these pieces were not republished after their first editions in the Nineteenth century.
The authors propose to begin to look at this repertoire following a subdivision according to the themes of the poems set to music. Some songs deal with patriotic matters: poets such as Ernst Moritz Arndt, Georg Herwegh and Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben praise Liberty, High-mindedness and the Motherland in songs full of sincere enthusiasm. Another group of songs is written for worker choruses; among these we find perhaps the first song of the class struggle, Le forgeron. Typical themes of Romanticism are also present: lyrics in praise of nature like Saatengrün, or flights into the realm of dreams as Der Gang um Mitternacht (“Ich schreite mit dem Geist der Mitternacht” – “I walk together with the Midnight Spirit”) and into the world of fairy-tales as in Uhland’s poem “Die alten Sagen kunden / Von einem Schatz im Rhein” (“Old tales tell about a treasure at the bottom of the Rhine”). The authors maintain that the choral songs written in the Forties could help us to understand the deep changes in this period in Liszt’s life, in his mind and his attitude to poetry, thus inviting us to pursue further study of these works.