Franz Liszt
The Later Works
Contents
I. Introduction
II. Later Years 1861-1886
III. The Death of Liszt
IV. Conclusion
The Music History III Final Paper
by
David Momont
11 December 2008
I. Introduction
Franz Liszt embodied the very definition of virtuoso. From his animated performances to
pages blackened by notes so numerous that even the greatest performers wish for an extra finger or
two, he cast a shadow over all other musicians of his time. Liszt was born in 1811 in Hungary and
starting from a young age, it was well noticed that he was a prodigy. His father, Adam, took him to
Vienna in hope that his son could become the musician that he never could be, and Liszt began
studying under Carl Czerny, a pupil of Beethoven and a famous piano technique teacher. Even though
Franz Liszt was being taught by the greatest teachers, his father, in a move that may have limited
Liszt's potential, hastily flaunted him on tour throughout Western Europe instead of allowing Liszt to
develop and refine his technique.1
It wasn't until 1930 when Liszt was introduced to Berlioz, Paganini, and Chopin that he began
to compose his own piano works, significantly influenced by these three musical geniuses. The
programatic music of Berlioz, virtuosity of Paganini, and harmonic nature of Chopin all can be seen in
Liszt's work.2 The glaring distinction between Liszt and his counterparts was that he performed works
by other composers much more then his own. While his performances may not have been originals, he
was the first to perform solo piano recitals that lost none of the graduer of full orchestras due to Liszt's
incredible skill3. Starting in the late 1930's, Liszt, while already a quite famous and attractive man,
toured the whole of Europe elevating his stardom to astonishing levels. His performances consisted of
mostly crowd pleasers and fantasias on well-known tunes and operas. Some would even criticize him
for his lack of original works.4 But even with the hectic life of a performer, he managed to compose
some of his most virtuosic etudes and concerti.
1 Arnold, p.5-6.
2 Sitwell, p.27.
3 Also of note, he was the first to turn the piano sideways. Needless to say, much of his performance was not only music,
but showmanship. Turning the piano so the audience could see the speed and elegance of his hands would only increase
their enjoyment and awe.
4 Hamilton p. 60.
In 1947, Liszt settled down with Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein in Weimar. Although he
was free from the duties of performing, he had the steady job of a conductor and courtly duties. While
in Weimar, Liszt's artistic freedom was imposed upon by the fact that he was living with a woman who
was still married. The upper-class looked unfavorably upon him, and he was forced to work under their
prejudice.5 But even with all this stress, he was still able to produce masterpieces: Piano Concerto in E
flat major. S 124, Grandes études de Paganini. S 141, and Eine Faust-Symphonie. S108, along with
others.
After his stay in Weimar, he moved to Rome and was ready to marry his princess when the pope
stepped in at the last minute.6 This caused Carolyne to go into a dark, religious depression state, and
while they never did marry, Liszt continued to visit her.7 After his stay in Weimar and the change of
state in his emotional well-being, Liszt began a new period in his life.
II. Later Years 1861-1886
I have taken so long to reach the beginning of my paper because without knowledge of his early
life, we could never see how much he changed and what he kept in his later years. It is the time
starting in 1861 until his death in 1886 that I will focus my discussion.
For me Liszt's output during the last twenty-six years of his life remains the most
important, interesting, and moving music he ever wrote. This music with its incomplete
and experimental character and without frills or sensationalism became increasingly dark,
lonely, personal, and sincere. This music was an outgrowth of his solitary and homeless
life, an errant life of an artist growing old who endured many delusions and unfortunate
experiences.
Ben Arnold, The Liszt Companion
I, for many of the same reasons as Ben Arnold, feel that the later years in Liszt's life are the
5 Arnold, p. 13.
6 Sitwell, p. 236.
7 Arnold, p. 17.
most captivating. The futuristic compositional ideas he introduced and where he saw music going in
the 20th century fascinates me along with his influence on impressionists and expressionists. From
here, I will discuss his early late works that foreshadowed impressionism, and his experimental works
that broke away from tonal composition all together anticipating expressionism.
Let us move ahead to 1876. Liszt has yet to settle down, and never will until his death. He
spends his years in three cities, Weimar, Rome and Budapest.8 His personality never left him, but his
energy and health began to diminish. He has lost two of his three children and his mother, and to make
matters worse, his only child is in breaking up her marriage for another man and will not speak to Liszt.
However, he continues to teach his faithful students for free and live a modest life, performing for
charitable and cultural causes.
While entertaining suicidal thoughts, Liszt returned to the Villa d'Este in the summer of 1877
and composed Les jeux d'eaux á la Villa d'Este (Fountains at the Villa d'Este), which is included in his
collection entitled Years of Pilgrimage (1867-1877).9 This is a perfect example of Liszt's
impressionistic ideas, sounding like Ravel's “water music”. The flowing upper register thirty-second
notes vividly symbolizes fountains and flowing water are characteristic of impressionist composers.10
Surprisingly, this piece is quite diatonic compared to most of his other late works which we will see.
Les jeux d'eaux á la Villa d'Este begins in F sharp major with a fluid arpeggiation ending a
series of tremolos and trills. At m. 49 Liszt introduces a melody in the left hand that must have been
inspired by Chopin and covers it with a deceivingly challenging arpeggiation11. When he repeats the
left hand melody, he raises the D by a step and then a half step. Liszt builds upon this melody adding
parallel sixths and then finishes with a flurry of sixteenth and thirty-second notes. This leads into a
celestial section in E major. The right hand trickles down the stream and into D major where Liszt
8
9
10
11
Walker, p. 3.
Walker, p. 369.
Walker, p. 372.
Listening to Stephen Hough fly through them, I did not anticipate their difficulty, and when I tried my fingers ended in a
tangled mess.
wrote, “sed aqua, quam ego dabo ei, fiet in eo fons aquae salientis in vitam aeternam” (but the water
that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life, John 4:14). This
is a fitting quote as the melody is passed to the right hand and the flowing water wells up from below.
Continuing his sequential composition, he returns to the tonic with the melody still in the right hand
with added harmony.
Now comes the Liszt signature, tension builds up and thins to a left hand trill and a strained
melody. A dark, dreary moving bass enters overshadowing the trickle of the water turning it into a
rushing fortissimo river. The flowing water is still present, but the dissonance and force removes all
peacefulness. The entire piece is relatively calming and beautiful until this point, but as quickly as it
came, it leaves the agitated depths to return to the flowing stream. He almost finishes with the major
celestial melody, but descends once again into the relative minor. It is a powerful statement at the end
because we expect him to go full circle with the flowing melody he began with, but instead he leads us
into thinking he wants to end as we expect and ends in a thin, minor cadence.
Les jeux d'eaux á la Villa d'Este stands out among Liszt's later works specifically because it
remains diatonic and faithful to harmony used sequentially. Liszt began to experiment with music that
did not obey major and minor harmonies in his later works. Many are only brief sketches that lack the
virtuosic nature of his earlier works. Liszt was imagining what music would be like in the 20th century,
a loss of tonality. The next two works I will look at were written in 1881, Ustern! Sinstre, disastro (S
208) and Nuages Gris (S 199). His dark side is exemplified in these two, and the latter was written
recently after he had sustained serious injuries from falling down a flight of stairs. He also had dropsy
and failing eyesight at this time.
Ustern! Sinstre, disastro has a slow start. Not only is the tempo marking, lento, but the melody
line is interrupted and then starts over, only to be interrupted again by half measures of rest. 12 It then
moves up a fourth to try again but to no avail, so Liszt, expressing his inner anguish, decides to march
12 Arnold, p. 168
in octaves to the first augmented triad in m. 25. This march then climbs chromatically but after the
climax, thins to the fading lower octaves. The distress is not over yet, as a twelve measure tremolo on
F begins in the left hand and the right climbs chromatically for two octaves of only augmented triads.
It peaks at a painfully dissonant recollection of the march theme but with an added tritone to the
augmented triad.
Franz Liszt had taken minor orders towards the priesthood and written multiple masses and
choral works. This side of him comes up in Ustern! After having enough of the dissonance, Liszt
writes “sostenuto, quasi Organo”, and introduces a hymn-like theme in B major.13 The intense contrast
is startling and leaves the listener somewhat bewildered by the change of direction. To bring us back to
his world without tonality, he repeats a parallel chromatic passage and leaves all sense of key in a
dreary, lonely descent to a final, single E.
Nuages Gris (Grey Clouds) is another perfect example of Liszt expressing himself bluntly with
a desperate, agonizing work unmistakably meant to release his inner turmoil through his music. This
work has been described as “the gateway to modern music.”14 It begins with a repeated tritone melody
accompanied by a tremolo in the left hand. The tremolo continues while the right hand of augmented
triads descends chromatically. A counter melody fills in the original by adding more tritones. Nuages
Gris concludes with parallel octaves climbing chromatically for an octave.
Romanticism loosened the bonds to tonic/dominant tonal form, but his thin textures, devoid of
any tonality would have seemed, at the time, absurd to the casual concert goer. Liszt's life as a pianist
had been built upon his ability to stun an audience with his virtuosity, not stupefy them with atonal
miniatures lacking any shred of difficulty. I do not believe that Liszt wrote his last works with the
expectation of them being performed in every concert hall across Europe, instead, he wanted break all
the rules and let the music speak for itself. He composed what he was feeling. In my reading, I have
13 Arnold, p. 169.
14 Walker, p. 440.
come across multiple instances where Liszt is referred to as an autobiographical composer. 15 The
music on the page symbolizes what he is feeling, and how he conveys this is exactly what makes him a
genius.
III. The Death of Liszt16
In 1885, Liszt met Claude Debussy, who later became a master impressionist, three times in
Rome where they played for each other.17 Liszt chose to play Au bord d'une source (Beside a Stream),
which he had composed in 1855. Au bord d'une source is “water music” and contains many of the
same characteristics of Les jeux d'eaux á la Villa d'Este. These meetings strengthen the claim that
Liszt influenced impressionism. Young Debussy could only have been impressed by this old, now 74,
man's ability to not only play the piano but make it speak.
The next year, on his seventy-fifth birthday, he was flooded with invitation to attend concerts in
his honor. He decided to attend one in London for three weeks of April. On his way back to Weimar,
he made a stop in Paris to perform also. The last few concerts were more popular than his during the
virtuoso years. He even admitted that he finally was respected as a musician. (Walker 499).
The final touring had taken its toll on Liszt. His dropsy made movement painful and almost
impossible. His eyesight was all but gone. “I am already more than half blind; perhaps I shall not have
to wait long for the rest...” 18 His last concert was held in Luxembourg on July 19 (505). Sadly, Liszt
death was not an easy one. For someone who had battled with depression and thoughts of suicide his
entire life, all he wanted was to die quietly, alone. His pupils would not stand for it and doctors insisted
15 e.g., “...of the piece were evidently autobiographical in origin.” Walker, p. 441. Also, “..suggests a spiritual journey that
carries us through Liszt's
16 In The Final Years by Alan Walker, he gives a through discussion of the diary of Lina Schmalhausen. Her diary is the
only complete source we have for what really happened in the last weeks of Liszt's life. She was his secretary and
caregiver until she was banned (along with the rest of Liszt's pupils) by his daughter, Cosima. In spite, she took up a
post outside his bed room window and recorded events that came to pass. p. 508-22.
17 Walker, p. 475.
18 Walker, p. 498. Quote by Franz Liszt.
it was only a cold. He was bed ridden with pneumonia and plagued with visitors. He eventually fell
into a coma and died the night of July 31, 1886.
IV. Conclusion
Liszt encompassed not only the virtuoso, but also the ingenious composer. He started by
writing music solely based off of others, but then took his compositions to new levels when he began to
let the music speak for himself. Les jeux d'eaux á la Villa d'Este is a piece that uses the imagery of
water, a theme found many times in the following impressionists such as Ravel and Debussy. His even
later works, stripped bare of his earlier grandeur, foreshadowed the expressionists and atonal music.
Liszt removed much if not all harmonic progression in favor of chromaticism, tritones, and augemented
triads. 20th century music owes itself to many of Liszt's later experiments, and would not be where it is
today without his imaginative compositions.
Bibliography
Arnold, Ben. The Liszt Companion. 1st. London: Greenwood Press, 2002.
Hamilton, Kenneth. The Cambridge Companion to Liszt. 1st. United Kingdom: Cambridge University
Press, 2005.
Sitwell, Sacheverell. Liszt. 1st. London: Faber & Faber, 1934.
Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt: The Final Years 1861-1886. 1st. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Music Used for Analysis
Kalmus, Edwin F. Liszt: An Album for Piano Solo II. New York: Kalmus Piano Series.
Kalmus, Edwin F. Liszt: Late Piano Works. New York: Kalmus Piano Series.