INDEX OF THE VOLUME
SERGE GUT, L’adaptation de la forme sonate beethovénienne dans certaines oeuvres du Liszt de la maturité
MICHAEL SAFFLE, Liszt’s Symphonic Poems: Past analyses and an introduction to meta-analytical issues
KONSTANTIN ZENKIN, Fluidity of structures in the music of Franz Liszt: From Romantic “form as process” to “open form
SHIGERU FUJITA, Interlocking-Directional tonality: la conceptualisation d’une nouvelle organisation tonale dans les ballades de Chopin et de Liszt
COSTAS TSOUGRAS, Chromatic third relations, symmetrical octave division and paths in pitch space: Analytical study of Franz Liszt’s Il Penseroso
AUTOGRAFI
JEAN-MICHEL BRANGER, Deux lettres de Massenet à des correspondants italiens
RECENSIONI
ABSTRACTS
SERGE GUT, L’adaptation de la forme sonate beethovénienne dans certaines oeuvres du Liszt de la maturité
When Liszt came to stay in Weimar in 1848, he had the ambition to compose some works, especially in the field of orchestral music, in order to prove his ability in applying the “Grand Form”. Before achieving his goal he hesitated and even committed errors. But finally he arrived. One of his greatest successes was the ingenious adaptation of Beethoven’s sonata form, which he did so skillfully that sometimes – with superficial analysis – you will not be conscious of Beethoven’s influence.
In this article the author tries to show how the sonata form is used as an underlying frame for the structure in the following works: the Dante Sonate, Les Préludes, Prométhée and the B minor Sonate.
In the conclusion the author gives a personal judgment on the particular situation of these works, inspired by Beethoven’s model, in the general frame of Liszt’s musical production.
MICHAEL SAFFLE, Liszt’s Symphonic Poems: Past analyses and an introduction to meta-analytical issues
Liszt’s symphonic poems have often been analyzed in terms of entirely musical (i.e. absolutist) analytical paradigms such as sonata form, thematic transformation, chromatic harmony, etc. An examination of musical and extra-musical (i.e. programmatic or symbolic) compositional processes reveals the presence of at least three meta-analytical paradigms: stylistic consistency as well as development, especially in terms of Liszt’s use of keys and key signatures; forms of extra-musical referentiality, including topicality; and the presence of structural and expressive gestures associated with the keyboard fantasy tradition. Among the works discussed is Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne, also known as the “Mountain Symphony” and Liszt’s first symphonic poem in order of publication.
KONSTANTIN ZENKIN, Fluidity of structures in the music of Franz Liszt: From Romantic “form as process” to “open form
The article explores issues pertaining to Formenbildung and the handling of tonal organization in music of the Romantic period (including the unfolding of musical forms in time and the ambiguity of formal functions), with a particular focus on the Sonata in B minor and other works by Franz Liszt. It details the progressive emergence of the characteristics of so-called “open form” (to use the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin’s term as adapted by the Russian musicologist Inna Barsova) from middle-period works such as Vallée d’Obermann and the Sonata onwards, a tendency which reaches its apogee in late works such as the tone poem Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe and the late piano pieces. It concludes by exploring the ways in which the compositional approaches and shaping of musical time manifest in Liszt’s later music transcend the framework of Romantic poetics.
Setting the question of the narrativity aside, many musicologists have paid attention to the characteristic structures in Chopin’s ballades. Their general common strategy was to highlight the differences from the classical norm, referring to the mono-tonal theory of Schenker. But, if Chopin succeeded in elevating his ballades into a new independent genre, a way must be found to describe their structures in a manner that can be understood in their own terms.
For this purpose, it may be useful to employ the concepts of “Interlocking tonality” and “Directional tonality”, both concepts being brought to music analysis by G. George (1970), H. Krebs (1981) and W. Kinderman (1988). When the two concepts are operatively combined, all the ballades will be described as the different realizations of the so-called “Interlocking-Directional tonality”, which consists of the original architectonic principle set out by Chopin.
Liszt composed two ballades, but their quality is uneven. While the First Ballade can be understood as the modest assimilation of Chopin’s, the Second Ballade can be well described as the interlocking of two tonal directionalities, that is the realization of the potentiality of the architectonic principle which Chopin’s never achieved in his ballades.
Chromatic third relations and symmetrical octave division into three or four equal parts consisting of major or minor thirds, as well as symmetrically constructed chords, were important structural elements of the music written in the second half of the 19th century. Theoretical research on these issues has been active since the end of the 19thcentury (mainly in the Riemannian functional harmonic theory tradition), but it has recently been invigorated by newer theories of harmonic structure and/or formal function (e.g. Imig, Lewin, Cohn, Hyer, Lerdahl, Kopp). The significance of symmetrical harmonic structures in Liszt’s mature works has also been explored in theoretical/analytical research by Todd, Skoumal, Cinnamon, Forte, et al. These papers examine the works’ deeper harmonic structures and identify the importance of chromatic thirds relations and the weakening of the dominant-to-tonic diatonic fifth relations, while they project their conclusions mainly through schenkerian reductional diagrams or chord charts and references to dualistic harmonic theories of the 19th century.
The present paper attempts the application of a combination of older and recent theories and analytical methodologies (focusing on Riemannian functional harmony, schenkerian/reductional theory, neo-Riemannian transformational theory and Tonal Pitch Space theory) to the analysis of Franz Liszt’s piano piece Il Penseroso from the collection Années de Pèlerinage – Deuxième Année: Italie. The analysis reveals that chromatic thirds and symmetrical harmony are core elements in the piece’s harmonic language, influencing both the surface linear chord progressions and the background tonal region relationships, as well as the work’s overall structural and morphological design. The piece’s deeper harmonic structure denotes the use of both the diatonic and the hyper-hexatonic systems, in reference to which the paths in tonal space are drawn schematically and calculated mathematically according to the Tonal Pitch Space theory. The clarification of the piece’s harmonic nature renders a holistic functional, structural and prolongational analysis of the work.
AUTOGRAFI
JEAN-MICHEL BRANGER, Deux lettres de Massenet à des correspondants italiens
Two letters by Massenet held by the Fondazione Istituto Liszt, and dating from a few years apart, illustrate the French composer’s close ties with Italy. The first has to do with a short, little-known trip the musician took in January 1899 to supervise or prepare various performances of his works in Genoa, Turin, and Milan. The second is a 1906 letter of thanks to Leopoldo Mugnone, shortly after the premiere of Ariane at the Paris Opera. A regular performer of Massenet in Italy, the famous conductor had presumably congratulated the composer on his new opera. The two documents thus bear witness to Massenet’s deep affection for a country where he was served by the most talented and greatest musicians, who tirelessly disseminated the music of a composer who was particularly popular with Italian audiences.
RECENSIONI
ROSSANA DALMONTE
Shay Loya, Liszt’s trascultural Modernism and the Hungarian-Gipsy tadition, University of Rochester Press, Rochester, 2011
Jonathan Kregor, Liszt as transcriber, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010