Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

No. 331 of the ongoing ITYWLTMT series of audio montages can be found in our archives at https://archive.org/details/pcast331

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My wife and I have escaped the Canadian winter for a week at a sunny destination. However, I did prepare a number of posts in advance, and this montage of Liszt favourites will hopefully get you through the cold of January.

Franz Liszt was a pianist, a teacher and a composer. He developed several musical ways such as programmatic music, technique and thematic transformation. He traveled most of his life, and composed a number of works about the places that he traveled.

Two of the main works in the program are for piano and orchestra. Liszt composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 over a 26-year period; the main themes date from 1830, while the final version is dated 1849. It premiered in Weimar on February 17, 1855, with Liszt at the piano and Hector Berlioz conducting. Liszt made yet more changes before publication in 1856. Béla Bartók described it as "the first perfect realisation of cyclic sonata form, with common themes being treated on the variation principle".

Some of the titles of Liszt’s pieces, such as Funérailles, La lugubre gondola and Pensée des morts, show the composer's fascination with death. In the young Liszt we can already observe manifestations of his obsession with death, with religion, and with heaven and hell. Totentanz (English: Dance of the Dead): is notable for being based on the Gregorian plainchant melody Dies Irae as well as for daring stylistic innovations. The piece was originally planned in 1838 and completed in 1849; it was then revised twice, in 1853 and 1859.

Keeping with the heaven and hell obsession, the Mephisto Waltz No. 1 is a typical example of program music, taking for its program an episode from Nikolaus Lenau's 1836 verse drama Faust The following program note, which Liszt took from Lenau, appears in the printed score:

There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer, and the nightingale warbles his love-laden song.

During the period 1860-1869, Liszt devoted himself to religious music, and by this time he began to write some pieces for organ. During a two-year retreat at the Madonna del Rosario, he completed the Two Franciscan Legends that open our montage: St. François d’Assise: La Predication aux Oiseaux, and St. François de Paule: Marchant sur les flots in 1863. Liszt had personal relationships with these two saints, and particularly he regarded St. Francis of Paul as his patron.

To close the montage, I thought I would re-explore a piece I originally shared in an early Tuesday Blog post in which I explored classical music showcased in cartoons. The Cat Concerto is the 29th Tom and Jerry short, released to theatres on April 26, 1947. Following its release, it was met with critical acclaim, and is considered one of the best Tom and Jerry cartoons. It won the 1946 Oscar for Best Short Subject: Cartoons (their fourth consecutive Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, tied with Disney's musical series, the Silly Symphonies.)

In a formal concert, Tom, in a tuxedo as the soloist, is performing a piano concerto version of "Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2". Jerry, who is sleeping inside the piano, is rudely awakened by the felts, then sits on top of the piano to mock the cat by "conducting" him. Yj rest of the short is filled with typical “cartoon slapstick”, usually in unison with the music which was arranged for the occasion by Scott Bradley.

I think you will love this music too.