L I S Z T ’ S R E PR E S E N TAT I O N

of I N S T RU M E N TA L S O U N D S on
T H E PIA NO
colors in black and white
Hyun Joo Kim
 Liszt’s Representation of
Instrumental Sounds on the Piano

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 Eastman Studies in Music
Ralph P. Locke, Senior Editor
Eastman School of Music

Additional Titles of Interest

Beyond the Art of Finger Dexterity: Reassessing Carl Czerny

Edited by David Gramit

Busoni as Pianist
Grigory Kogan
Translated by Svetlana Belsky

Heinrich Neuhaus: A Life beyond Music

Maria Razumovskaya

In Search of New Scales: Prince Edmond de Polignac, Octatonic Explorer

Sylvia Kahan

Irony and Sound: The Music of Maurice Ravel

Stephen Zank

Liszt’s Final Decade

Dolores Pesce

Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism and the Hungarian-Gypsy Tradition

Shay Loya

The Music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

David Schulenberg

Schumann’s Piano Cycles and the Novels of Jean Paul

Erika Reiman

Stravinsky’s “Great Passacaglia”:

Unifying Elements in the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments
Donald G. Traut

A complete list of titles in the Eastman Studies in Music series may be found
on the University of Rochester Press website, www.urpress.com

Kim.indd ii 2/5/2019 4:05:22 PM

 Liszt’s Representation
of Instrumental
Sounds on the Piano

Colors in Black and White

Hyun Joo Kim

Kim.indd iii 2/5/2019 4:05:22 PM

 The University of Rochester Press gratefully acknowledges generous support from
the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in
part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation.

Copyright © 2019 by Hyun Joo Kim

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no

part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner.

First published 2019

University of Rochester Press

668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.urpress.com
and Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-946-3
ISSN: 1071-9989

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kim, Hyun Joo, 1978– author.

Title: Liszt’s representation of instrumental sounds on the piano : colors in black
and white / Hyun Joo Kim.
Other titles: Eastman studies in music ; v. 153.
Description: Rochester : University of Rochester Press, 2019. | Series: Eastman
studies in music ; v. 153 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018054783 | ISBN 9781580469463 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Liszt, Franz, 1811-1886--Criticism and interpretation. | Piano
music—19th century—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC ML410.L7 K54 2019 | DDC 786.2092—dc23 LC record
available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018054783

This publication is printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America.

Kim.indd iv 2/5/2019 4:05:29 PM

 Contents
Introduction 1

1 Approaching the Reproductive Arts 14

2 “Partitions de Piano” 37

3 Between “Text” and “Event”: Liszt’s Guillaume Tell Overture 57

4 Translating the Orchestra: Liszt’s Two-Piano Arrangements of

His Symphonic Poems 78

5 Interpretive Fidelity to Gypsy Creativity: Liszt’s Representations of

Hungarian Gypsy Cimbalom Playing 102

Conclusions: Recurring Techniques and Aesthetics 145

Appendix: Liszt’s Preface to His Piano Arrangements of Beethoven’s

Fifth and Sixth Symphonies in the Breitkopf & Härtel Edition, 1840 159

Notes 163

Bibliography 203

Index of Liszt’s Works by Genre 221

Subject Index 225

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Kim.indd vi 2/5/2019 4:05:29 PM
 Introduction
Style in engraving is the preeminence of drawing over color and of
beauty over richness. I say “color,” because the engraver, although he
has only the limited, monochrome effect of black and white [available
to him], has nevertheless his very own way of being a colorist.
—Charles Blanc

In his Grammaire des arts du dessin (The Grammar of Painting and Engraving), the
art critic Charles Blanc made the sensational and paradoxical assertion that
the engraver, who creates only a “monochrome effect,” is essentially a “color-
ist.” Along similar lines, he argued that “the engraver having at his disposal,
so far as color is concerned, only black and white, ceases to be a copyist and
becomes, instead, a translator.”1 Blanc further described the engraver’s end-
product as similar to that of a translator [of a verbal text], in that it “highlights
the essential [features], that nonetheless manages to indicate everything and
to say everything.”2 The notion of engraving as translation was well ingrained
in the minds of Blanc’s contemporary critics. For instance, the outstanding
engraver Nicolas Ponce (1764–1831) conceived the engraving as “not a copy of
the painting” but “a translation of it, which is different.”3 He makes the further
significant point that the “line” of a print can be translated literally, whereas
the “effect, the color and the harmony of a print” are reliant on the engraver’s
reinterpretation, which requires his “genius.”
Blanc and Ponce brought up the widespread nineteenth-century qualms
about one critical limitation of engraving: the lack of color. Around the same
time, music critics and reviewers also often made an analogy between the
piano transcription and its visual counterpart of engraving by focusing pri-
marily on their mutual deficiency: the inability to transport the original “col-
ors” literally. E. T. A. Hoffmann’s famous comparison of a piano transcription
to a black-and-white sketch of an oil painting conceives transcription as an
outline of the original music, incapable of conveying its colors and sounds
in depth.4 At the same time both camps of music and art critics understood
how art reproduction stimulates the executor’s imagination in translating
the original colors. As we observed above, Blanc and Ponce considered the
limitation as compelling the engraver to “highlight the essential aspects” of
the original and “create the effect and harmony of his print,” respectively.

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 2 ❧ introduction

Furthermore, Ponce’s description of the engraving process, which distin-

guishes the line from the effect or the color, becomes a plausible analogy to
a musical transferal from one medium to another, because that process also
elicits several levels of distinctions between the structure and the effect or
timbres, between a literal and an interpretive rendering, and between the
executor’s fidelity and his creativity.
As an apprentice of Paris’s eminent engravers of the time, such as Luigi
Calamatta and Paul Mercuri, and an advocate of their works as artistically origi-
nal, Blanc reminisced about Calamatta’s studio around 1835, in and around
which painters, printmakers, and musicians interacted.5 According to Blanc’s
report, the periodic visitors to the studio included the influential engravers
Ary Scheffer and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who had drawn or painted
Liszt, as well as pianist-composers such as Chopin and Liszt.6 A frequent guest
in Calamatta’s studio, Liszt was an artist in the vanguard of the latest artistic
aesthetics and philosophies, and he was familiar with engraving. In his preface
to his transcriptions of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, published in
1840, Liszt likened his role as transcriber to a “knowledgeable engraver” and
“conscientious translator,” dedicating the first version of the transcriptions to
the celebrated engraver Ingres, with whom he had become acquainted in the
1830s.7 Liszt’s notion of engraving in his preface holds a further implication:
his acknowledgement of engraving as a powerful representational medium
equal to his arrangements. Crucially, the same attitude is found in the oppo-
site direction from Ingres. Just as he regarded prints after his paintings as the
epitome of accomplishment, the eminent painter and engraver, as a devotee
of music, also showed his esteem for the medium of a piano transcription.
Referring to transcriptions of orchestral compositions for piano, presumably
those of Beethoven’s symphonies, Ingres wrote: “I have sublime extracts and,
no small thing, I can hear them over again 23 times if I wish, and in truth I
believe that it’s at the piano that you really come to know a masterpiece.”8
Just as extraordinary printmakers such as Calamatta and Ingres had trained
their eyes and hands by means of engraving before the invention of photogra-
phy, professional composer-arrangers such as Liszt had honed their skills on
the medium of a piano transcription before the invention of recording.9 The
two camps of artists thus embody the extraordinary story of living practitio-
ners in a uniquely innovative part of the Romantic era, pre-photography and
pre-recording, respectively, who already acknowledged the notion of “repro-
ductive” arts. Although seldom addressed in scholarly literature on the profes-
sional, labor-intensive task of reproduction in the visual and musical culture of
the early nineteenth century, these reproductive arts reveal textual fidelity and
artistic creativity in the executor that rivaled and sometimes even surpassed the
original. One of my purposes in this book is to open up the wider issues that

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 introduction ❧ 3

arise when we look at the spectrum of modes of Liszt’s reworking of instrumen-

tal sounds in his compositions of this distinctive period.
This book investigates Liszt’s replication and reworking of the existing
instrumental sounds and effects on the piano, drawing on the discipline of
French visual cultural history. I situate Liszt’s focus on instrumental colors in
the cultural and aesthetic context of the nineteenth century’s broader interest
in art reproduction and color and investigate his specific compositional strate-
gies by analyzing his renderings of instrumental music for the piano. Such an
analysis demonstrates both his faithful approach to the borrowed model and
his creative pianistic solutions to preserving the model’s integrity effectively.
Much of the previous research on this topic has regarded fidelity and creativity
in Liszt’s reworkings as two separate, contrasting, and contradictory sides of
his compositional method. Yet the two aspects are actually complementary and
mutually motivating, and interact in a dynamic way throughout his reworkings.
The repertoire I take into account in this book comprises three main
groups of pieces. The first group consists of Liszt’s solo-piano arrangements
of orchestral compositions by others, written mostly during his virtuoso years
in the 1830s and 1840s, which Liszt designated Partitions de piano, adopting the
French term for score.10 Liszt himself described his unique concept of “parti-
tions de piano”—that is, a meticulous arrangement down to the finest detail—as
he embarked on his arrangement of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and as he
further refined the concept in the preface to his arrangements of Beethoven’s
symphonies.
The second group is Liszt’s middle-period arrangements of his own sym-
phonic poems for two pianos in his Weimar years of 1848–61. Liszt’s two-piano
arrangements align themselves with his earlier partitions with respect to his
meticulous approach to the original orchestral score. By shifting the medium
of solo piano to two pianos, Liszt reinvigorated the interaction of fidelity and
creativity in accordance with new reworking methods for the new medium.
The third group expands the concept of orchestral arrangement to embrace
Liszt’s “arrangement” of Hungarian Gypsy–ensemble music in his Hungarian
Rhapsodies that mostly appeared in 1851–53, with a focus on his renderings of
cimbalom playing. Although the original material encompasses seemingly dis-
parate traditions, Western orchestral art music and Hungarian popular Gypsy
music, both kinds of transferal could make legitimate claims to employ the
fidelity–creativity interactive mode of Liszt’s reworking. If Liszt’s arrangements
of orchestral scores by Berlioz and Beethoven represent the pinnacle of his
overt faithfulness to his models and at the same time his creativity in represent-
ing orchestral music on the piano, his Rhapsodies, at the other end of the spec-
trum, encapsulate an artistic creativity that goes far beyond his models along
with a conscientious and faithful rendering of their sounds and gestures.

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 4 ❧ introduction

Approaching Romantic Reproductive Arts

Recent scholarship has begun to recognize the cultural and philosophical

importance of art reproduction in the Romantic era. In musicology, it is only
very recently that scholars such as Jonathan Kregor have investigated corre-
spondences among literary translation theory, visual printmaking, and musical
transcriptions within nineteenth-century European culture on a broad scale.11
Kregor addresses how Liszt’s experimentation with transcription should be
understood in a broader context of the reproductive arts, with acknowledg-
ment of the executor’s creativity and the work’s independence, and how Liszt’s
transcriptions as a mechanism of validation forged his roles as composer-pia-
nist, collaborator, commentator, philosopher, and artist.
In the field of art history, there has been a significant amount of research
on art reproduction in the early nineteenth century. Among others, studies
by Stephen Bann, Anthony Griffiths, Trevor Fawcett, and Susan Lambert have
addressed the aesthetics and practices that influential engravers and lithog-
raphers in Parisian salons cultivated and how they collapsed the boundary
between creator and reproducer and between a mere copy and a genuine
translation of the preexisting work.12 These scholars, especially Bann, have
challenged traditional conceptions of “reproductive” engravings as derivative,
second-hand expression, or mechanical copies of the original, acknowledg-
ing the medium’s own philosophical and cultural identity. The present study
participates in such a new conception, yet it is not my intention to repeat the
prevailing view about reproductive arts as having historical value on their own
terms. Instead, this study turns to research on art criticism regarding print-
making as a means of shedding light on the nuanced and concrete layers of
meaning of crucial concepts such as translation, interpretive fidelity, and the
representation of color in black-and-white media, all of which help us to under-
stand more fully the case of Liszt and his representation of instrumental colors.
A number of art history scholars have offered a sophisticated corrective to
the previous neglect of prints. Bann addresses the crucial role that printmakers
and art critics played in shaping French printmaking culture over the course of
the nineteenth century.13 He distinguishes the reproductive arts from the orig-
inal works of art with respect to their specific mode of creation, while simul-
taneously (in another reflection of the first word of his title) “discriminating
critically” the different properties of each of the prints: engraving, lithography,
and etching.14 Bann’s approach is useful for understanding Liszt’s replication
and reinterpretation of instrumental sounds; on the one hand, it leads us to
appreciate Liszt’s reworking and transferal methods as a whole at a level of aes-
thetic distinction, while on the other, it deepens our understanding of his indi-
vidualized reworking techniques of source materials such as Western orchestral
music and Hungarian popular Gypsy-band music to the piano–whether solo

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 introduction ❧ 5

piano or two pianos. Even within the group of Liszt’s partitions (see chapters 2
and 3), we can see ways in which Liszt used a distinctive compositional strategy
that both links all of the partitions and simultaneously distinguishes them.
Stunning contemporary engravings and lithographs were embedded
within contemporary critical discourses. Bann’s painstaking account of the
relationships between printmakers and art critics has been instrumental in
my discussion in this study. Articles and reviews from journals such as Gazette
des beaux-arts, L’artiste, and La revue des deux-mondes served not merely as sites
for the display of reproductive images but more importantly, as conduits for
conveying criticism and acute commentaries on the nuanced differences
among the works of noteworthy printmakers. In these critical discourses, a
number of art critics emerged as self-appointed custodians of the incontest-
able printmakers and the great variety of their print techniques. Blanc was
the first and foremost art critic among those under consideration in this
book. As the founding editor of the Gazette des beaux-arts from 1859, his com-
mentaries on engraving created a crucial forum for engravers’ reproduction
of their models. Furthermore, his writings about engraving and lithography
in his book Grammaire des arts du dessin attest to his acute knowledge of the
various techniques available to the printmakers and thus his expertise in
assessing the qualities and merits of their prints.15 In addition, the present
study investigates critiques by Blanc’s contemporaries, including Philippe
Burty’s reviews for Gazette des beaux-arts, Henri Delaborde’s articles in La
revue des deux-mondes, and George Sand’s commentaries from her Oeuvres
autobiographiques, as well as reproduction as an academic discipline in the
Engraving Department at the Institut de France established in 1803.16
As the scope of this study expands into Liszt’s middle-period arrangements
composed in the 1850s, it is also necessary to follow the discourse of art criti-
cism as it developed during the middle of the century. The purpose behind this
approach is not to assert specific correspondences between musical transcrip-
tion and printmaking during the second half of the century but to discover
the parallel phenomenon of the two domains in their lasting power during the
period, their aesthetic goal of interpretive fidelity, and their enthusiastic recep-
tion by contemporary critics. For instance, in his monumental and enthralling
reference work, Les graveurs du XIXe siècle, the discerning critic Henri Beraldi
extolled the lesser-studied engraver Louis Pierre Henriquel-Dupont as “the
most celebrated engraver of the nineteenth century.”17 Beraldi’s estimation of
Henriquel-Dupont’s tripartite engraving after Delaroche’s Hémicycle des Beaux-
Arts, demonstrates that traditional burin engraving was still held up into the
second half of the nineteenth century.18
In short, what is at stake in this study is the emergence of a new conception
of the relationships between visual printmakers and musical transcribers: just
as the eminent engravers and lithographers of Liszt’s time invested heavily in

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 6 ❧ introduction

new technical apparatus to control light and shade and thus bring about strik-
ing visual effects as equivalents to the original colors, creative arrangers such
as Liszt developed new methods to render the sonic properties of instrumental
colors on the black-and-white keyboard.

Liszt’s Transcriptions

A rich secondary literature has been written on the social function of the
reproductive arts in both music and fine arts; yet the individual executors
remain obscure. A number of musicologists such as Thomas Christensen have
provided useful insights into the relationships between musical transcription
and copper engraving by drawing attention to their shared democratic impulse
to disseminate art to a broader public.19 A similar argument has been made
in many studies on reproductive prints in the fine arts. Although the topic of
reproduction is bewilderingly rich, art historians such as A. Hyatt Mayor and
Peter Marzio have generally focused on mass production and consumption
of the prints.20 Entranced by this focus on the democratic function, however,
we have overlooked artistic and artisanal reproduction in both visual prints
and piano transcriptions, the philosophical, aesthetic, and cultural identity of
which goes beyond saleable commodities.
Virtually every study of nineteenth-century piano transcriptions tends to
repeat the supposed purposes of Liszt’s arrangements, which exist for dis-
semination and promotion of the original work as well as for education of the
public. Yet these broad purposes—which prize the status of the original com-
position—risk undervaluing the individuality of Liszt’s work as an arranger.
Liszt’s arrangements are virtuosic—technically challenging, intended for pro-
fessionals—and meticulously rendered, with subtleties to be appreciated by
only a select few listeners. Clearly, the supposed purposes of dissemination and
promotion alone fail to explain the case of Liszt as arranger. Instead, in this
book I address the difficulty, exclusivity, and artistic creativity of Liszt’s rework-
ings by situating them not within the majority of commercially oriented print-
makers but within extraordinarily labor-intensive, carefully produced works by
a few artistic engravers and lithographers such as Calamatta, Paul Delaroche,
Ingres, Hyacinthe Aubry-Lecomte, and Mercuri, whose works translated inge-
niously the coloring of the picture into chiaroscuro.
Scholars of Liszt’s transcriptions of orchestral music, such as William Michael
Cory, Zsuzsanna Domokos, Walden Hughes, and Alex Schröter, have provided
useful examples of his transferal process.21 These studies have tended to focus
on the two categories of “literal” and “nonliteral” transcriptions, ultimately
proposing to relate the “literal” to Liszt’s fidelity and the “nonliteral” to his
creativity.22 But these two facets of arranging—fidelity and creativity—actually

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 introduction ❧ 7

are not mutually exclusive; the close inspection of Liszt’s arrangements in this
book reveals that the places where he is most faithful to the model are also the
places where he deploys his creativity to approximate the original effectively in
pianistic terms. His liberal renderings on the surface stem from his deep, con-
scientious approach to the essence of the original. The dynamic of fidelity and
creativity thus serves as a significant aesthetic underpinning of his orchestral
arrangements.
The locus of scholarly inquiry into Liszt’s orchestral arrangements tends to
be situated in a limited part of the repertoire, almost exclusively focusing on
the arrangements of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and selected symphonies of
Beethoven.23 To comprehend Liszt’s transferal process fully, we must include
more of the repertoire in his massive project of piano arrangements. In order
to do so, first, this book includes his partition of the overture to Rossini’s
Guillaume Tell, contrasting it with his celebrated partitions of orchestral music
by Berlioz and Beethoven. This approach sheds light on how they are related
to the concept of “partition” and at the same time what aspects of each work
are distinctive in respect to Liszt’s reworking strategy. Second, consideration of
Liszt’s solo-piano arrangements needs to be extended to include the two-piano
arrangements of his Weimar years—the majority of which are those of his own
symphonic poems—asking how the use of two pianos facilitates his explora-
tion of new techniques of reworking. Finally, reorienting our investigation
to embrace Liszt’s rendering of Hungarian Gypsy–band practices and styles
enriches the study of Liszt’s arrangements of orchestral and ensemble music.

Terminology

The terms transcription and arrangement are often used interchangeably by

musicologists and theorists. Although a strict division between the two terms
is not possible because of their overlapping characteristics, arrangement in gen-
eral is defined in a broader sense than transcription. The term arrangement tends
to embrace both a literal and a freer style of reworking, whereas transcription is
usually used only in the more literal sense of reproduction.24 The process of
the arrangement also usually entails two important properties of the reworking
and a change of medium.25 I will use the term arrangement for the repertoire
that composes chapters 2–4 in my study, primarily for three reasons. First, the
genre of the original composition tends to define the term, as in Liszt’s clas-
sification of arrangement in his 1877 catalogue, which includes model composi-
tions that were originally instrumental, primarily large-scale orchestral music,
and thus the repertoire of this study would fit his own sense of arrangement.
Second, the repertoire also involves a change of medium from an orchestral
composition to solo piano or two pianos. Finally, Liszt’s reworking style reveals

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 8 ❧ introduction

the faithful and the creative as complementary, going beyond literal reproduc-
tion. Along with the term “arrangement,” I also use partition as a particular type
of arrangement, as will be further explained in chapter 2.

Liszt’s Uses of Existing Music

Kenneth Hamilton claims that “Liszt’s imagination often seemed to need a

specific pre-existing musical stimulus (however trivial) to work from, and this
could be his own early pieces as well as the works of others.”26 Liszt’s compo-
sitional process was often inextricably bound to his borrowing of the music
of other composers; in fact, roughly half of his enormous output is based on
the music of others. Amidst his substantial borrowing throughout his oeuvre,
Liszt’s considerable arranging of orchestral music was a life-long dedication.27
His use of Hungarian Gypsy–band style also occupied him throughout his life;
his arranging of specific Hungarian tunes in Gypsy-band style, in keeping with
his close study of Gypsy performance practice, constituted a significant project
from 1840 to 1853, as represented in the first fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies.28
Against the backdrop of these types of borrowing, this study sheds light on one
dimension of them, inviting further inquiries into his reworking methods.
This book analyzes Liszt’s reworking and transferring process in detail,
revealing his personalized, interpretive, and creative use of existing music and
viewing his roles as composer, arranger, and pianist as a whole. By demonstrat-
ing the extent to which Liszt accomplished his unique reworking methods
through his use of existing music, this book provides valuable insight into his
borrowing for music scholars and musicians alike. The field of musical borrow-
ing, which has been mapped by J. Peter Burkholder, has helped us to discover
both the interrelationships and the uniqueness of types of borrowing, under-
stand the nature and depth of the relationship between the new piece and
the original, and strengthen our insight into the underlying aesthetics of those
borrowings without hasty conclusions or speculation.29 This study draws on
Burkholder’s methods, shedding light on (1) the biographical circumstances
of Liszt’s relationships with the borrowed material; (2) an analytical, interpre-
tive, and critical approach to his treatment of the existing music; and (3) the
meaning of the borrowed material in Liszt’s version and the aesthetic purposes
of his reworking. Although this study contributes to our understanding of only
one facet of Liszt’s borrowing, it addresses one significant constituent of his
grand project of arranging orchestral music, simultaneously juxtaposing it with
his reworkings of Hungarian Gypsy–ensemble music. The closer inspection of
musical analyses throughout helps to deepen the understanding of the rela-
tionships between Liszt’s models and his renderings and permits comparison
between disparate realms of borrowing.

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 introduction ❧ 9

Throughout the chapters that follow in this study, detailed musical analyses
demonstrate how convincingly Liszt provided solutions to problems in trans-
ferring to the piano original orchestral effects such as string tremolos and sus-
tained notes, as well as distinctive instrumental colors such as timpani rolls.
The critical and interpretive inquiry into Liszt’s reworkings does not merely
focus on what Liszt is doing—whether he adds or omits notes, or alters some
parts of the orchestral score to adjust them to his piano score—but proposes
to find the impulse behind his reworking. In doing so, the analyses ultimately
reveal that although Liszt’s radical transformations of the model may seem con-
tradictory to his overall faithfulness, they stem from his conscientious attempts
to capture the essence of the original.
In revealing the compositional importance that Liszt’s reworkings held for
nineteenth-century pianist-composers, this study reorients our understanding
of the composer’s use of existing music from the conventional, general, and
stylized manner toward his specific approach to representing the borrowed
material in a detailed, realistic, and vivid manner. Despite a certain amount
of musicological research on how Liszt used borrowed music for his own pur-
poses historically, culturally, and analytically, scholars have generally shied away
from discussing his distinctive techniques of borrowing. In the field of Liszt’s
uses of Hungarian Gypsy–band styles, scholars such as Jonathan Bellman and
Ralph Locke have enriched our awareness of Liszt’s reshaping of such music as
“stylistic exoticism” and “idiomatic” representations of non-Western elements
in Western composition, or as facets of broad Romantic nationalism and exoti-
cism.30 Furthermore, recent scholars of Hungarian music such as Shay Loya
and Lynn Hooker have rediscovered, historicized, and theorized Hungarian
Gypsy–style music. This book participates in conversations with such works,
extending it into the domain of a direct, realistic understanding of Liszt’s bor-
rowing methods that have often escaped musicological attention.31 In doing
so I draw on specific idioms and techniques of the model instruments from
contemporaneous articles in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and method books such
as Cimbalom iskola (1886) by Géza Allaga, particularly in the case of Liszt’s rela-
tionships with the cimbalom, as well as anecdotes about his direct experience
of the instrument.32 For older sources, I intentionally preserved some incon-
sistencies of spelling (in other words, have not always standardized spelling to
meet modern-day norms).
One of my central arguments in this book is that Liszt thought of the piano
in a fundamentally new way to convey the timbral interplay of a variety of other
instruments with his ten fingers. Musical examples I present also demonstrate
how Liszt saw the potential of the pianist’s ten fingers as analogous to the mul-
tiple instruments of the orchestra or instruments typical of Gypsy bands, such
as the violin and the cimbalom. In many instances, all the fingers are required
to manage contrasting types of articulation, texture, and figuration, producing

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 10 ❧ introduction

a timbral interplay of different groups of instruments simultaneously on the

piano. Moreover, analyses of moments that feature a blizzard of sixty-fourth
notes show that they are aimed at generating great vibrating columns of sound
to which the individual notes in succession are subordinate. Liszt conceived
of the piano as a “huge resonant gong,” an instrument that sets a full range
of strings in vibratory motion all at once. Furthermore, my analyses reveal
that Liszt envisioned contrasting instrumental timbres on the piano that are
impossible to render literally in the medium. In order to accomplish this, he
effectively used pianistic resources such as the contrast of keyboard registers.
His novel solutions heighten the effect of the contrast intrinsic to the origi-
nals, while simultaneously extending that contrast for his own purposes, such
as aurally sensational and even visually stunning effects. To pursue the issue of
Liszt’s use of contrast of the keyboard register further, as we will see in chapter
1, it is tempting to compare it to Ingres’s use of shadow in his prints.33 Just as
Ingres re-created shadow zones and perspectives through his physical naviga-
tion of sculptures in a visual print, Liszt seized on the contrast of register to
suggest his physical experience of familiar objects in a musical arrangement.

Liszt’s Uses of Popular “Hungarian Gypsy–Style” Music

Liszt’s musical progress and discourse call for the need to embrace cultural
dichotomies that separate the Western from the non-Western.34 The composi-
tional models Liszt used were largely those in the Western European tradition,
from his early years in Paris in the 1830s to the more intense years in Weimar
(1848–61), when he was deeply involved in German culture. At the same time,
he was committed to a five-decades-long involvement with Hungarian Gypsy–
style music. This book crosses the boundary between Western European music
and popular Hungarian Gypsy–style music as source material for Liszt’s borrow-
ing, mediating the musical, cultural, and aesthetic divides between European
Western and Hungarian Gypsy, mainstream and peripheral, art and folk, seri-
ous and popular, written and oral transmission, and elevated and earthy.
This approach compels us to grapple with the task of treating the two com-
pletely different musical sources and how we can use them in interpreting Liszt’s
imitation of the instruments from each tradition. On the one hand, we deal with
the published orchestral scores of Western European composers as predeter-
mined, authorial sources for Liszt’s arrangements; on the other hand, the source
material of his Rhapsodies is contingent upon the dialogue between sources
available to us and the performance practice of Hungarian Gypsy music.35 For
instance, several existing tunes that Liszt used for his Rhapsodies have been
identified.36 His treatment of the tunes in paraphrase or fragments immediately
invites us to relate it to the reworking methods in his operatic paraphrases and

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 introduction ❧ 11

fantasies. Yet at a deeper level, the way he arranges the tunes seems to become less
significant than his attempts to capture the way Gypsy-band musicians arranged
tunes in their performances. Despite the entirely different musical realm of the
Gypsy band, Liszt’s close attention to the distinctive instruments and his search
for ways to evoke their sounds and playing styles on the piano all relate to what
he had already explored in his earlier orchestral arrangements as a continuation
of the transferal and reworking process for his solo-piano versions.
The prerequisite studies for the analysis of Liszt’s Rhapsodies include the
composer’s own Des bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (1859), a philosophi-
cal justification and legitimation for his Rhapsodies. Although the book is full
of flowery writing and there is a question of the authenticity of the authorship,
it contains valuable passages related to musical description and commentary.37
Bálint Sárosi’s book Gypsy Music (1978) provides probably the most essential
and significant source material in the scholarship of the Hungarian Gypsy
band, which appeared in the orbit of Vienna in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries with essentially European instruments.38 Géza Papp’s
“Die Quellen der ‘Verbunkos-Musik’” furnishes an extensive amount of the
published source material of Hungarian Gypsy dances.39
Among the many musical parameters that Liszt borrowed from Hungarian
Gypsy–style music, I investigate his attentive approach to cimbalom playing. A
number of studies have discussed Liszt’s references to this instrument, yet the
authors have examined them cursorily, without sufficient understanding of the
specific idioms of the instrument and Liszt’s responses to those; moreover, the
studies have focused more on composers after Liszt, who were familiar with the
development of the modern cimbalom after 1873.40 Chapter 5 provides a deep
understanding of contextual dimensions for the cimbalom and Liszt’s connec-
tions to the instrument as well as his renderings of cimbalom playing in detail.
Hooker proposed using the terms “Hungarian-style” and “Hungarian-Gypsy
style” music rather than the prevailing verbunkos and style hongrois. The former
refers to Hungarian national art music originating from “recruiting” dances
and their music, and the latter denotes the adaptation of stylistic elements
of verbunkos in Western art music.41 In the present study, I have followed her
terms throughout. One of the reasons she chose them is that the distinction
between verbunkos and style hongrois is not clear-cut, because both Hungarian
and non-Hungarian composers used many of the same kinds of stylistic mark-
ers in similar ways.

Engraver, Translator, Interpreter

It is unfruitful to take a linear view of the development or evolution of Liszt’s

transferring techniques. The separate chapters of this book therefore offer an

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 12 ❧ introduction

array of different settings of Liszt’s reworkings seen from varying angles: the
interdisciplinary site of French visual printmaking (chapter 1); the painstaking
laboratory of Liszt’s partitur-type arrangements (chapters 2–4); and the cross-
over where Western Romantic and popular Hungarian Gypsy idioms meet in
his Rhapsodies (chapter 5).
Nineteenth-century art critics provided acute commentaries on the ideas
of perspectives and colors in chiaroscuro and varying degrees of translation
methods in printmaking. Chapter 1 situates the spectrum of Liszt’s modes of
reworkings of instrumental colors in this uniquely distinctive critical discourse.
Then it explores Liszt’s little-noticed acquaintance with the influential Parisian
painters and engravers, focusing on his relationship with Ingres, in which their
shared attitudes toward the imperative of reproductive arts occupy center
stage. These broader discussions help set the stage for understanding how Liszt
fashioned his role as a musical engraver, translator, interpreter, and colorist to
make the reproduction in “black and white” as vibrant and alive as the original.
The notion of partition tends to posit Liszt’s indefatigable fidelity to the
original as a starting point for interpreting his transferal methods. Reassessing
the prevailing notion of partition, chapter 2 draws on the debate on faithful-
ness and creativity in the field of arrangement addressed by critics, composer-
arrangers, and musicians in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as
well as by recent scholars. Blanc’s concept of fidelity, for instance, advocates
not the repetition of the contour of the original but, paradoxically, a creative
act of translation, which brings out the “character,” the “spirit,” and in a word,
the “essence” of the model.42 By addressing how challenging and problematic
the concept of partition is, I contend that the dynamic of fidelity and creativity
as a significant aesthetic arises in the very concept of partition. The chapter also
investigates Liszt’s experiments with notation as an integral part of his parti-
tions, further relating them to his demands on pianists to bring off an effective
performance.
Although Liszt’s partitions as a whole stand at a distinctive aesthetic level in
their exceptional degree of faithfulness, it is necessary to examine how his indi-
vidual approach to each of the partitions distinguishes each one from another.
Chapter 3 focuses on the differing approaches Liszt took in Beethoven’s
scores—as “sacred text”—and in Rossini’s—as a platform for performance.
Based on contemporary assessment and performance accounts, I demonstrate
the contrasting reception of the two types of partitions. I then turn to illustrat-
ing distinctive reworking techniques Liszt deployed for his partition of Rossini’s
Guillaume Tell Overture, addressing how this piece straddles the dichotomies
between the score-based “text” and the performance-based “event.” His desig-
nation of partition makes the piece worthy of serious attention in itself, while
simultaneously epitomizing a virtuoso-centered event.

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 introduction ❧ 13

Chapter 4 examines a distinctive medium of Liszt’s partitur-type arrange-

ments of his own twelve symphonic poems during his Weimar years. The
dynamic between fidelity and creativity becomes revitalized because new com-
positional methods emerge from the transferal process to the new medium of
two pianos. Liszt’s deep understanding of the medium often motivated him
to experiment with a distinctive use of the two pianos in physical, visual, and
acoustic dimensions. From this knowledge of the new medium emerges Liszt’s
judicious treatment of the two pianos in the manner of distribution, layout,
and interaction. Furthermore, the impulse behind certain types of Liszt’s trans-
feral techniques is his reinterpretation of the programmatic references of the
original symphonic poems.
Chapter 5 transports us to the completely different realm of Liszt’s rework-
ings of Hungarian Gypsy–band music in his Hungarian Rhapsodies, focusing
on Liszt’s representations of cimbalom playing. This chapter provides the his-
torical background of the instrument, as well as his own remarks about it in his
Des bohémiens and accounts of his ongoing relationships with cimbalom play-
ers, makers, and pedagogues. Then the chapter delves into the salient features
of the instrument’s timbre and technique, including cimbalom tremolos and
trills, cimbalom single-note hammering, and cimbalom improvisation. Liszt’s
reworkings of these idiomatic techniques demonstrate both sensitive attention
to the integrity of the instrument and inventive pianistic solutions, portraying
the cimbalom player vividly and bringing Gypsy-band performance to life. In
short, a major part of my endeavor is to introduce a new conception of the
relationships between Liszt’s diverse source materials and the techniques he
employed to ‘colorize’ his piano arrangements of them.

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 Chapter One

Approaching the
Reproductive Arts
The celebrated engraver Luigi Calamatta reminisced vividly in his memoirs
about his process of engraving Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the long, drawn-
out saga of his thirty-year commitment to the project, and his anxiety over the
considerable obstacles that lay in the path of a large-scale burin engraving:

I began to engrave the Mona Lisa in 1829 at Loro in the Marche, where I had
to go for a change of air. Subsequently for a long period of years I could work
on it only during the night, as I had to give my attention to the works that
were commissioned from me. I experienced a great difficulty in engraving
it, in view of the largeness and the forcefulness of the coloring. This can be
obtained easily through broad and heavy cuts [but] in the Mona Lisa there
are many details and finesses in the background, very many more in the folds
of the veil that covers her and quite a few in the hair that I had to treat all in
fine and strict work, and so the difficulty became greater. I know of no object
more difficult to be followed in engraving. . . . The difficulty of the engrav-
ing is to be able to obtain, on the basis of an object, that it should be of
the same material, of the same stuff and substance, alike in the clear, in the
middle tints, and in the dark ones, and this is what I have sought with much
effort through the combination of cuts and points. This is the thankless métier
of the engraver, which is not appreciated and not even observed by almost
anybody: to make it really felt through this work alone that this cloth is of
silk, of veil, or of velvet, in all the movements made by the folds, is not an
easy thing, any more than all the infinite varieties that a good engraver must
express through the burin, to the end that everything can say—I am marble,
wool, water, skin, etc.1

Among the various techniques and media of printmaking, burin engraving, in

which the engraver used a sharp tool to incise an image on copper plate, was
the most prestigious, as well as the most labor-intensive and time-consuming,

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 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 15

throughout the period under discussion.2 Because of the extraordinary tech-

nical challenges involved, engravers often confronted psychological barriers
to a perfect record of the original. For this reason, the critic Henri Beraldi
describes Calamatta as “one of the fortunate ones in the world of engrav-
ing, this world in which ordinarily careers are so difficult and unrewarding.”3
Calamatta made his mark in the early nineteenth century through his single-
minded devotion to the art of engraving. He was the last representative of
reproductive engraving when the medium was seeing its demise toward mid-
century: as Beraldi noted, “Calamatta took with him the noble formulas of our
art, the high style. He was the last engraver to be capable of attacking the great-
est masters, Raphael, Ingres.”4 As observed above, however, even the devoted
and eminent Calamatta viewed his profession as an ordeal.
The intrinsic technical difficulties of engraving stem largely from two essen-
tial transformations that occur in the process of engraving: the reduction in
size and the change of medium. Because the latter often involves a transfor-
mation of a colorful painting to a black-and-white print, much critical dis-
course focuses on the lack of color as a significant limitation of engraving. As
presented in the introduction, both music and art critics deplored the loss of
color in the process of musical transcription and visual engraving, respectively.
E. T. A. Hoffmann perceived the medium of piano transcription as insufficient
in sonic depth and color in the same manner that Charles Blanc noted engrav-
ers having only black and white at their disposal. William Morris addressed
this issue in relation to some engravings after Fra Angelico in 1855: “They rep-
resent the picture fairly I think on the whole, only the loss of color makes of
course a most enormous difference, where the color is so utterly lovely as in
the original.”5 Liszt, as a musical engraver, acknowledged the lack of colors on
the piano, at the same time having faith in the instrument’s capability of com-
pensating for it. In an open letter of 1837 to Adolphe Pictet (published in the
Revue et gazette musicale as one of Liszt’s remarkable Letters of a Bachelor of Music),
Liszt observed, “even if it [the piano] does not reproduce the colors, it at least
reproduces the light and shadow.”6
The reproductive art of works by eminent engravers such as Calamatta and
Paul Mercuri received intense scrutiny from art critics and commentators such
as Charles Blanc, Henri Delaborde, Philippe Burty, and George Sand. Sand,
for instance, portrayed by Calamatta in 1836, had already acknowledged his
accomplishments in engraving Mona Lisa by “conserving and immortalizing”
the “fugitive smile” of the painting.7 Her debate on the significant notion of
copy and creator is well illustrated in her famous two categories of engravers:
those who “copy faithfully the qualities and the defects of their model,” and
those who “copy freely by giving rein to their own genius.”8 Blanc, above all,
had a strong faith in the potential of engraving: “Nothing now hinder[s] the
print from being the equivalent of the picture [i.e., painting].”9 For Blanc,

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 16 ❧ chapter one

it was impossible to speak of engraving “without recalling with appreciation

the eminent masters Calamatta and Mercuri, who taught us the laws and the
secrets of their art.”10
The first part of this chapter investigates this critical climate and discourse.
The most prolific era for reproductive engraving was its last period of flower-
ing, broadly between 1825 and 1860.11 The role of the reproductive arts and
the canon of interpretive printmakers had all been established within art edu-
cation in Paris.12 Critical responses to the medium during those times already
acknowledged not only the status of a reproductive engraving as more than a
mere record of the original but also the place of the medium in the permeable
boundary between original and copy.13 My intent is, however, neither to reiter-
ate or concede such claims nor to provide a general assessment of the issue of
reproduction. Rather, I will consider the sophisticated variations in engraving
techniques and aesthetic approach in the world of reproductive engraving as
they relate to concepts such as translation, fidelity, creative modifications, and
justified inaccuracy. A further intriguing issue emerges in this context about
translation, which elicits a critical discourse on the contrasts between contour
and color, form and effect, and literal and interpretive rendering. The intense
critical discourse on translation also concerns what techniques the engraver
used to render the original colors into black and white and how he controlled
light and shadow as well as perspective to create visual effects as equivalents of
the original colors.
Liszt’s fruitful relationship with the painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres,
for whom reproduction in multiple form was a pressing concern, will be my
main focus of attention in a later stage of the chapter. Their connections,
both biographical and artistic, make it imperative for us to look at the two
artists side by side within the wider field of reproductive arts. Both Ingres and
Liszt were preoccupied with achieving the best possible methods of repro-
duction. It is not by accident that the two artists shared certain aesthetics
and technical concerns. The critical commentaries as well as the relationship
between Liszt and Ingres that follow do not claim to exhaust the complex
interrelated issues of reproductive arts in early nineteenth-century France.
I propose the cultural and intellectual context within which to consider the
scope of Liszt’s musical reproduction. This chapter thus provides a necessary
prelude to the detailed analysis of particular modes of Liszt’s reproduction
and reworking of musical materials.

Translation

The metaphor of translation has been used to describe engraving’s relation-

ship to painting throughout the history of the medium in order to address

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 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 17

not only its reproductive purpose but also its creative potentials. The notion of
engraving as translation was well ingrained in the minds of contemporary crit-
ics and commentators such as Blanc, Delaborde, and Sand. This idea of trans-
lation was a major impetus for their systematic discussion and evaluation of
the art of printmakers, particularly reproductive engravings. Delaborde—ini-
tially a painter and a pupil of the engraver Paul Delaroche as well as a devoted
art critic for La revue des deux-mondes in the 1850s and then for La gazette des
beaux-arts—referred to the works of the Classical Italian engraver Marcantonio
Raimondi as “these delightfully deceitful translations.”14
The engraving of Raimondi helped Blanc to forge his own view of transla-
tion, which stems from a historically based concept of reproductive art associ-
ated with his Italian predecessors:

Marcantonio conceives of engraving as it should be conceived when dealing

with the [works of the] great masters. He conceives of it as a concise transla-
tion (of a verbal text), in that it highlights the essential, manages to indi-
cate everything, say everything, and, deprived of the language of color, insists
[instead] upon the supreme beauty of [the image’s] contours.15

It is worth noting that in Blanc’s view, translation “highlights the essential”

aspects, in the same manner that commented on the engraver’s role: “the
engraver should strive above all, by accurate and expressive drawing, to con-
vey the characteristics of the original he wishes to engrave.”16 In 1839, when
Blanc highlighted the extremely distinctive skill that Mercuri had lavished on
his print in comparison with lesser practitioners, he also underscored that the
engraving should not lose the integrity of the original:

M. Mercuri achieved a masterpiece, of which no similar example can be

found among the old masters. . . . As M. Mercuri practices it, engraving has
all the advantages of drawing, without losing any of those qualities that are
specific to it; it is as soft as wash; while remaining much firmer, it is as smooth
as the pencil, with much more brilliance.”17

Intriguingly, Blanc’s reasoning about the concept of translation also under-

lies his notion of fidelity. His focus on the essential aspects of the original and
characteristics of the model in the process of translation, as seen above, reso-
nates tellingly with his idea of fidelity in reproductive arts:

The most crucial quality of the engraver is fidelity, in the sense that he ought
not only to convey the original feature-for-feature, to repeat the contour and
the sense of thickness or thinness, but also, and above all, to preserve the spirit
and the appearance of the work reproduced, to bring out its good qualities
and even reproduce its defects—in short, to reveal its character honestly.18

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 18 ❧ chapter one

From Blanc’s standpoint, fidelity meant being able not merely to “repeat the
contour” of the original but to “preserve the spirit” of the original and “its
character.” Understanding “the spirit” of the model work was, as we will see,
also a pressing concern for Liszt when he arranged the Beethoven sympho-
nies: “My goal has been achieved when I have done the same as the knowl-
edgeable engraver and the conscientious translator, who can encompass the
spirit of a work.”19
Instances of inaccuracy are justified in the process of translation. In his dis-
cussion of the Musée français project, a significant body of French engravings
representing Classical statues in the Louvre in the early nineteenth century,
George D. McKee asserts that the most significant goal—more important
than that of creating accurate likenesses—was that of rendering “the impact
of the originals themselves.”20 Paradoxically, translation as an act of creative
interpretation validates modifications occurring in the reproductive process.
The professional engraver Henri Delaborde had already considered “creative
modifications” of the utmost significance in a print.21 The transferring pro-
cess thus requires the executor to become a sensitive translator, whose role
is less associated with preserving an artistic work than probing beneath its
surface to discover its spirit. As Delaborde elaborated about the medium,
“Engraving has thus a double task to fulfill. It must simultaneously copy and
comment upon painting or it risks losing its privileges and gives up the crite-
ria of art.”22
Consequently, the executor’s translation on some occasions contributes to
an improvement over the original. For instance, Mercuri’s engraving (1857)
after Paul Delaroche’s painting The Execution of Lady Jane Grey (exhibited at
the 1834 Salon), one of the most widely known prints of the century, was so
perceived by the critic Théophile Gautier. In his commentaries on the final
appearance of the print in January 1858, Gautier estimated the success of the
engraving:

The plate of M. Mercuri gives the idea of a much more perfect picture than
the original that it represents. The draftsmanship of the engraving is firmer,
more learned, more masterly. The burin has almost everywhere corrected
the brush; a fine, controlled workmanship, varying according to the objects
that it must render, giving its value to everything, subduing the two vivid and
as if tin-coated tones of the painting, nourishing the shadows with fine hatch-
ings, has removed the faults that so shocked us once and made us insensible
to the real merit of the work.23

Delaroche, as Stephen Bann points out, in fact relied heavily on Mercuri to

correct his own mistakes: for instance, with regard to the outstretched arms
of Lady Jane Grey, Adolphe Goupil provided the general estimate of the art-
ists who had seen Mercuri’s latest proof: that “the two arms [of Mercuri’s

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 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 19

engraving] were too heavy.” “Is it M. Delaroche’s fault?” asked Goupil, “He
fears it is and trusts in the talent of M. Mercuri.”24 We cannot assess in the full-
est measure how Mercuri responded to the exceptional demands placed upon
him. Yet, it was by no means inconceivable that the engraver was perceived as
an artist who goes beyond mere interpretation and who is capable of amend-
ing the painter’s faults, ultimately elevating Delaroche’s “imperfection to the
level of perfection.”25
Given that the model work was not always perfect, its “imperfection” some-
times created a problem for the engraver. John Ruskin aptly wrote the follow-
ing account of the engraver’s frustrating experience of reproduction:

The drawing of Giotto is, of course, exceedingly faulty. His knowledge of the
human figure is deficient, and this, the necessary drawback in all works of the
period, occasions an extreme difficulty in rendering them faithfully in the
engraving. . . . In most cases modern copyists try to modify or hide the weak-
ness of the old art,—by which procedure they very often wholly lose its spirit,
and only half redeem its defects, the results being, of course, at once false as
representations, and intrinsically valueless. And just as it requires great cour-
age and skill in an interpreter to speak out honestly all the rough and rude
words of the first speaker, and to translate deliberately and resolutely, in the
face of attentive men, the expressions of his weakness or impatience, so it
requires at once the utmost courage and skill in a copyist to trace faithfully
the failures of an imperfect master.26

Indeed, the paintings of Paul Delaroche, whom Liszt had certainly known,
became a significant source for the celebrated engravers in the nineteenth cen-
tury, particularly for Louis Henriquel-Dupont.27 Again, Blanc without a doubt
emerged as a crucial writer who made a close comparison between Delaroche’s
painting and its reproductive print through the hands of Henriquel-Dupont.
For instance, Blanc praised Delaroche’s Moïse exposé sur le Nil as “one of the most
charming studies that Paul Delaroche made, inspired a little by Poussin.”28 Yet
more importantly, Blanc made the comment on Henriquel-Dupont’s print that
it allows the composition to “take on a harmony that the painting did not pos-
sess, being a little reddish and feeble.” It is notable that from Blanc’s vantage
point, Henriquel-Dupont’s engraving went beyond the ability and originality of
the original painter.
The nexus of Delaroche–Henriquel-Dupont–Blanc culminated in the criti-
cal responses that accompany the story surrounding Delaroche’s Hémicycle des
Beaux-Arts. Delaroche completed this monumental semicircular wall painting
in 1841 in the prize room of the École des Beaux-Arts of Paris. The paint-
ing, sensational primarily because of its vastness in scale, became the subject
of some of the most distinguished engravings in the nineteenth century.29
Henriquel-Dupont’s three-part engraving is probably the most representative,

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 20 ❧ chapter one

having benefited from the acute commentator Blanc, who validated Henriquel-
Dupont’s ability to reveal the “spirit” of the original in such a way that his work
even exceeded the original:

Instead of being tight, deliberate and tense as Paul Delaroche’s execution

sometimes is, the engraving is easy, brilliant and all the more spiritual in that
the spirit of the master is preserved there in its freshness, being caught and
fixed straight off.30

These critical responses to such outstanding, labor-intensive engravings

support the broader notion of reproductive printmaking as translation. The
concept of translation underscores the properties of creative modifications,
interpretive fidelity, validated inaccuracy, and conveyance of effect in the pro-
cess of reproduction. Consequently, the reproduced work in the hands of pro-
fessional engravers does not necessarily signify a subsequent version of lesser
quality than the original, but an independent version or versions that may
improve on, vary from, rival, and even surpass the original.
The idea of translation is a sine qua non for both visual printmaking and
musical transcription, and the process of translation in the two domains has
some essential commonalities. As observed above in Calamatta’s view of his
profession as ordeal, because a reproductive work underwent crucial trans-
formations such as the change of medium, the executor’s thoroughgoing
reinterpretation was indispensable. The sensitive musical translator Liszt,
as subsequent chapters will reveal, experimented with a wide array of adjust-
ments, alterations, and even radical transformations to reveal both his fidelity
to the original and his individuality as an arranger. As the commentaries on
the engraver’s role highlight, the projection of the effect of the original to the
audience was also one of the primary concerns for Liszt as arranger. We will see
how he devised a dazzling array of methods to evoke the effect of instrumental
colors and timbres. Furthermore, his translation on some occasions involves
his own experience of the original in physical, visual, and aural dimensions,
seeking to convey a total view of the original.

Color and Contour

One of the pressing problems with the reproductive arts stems from the task
of translating colors to black and white. As mentioned in the introduction, the
influential engraver Nicolas Ponce pointed to the limitation of “only black and
white” at the engraver’s disposal, which compelled the engraver to “create the
effect and harmony of his print”:

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 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 21

The engraving . . . is not a copy of the painting. It is a translation of it, which

is different. . . . Composition and line are the only things that the engraver
can translate literally; but the effect, the colour and the harmony of a print
are almost always dependent on his genius. Having only, for the rendering
of all these objects, equivalents that are often insufficient, the engraver is
obliged to make up for it by his intelligence, all the more so as painting some-
times only produces its effect through the kinship and variety of colours, and
the engraver, who has only black and white, is obliged to create the effect and
harmony of his print.31

To produce the original’s “effect through the kinship and variety of colors,”
Ponce underscores the necessity of the engraver’s reinterpretation from “his
intelligence.” The engraver’s “genius” played a crucial role in determining the
“effect, the color and the harmony of a print,” whereas the “line” of a print
makes it possible for the engraver to “translate literally.” Crucially, the engraver
made a compelling contrast between the line and the effect or the color of a
reproductive work, just as the structure and the effect or timbre of a musical
composition are distinguishable from each other when transferring them to a
different medium.
Such a distinction between color and contour appears as significant rheto-
ric in contemporaneous critical commentaries on printmaking. In his remarks
on the engravings after Raphael by Marcantonio Raimondi, Blanc articulated
the distinction between “color” and “contour” in this way: “Deprived of the
language of color, [Marcantonio’s work] insists upon the supreme beauty of
contour.”32 Further developing the idea of the contrast of “color” and “form,”
Blanc wrote: “Just as feelings are plural whereas reason is singular, in the same
way color is a fleeting, vague, elusive element, whereas form, on the contrary, is
precise, limited, palpable, and constant.”33
The dichotomy of color and contour is also perpetuated in the contem-
poraneous writing about English engraving. In his remark on “Sketches
of the Principal Picture-Galleries in England,” William Hazlitt reflected
that although there exist “good” prints, which are far better than pictures,
they are mostly “outlines with little of what the painter has done.”34 The
transferring process involved in engraving, as Hazlitt continues to ponder,
makes one muse, “in wondering what colour a piece of drapery is, green
or black,—in wishing, in vain, to know the exact tone of the sky in a par-
ticular corner of the picture!” In his discussion of “Comparative Merits of
Line Engraving and Mezzotinto,” John Burnet identifies “outline,” “light
and shade,” and “color” as properties of a picture, isolating the last term
from the others and pointing to the importance of conveying something
equivalent to the property in the medium.

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 22 ❧ chapter one

We must always bear in mind that an engraving is not a copy of a picture,—it

is a translation; and as a picture is possessed of three properties,—outline,
light and shade, and colour,—no print can be a proper transfer unless some-
thing is given as an equivalent for the last; hence the variety so pleasing and
effective in line engraving.35

The term mezzotint denotes an essential method of engraving particularly

associated with English engravers in the early nineteenth century.36 The
method uses subtle degrees of light and shade, rather than lines, in order
to create the image. Although Burnet advocated the potential of engraving
above, he implies the superiority of mezzotint over engraving with respect to
the former’s ability to elicit the “harmonious mingling of light and shade,”
which “[the engraving] cannot produce” but is “given by mezzotint.”37
Whereas Burnet establishes a hierarchy between engraving and mezzotinto
when necessary, Blanc puts his faith in the capacity of engraving, in which the
technique of light and shadow creates the illusionistic depth and perspectives
equivalent of the original colors. In his famous Grammaire des arts du dessin,
Blanc places an extensive chapter on “Engraving” as an appendix to the third
volume devoted to painting.38 Throughout this extensive chapter, Blanc often
addressed the issue of how to transfer “local tints” of a painting into “chiar-
oscuro,” which denotes the technique that controls the light and shadow to
elicit the visual depth.

[The engraver] translates truly into chiaroscuro the coloring of the picture
[i.e., painting] and, by abstracting the tints, preserves only their intensity.39

Raphael had inaugurated style in engraving, Rubens introduced color to it.

He taught the two Bolswerts, Wostermann, and Pontius, his engravers, not to
neglect the value of local tints, which are, after all, only notes in the music of
chiaroscuro.40

The pupils of Rubens were to show in what manner the effect of a painting
could be reproduced; that is, its coloration by means of light.41

From Blanc’s standpoint, the engraver is capable of rendering “perspectives

with a subtle degree of strokes.”42 The methods of the engraver upon copper
also rely on the combination of the two basic elements, “the light represented
by the white of the paper, and the shadow obtained by hatching and points.”43
The issue of the control of light and shadow was one of the significant
properties Blanc took into consideration in his assessment of Calamatta. In
1876 Blanc provided his perceptive commentaries on Calamatta’s engraving
of Ingres’s Le vœu de Louis XIII, which had exhausted Ingres but at the same
time had brought him critical acclaim. Having undertaken the work around

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 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 23

1825 and completed it in 1837, Calamatta proved his status as the foremost
engraver of Ingres, who congratulated him in his letter of 1837 with the phrase:
“I am happy and glad to be so gloriously translated.”44 In Blanc’s assessment,
Calamatta accomplished the “straightforwardness of the effect” of the original
painting through the proper combination of the treatment of “shining light”
and the “firmest shadows” with his uniquely simple and sustained cuts.

Ingres, so they said, if he had known how to hold the burin, would do no bet-
ter; he could not be more like himself.
We were able to judge for ourselves, two years ago, when the Vœu de Louis
XIII was exhibited with all of Ingres’s works at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
The straightforwardness of the effect, in the original painting, allowed the
engraver to depart from a very deep tone to lead the eye up to the shining
light produced by the pure white. It is however remarkable that the firmest
shadows, and the most resolved ones, are obtained with only two cuts or even
with one cut.45

It is notable how acutely and uniquely Blanc described specific techniques

used for engravers to render perspectives and colors in chiaroscuro. Blanc’s
use of technical vocabulary, first and foremost, reflects his earlier training as
an engraver in the studio of Calamatta in the early 1830s, in which a striking
collaboration between printmakers and painters evolved, and where contem-
porary composers such as Chopin and Liszt visited periodically.
Calamatta deployed the techniques of “light cuts” and “inter-cuts.” These
techniques, as Stephen Bann points out, were favorites of Calamatta for por-
traying the unique tone of softness of the skin in his subsequent work of the
portrait of George Sand (1836), possibly after Eugène Delacroix (1834).46 In
Blanc’s view, Calamatta’s exploration of such delicate techniques led him to
represent the painter’s ideas better than the original painting, ultimately secur-
ing his engraving at the level of a “more savory form of painting than that of
Ingres.” In fact, the depth of cutting appears crucial for rendering the depth
and character of colors in engraving. Blanc describes how “colors being consid-
ered by [the engraver] as more or less luminous spots, or more or less somber,
he engraves yellow drapery, for instance, with lighter cuttings and wider spaces
than blue drapery, so that the latter forms a darker mass than the former in the
engraving.”47
Several of the critics quoted above became custodians of a print culture
that remains little noticed today. Their acute commentaries marked a water-
shed in the development of French printmaking. The critics acknowledged
from different angles the prestige of burin engraving among others, despite
its time-consuming, labor-intensive, and accident-prone process. Their com-
prehensive writing was created in the uniquely distinctive circumstances of a
favorable comparison between an engraving and the original painting. The

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 24 ❧ chapter one

critical discourse drew a line between a mere record of copy and a genuine
“translation” of the model work. The critics viewed engraving as an optimal
medium for leaving ample room for the executor’s personal interpretation.
Their descriptions reveal how the necessity and urgency of translation pushed
engravers forward to explore novel combinations of engraving techniques.
The influential engravers of Liszt’s time were constantly searching for new
techniques to control light and shade, thus creating striking visual effects as
equivalents to the original colors. Their search set the scene for the Liszt, the
indefatigable musical arranger, to push the limits of what had could be done
to render the sonic properties of instrumental colors on the black-and-white
keyboard.

Ingres and Liszt in Reproduction

Liszt acknowledged his relationship with Ingres by dedicating the first version
of his transcriptions of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies to him in 1840.
A deeper investigation of their relationship, both circumstantial and artistic,
enables us to reassess reproduction in the domains of both visual engraving
and musical transcription. Before looking at their shared aesthetic and techni-
cal approaches, it is worth briefly accounting for the fluid interactions among
the contemporary printmakers, painters, art critics, literary figures, and com-
posers surrounding the two artists.
Ingres’s friendship with and artistic influence on Liszt in the late 1830s are
both documented, although meager records exist. Ingres, the leading nine-
teenth-century exponent of the Classical tradition in French painting, was a
director of the French Academy of Art at the Villa Medici in Rome from 1834
to 1841. He produced the well-known drawing of Liszt in Rome during that
period, in May 1839.48 At that time, Liszt had already resolved to become a
“knowledgeable engraver” and committed himself fully to an array of meticu-
lous arrangements, known as partitions de piano. Liszt’s letter of 1839, written
during his sojourn in Rome, describes his encounter with and admiration for
Ingres and his works, worthy of quoting at length:

One of the luckiest encounters of my life also helped in no small way to

strengthen both my intimate feelings about these matters and my fervent
desire to increase my understanding and knowledge of art. A man whose
genius, abetted by exquisite taste and virile energy, has produced the finest
examples of contemporary painting, Ingres extended his friendship to me so
warmly in Rome that I still recall it with pride. He was everything that his rep-
utation had led me to expect, and even more. . . . This great artist, for whom
antiquity holds no secrets and whom Apelles [of Kos] could have called his

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 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 25

brother, is an excellent musician as well as an incomparable painter. Mozart,

Haydn, and Beethoven speak to him in the same language as do Phidias and
Michelangelo. . . . One unforgettable day we visited the halls of the Vatican
together. We walked through the long galleries filled with innumerable
art works from Etruria, Greece, ancient Rome, and Christian Italy, passing
respectfully before those yellowing marble figures and partially effaced paint-
ings. Ingres spoke as he walked, and we listened like rapt disciples. His glow-
ing words gave new life to all those masterpieces; his eloquence transported
us back to bygone centuries; line and color came alive before our eyes; forms
that had been damaged by the passage of time or a profaner’s hand were
born again in all their pristine purity and displayed all their young beauty
for us. A mystery of poetry stood before us fully revealed: it was the genius of
modern times evoking the genius of antiquity.49

The letter attests to Liszt’s growing enthusiasm for the fine arts, particularly
his knowledge of Ingres’s reproductive arts. According to Richard Bolster’s
account, after that tour of the Vatican Museums, Liszt and his companion
Marie d’Agoult, a salonnière and art critic, spent the evening with Ingres at his
home, and continued their lively discussion about the evolution of art. When
Liszt noticed the music of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata in A minor sitting on the
piano, he insisted that Ingres play it, to his accompaniment.50 Ingres’s per-
formance was received enthusiastically by Liszt, who wrote to Berlioz in 1839:
“Oh, if you only could have heard him! The religious fidelity with which he
played Beethoven’s music!”51 Liszt observed, “This great artist” is “an excellent
musician.” That Ingres was well known for his playing as is shown by the phrase
“le violon d’Ingres.”52 Ingres became a favorite musical companion of Liszt; as
the pianist wrote to the Belgian violinist Lambert Massart in 1839: “I often see
Ingres, who is very kind to me. We make a lot of music together. . . . We plan to
go through everything by Mozart and Beethoven.”53
Ingres and Liszt remained in the same orbit of artistic circles, such as those
of Marie d’Agoult and Calamatta, which embraced artistic collaborations
among printmakers, painters, art critics, literary figures, and composers, and
shared concerns about the aesthetic adequacy and creativity of the reproduc-
tive arts. Marie d’Agoult played multifaceted roles in Ingres’s circle in Rome
and Paris in the late 1830s and early 1840s. As a Parisian hostess, she gath-
ered a small group of influential celebrities in her own house; on one occasion
she invited Ingres, Victor Hugo, Balzac, and others, describing her excitement
about that evening to Liszt.54 As a critic and writer, Marie published an arti-
cle on one of Ingres’s paintings in La presse on January 7 (1842).55 She and
Liszt corresponded in the 1830s, and several of his letters to her indicate his
acquaintanceship with Calamatta: in one of his responses to her, Liszt called
Calamatta “our artist friend.”56 Calamatta, as the foremost engraver of Ingres,

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 26 ❧ chapter one

made his reputation chiefly with his works based on some of Ingres’s most
noteworthy paintings.57 Again, the well-informed critic Blanc played a crucial
role in vindicating Calamatta’s individual style of engraving of Ingres’s works,
as we have already seen in his commentaries on Calamatta’s work after Ingres’s
Le vœu de Louis XIII above.
Ingres’s relationship with Calamatta through the virtuoso Paganini is also
worth mentioning, to show another instance of the interrelationships among
painters, printmakers, and musicians. Ingres first met the legendary virtuoso
in Rome, presumably in April 1819, the date inscribed in his original signed
drawing of the virtuoso in the Louvre.58 As Bann suggests, it is highly likely that
Ingres entrusted Calamatta to engrave the celebrity in the early 1830s, when
the virtuoso dazzled audience in Paris.59 In addition, Calamatta’s engraving
of Paganini offers a useful insight into “crayon-manner” engraving, a relatively
short-term process in comparison with traditional engraving.60 One might con-
sider that the original is a drawing, not a painting with colors, and thus it does
not pertain to this study, which focuses on the transferal from colors to black
and white. Nevertheless, Calamatta’s Paganini illustrates well how the engraver
sought to represent the distinctive characteristics of the graded tones and tex-
tures of the original. In particular, the engraver effectively combined the basic
techniques of the burin with a close grouping of dots typical of crayon-manner
engraving: the former is used for the shaded areas of Paganini’s face, the latter
for the softer lines.61
The reproductive arts for both Ingres and Liszt were intended exclusively
for their personal acquaintances. Ingres tended to use his prints primarily
for his own purposes by distributing them to his friends and associates rather
than for the public or commercial market.62 Liszt, likewise, distanced his set
of arrangements of Beethoven’s symphonies from the commercially oriented,
“superficial” ones of the time, creating them for a small elite audience and
professional musicians, as we will see from the contemporaneous reviews of
Heinrich Adami and G. W. Fink in chapter 3. Liszt’s correspondence with
Louis Köhler during the mid-1850s (chapter 4), makes it clear that he consid-
ered the arrangements for two pianos primarily as a vehicle for communica-
tion with his close friends and acquaintances.
Investigation of Ingres’s reproductions of statues may appear a detour from
the main thread of this study, because white sculptural marble as the model
work is virtually irrelevant to the matter of colors. Yet his use of the medium
attests to the distinctive imperative of his reproductive arts, which remain in
the realm of the executor’s simulated experience with the original. Specifically,
Ingres seized upon on shadow as an effective representational tool to translate
a sculpture to a print. His use of shadow is comparable to Liszt’s use of contrast
of the keyboard register in their shared concept of representation and their
emphasis on the artist’s corporeal experience of the original.

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 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 27

Pursuit of “Corporeal Feeling”

Ingres established a unique reputation for his drawings after ancient sculp-
tors. This genre is the most represented in the monumental publications of
the Musée français and its succeeding series, the Musée royal, which appeared
in Paris between 1803 and 1824.63 These publications are devoted to the col-
lection of painting and Classical sculptures assembled at the Louvre between
1792 and 1814.64 The Musée français is a useful source for this study, primarily
because the publication constitutes, as George D. McKee describes, an “unri-
valled achievement [in] the art of reproductive engraving.”65 The last of the
four volumes of Musée français particularly attracts our attention because it is
devoted to engraving, containing 343 engravings altogether, including twelve
engravings based on designs by Ingres.66 Ingres himself ensured his partici-
pation in the Musée français project through his careful inscription of these
“twelve antique figures” in his ninth notebook (cahier 9).67 A representative
figures is Auguste Boucher-Desnoyers’s engraving of Ingres’s Cupid (ca. 1803),
shown in figure 1.1.
In the Musée français project, Ingres’s collaboration with eight different
engravers, in all but one of his designs, reveals that the painter made careful
efforts to use striking shadows.68 Such sophisticated shadows are completely
absent in the large majority of the engravings not by Ingres in the portion of
the Musée français devoted to antique sculpture.69 The delicate gradation of
the shadows and its remarkable effect attest to Ingres’s exclusive showcase for
his refined process and control of mezzotint, which prizes delicacy of light and
shade over lines to create images.70 As shown in figure 1 above, the shadow
zones of the Cupid are commonly related to the form of the sculpture, simul-
taneously acting as an independent entity to convey the “sinuous deconstruc-
tion” or even “deformation” of the sculptural figure.71 In a word, Ingres had
the shadows take on a life of their own.
Ingres’s drawings after ancient sculptures epitomize his lifelong practice
of navigating the boundary between the original and its reproduction.72 On
the surface, Ingres was engaging with the well-established convention for art-
ists educated in the French academic system, the copying of antique statues
through print reproductions.73 More importantly, in the broader context,
Ingres encountered both the old and new versions of the imperatives of the
medium around 1800. On the one hand, his print after sculpture elicits, as
Sarah Betzer describes, a “direct experience of viewing—that is, of presence.”
On the other hand, a new emphasis of sculptural meaning was imposed on the
viewer’s physical encounter.74 This new sculptural imperative emerged partly
from the allure of the antique, particularly masterworks of ancient sculpture,
which animated the enthusiasm of both art historians and artists in the second
half of the eighteenth century. In his commentaries on the Apollo Belvedere

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 Figure 1.1. Boucher-Desnoyers, after Ingres, Cupid, ca. 1803, Robillard-Péronville
and Laurent, Musée français 4, pl. 34, engraving.

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 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 29

from The History of the Art of Antiquity (1755), Johann Joachim Winckelmann
underscored the sculpture’s transformative effects on the spectator, assert-
ing that reproducing antique sculptures requires more than the dry repeti-
tion of ideal form.75 In his Sculpture: Some Observations on Form and Shape from
Pygmalion’s Creative Dream (1778), Johann Gottfried Herder, an admirer of
Winckelmann, further articulated the idea of the viewer’s encounter and expe-
rience of the sculptural body: unlike two-dimensional media such as painting,
sculpture demanded “corporeal feeling” to draw the spectator into an utterly
different three-dimensional interaction.76
It is a challenge for an engraver to represent the three-dimensional nature
of a white marble figure in a black-and-white print. This task requires a subtle
treatment of light and shade, shades of gray, and shadow over the figure’s sur-
face. The engraver Charles-Clément Bervic, a representative of the first gen-
eration of engravers accepted into the Engraving Department at the Institut
de France (established in 1803), was recognized for his new experiments in
the vibrant engraving of ancient sculpture.77 For instance, Bervic’s rendering
of the Laocoön, published in Robillard-Péronville’s Musée Napoléon in 1812 and
exhibited at the Louvre, represents his departure from the conventional pre-
cise dessin, which emphasizes the outline of the sculpture and thus the surface
and linear quality of the print.78 Instead, the engraver conveys the expressivity
of the sculptural body through his sophisticated control of light and shadow.
Although the sharp light placed on Laocoön’s face and body is convincing in
capturing the struggle and pain, the shadow that Bervic carefully displayed
on the face of the younger son, as described by archeologist Ennio Quirino
Visconti, Bervic’s colleague at the Institut, is effectively used to express his eyes
“imploring his father’s help.”79
The shadows with which Ingres endowed his drawings after sculptures are
also a fascinating testimony to an animated rendering of a sculpture. Ingres
deployed the shadows to convey both the presence of the sculpture and his
physical experience of it in the round.80 Drawing on Sarah Betzer’s study, a
comparison of figures 1.2 and 1.3 provides such an account.81 Figure 1.2 illus-
trates how Ingres offered a thoroughly faithful rendering of the sculpture
through the drawing for the Musée français engraving of the figures. In con-
trast, figure 1.3, one of the studies after Cupid and Psyche, in the Musée Ingres,
provides a striking example of how Ingres moved the figures as if they were
viewed in a circular manner. Ingres created the shadow zones and perspectives
anew through his navigation of the sculptures. He was less interested in the
expected, familiar frontal view of the sculpture than his uniquely rotational
view of it in space.82 The result is an extraordinary perspective that utterly
transforms the original line.

Kim.indd 29 2/5/2019 4:05:51 PM

 Figure 1.2: Boucher-Desnoyers, after Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Cupid
and Psyche, ca. 1803. Robillard-Péronville and Laurent, Musée français 4, pl. 35,
engraving.

Kim.indd 30 2/5/2019 4:05:51 PM

 Figure 1.3. Ingres, study after Cupid and Psyche, graphite on paper. Musée Ingres,
Montauban.

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 32 ❧ chapter one

When undertaking his project of arranging, Liszt also faced the daunting
task of rendering familiar pieces in a way that would conjure their “presence”
and at the same time indelibly suggest his own experience of these objects.
As the musical examples of the subsequent chapters will reveal, Liszt seized
on compelling pianistic resources, particularly the contrast of register. These
resources serve as a powerful representational tool indicative of the “presence”
of the orchestral music, simultaneously registering his physical, visual, and
acoustic experience of it on score and stage.
To take but one example, Liszt’s reworking of the first movement of
Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony illustrates how ingeniously he uses the regis-
ters of the keyboard. The most vital idea of Beethoven’s movement is rhythm:
the persistent dotted rhythm associated with the gigue throughout.83 In his
piano rendition of the exposition of the Seventh (including mm. 84–87),
Liszt’s focus on the rhythmic energy and vitality led him to eliminate other
parts drastically—the emphatic chords with sforzando marks in the upper winds
and horns. The development, as shown in examples 1.1a and 1.1b, consists
almost exclusively of the persistent rhythm. The characteristic dotted rhythm
has a climactic moment shown in example 1.1a.
Liszt does not transfer the passage literally, as suggested in the ossia, but
reworks it in an extraordinary way through his registral alterations, as shown in
his marking 8va across measures 257–58 and 260–62. In other words, he avoids
the unidiomatic writing of merely hammering full chords, as in the ossia pas-
sage of measures 256–57. Instead, for the entire passage, he exploits the key-
board register, expanding and contracting it back and forth in order to keep
the interest in the constant rhythm and thus sustain the massive effect of the
tutti. Liszt’s registral exploitation also creates a powerfully visual sensation in
the experience of the listener. The passage in measures 260–62, in particular, is
dazzling through its exploration of three octaves in rapid succession.
Moreover, Liszt’s reworking in measures 256–57 creates a new, rising melody
of E–A–E–A, not in Beethoven’s score. This expanded range makes the passage
more exciting. His reworking (unlike the ossia) also occurs in a melodic con-
tent, emphasizing the strings over the winds on the first beat of each measure.
This reworking also reflects his attempts to simultaneously capture the two dif-
ferent groups of instruments and their sonorities by juxtaposing them in his
pianistic rendering. His rendering thus creates a remarkable acoustic interplay
between the two groups of performing forces, eventually eliciting a unique
acoustic sensation in the experience of both performer and listener.
As illustrated in example 1.1b, Liszt offers his novel approach to the per-
formance manner of the original theme, reinvigorating the model in his own
version. Moreover, when we consider Liszt’s commitment to adhering closely
to the model of Beethoven, as will be seen in his preface to the set of his
Beethoven arrangements in the next chapter, the registral exploitation would

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Kim.indd 33
Example 1.1a. Beethoven, no. 7, mvt. 1, m. 255–62.

Vivace
255 nœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ a2
œ œ œ œ œ œ ≈ nœ œ œ nœ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ
Flute I
### 6 ≈ nœ nœ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ
II
& 8
68

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ a2
Oboe I
# # 6 nœ œ nœ œ ≈ œ œ
II
& # 8 nœ ≈ œ nœ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ nœ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ 68

œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
Cl. I
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bœ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ 6
(A) II
&
6 bb œœ
8 ≈ œ bœ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ bœ œ ≈ œ œ 8
nœ a2
œ nœ œ ≈ œ œ
Bsn. I
œ œ ≈ nœ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ
II
? # # # 68 ≈ nœ nœ ‰ nœ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ nœ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ 68

Hn. I
6 ˙. œ œ œ œ ˙. ˙. 6
(A) II
& 8 . ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ 8
˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙. ˙.

Tpt. I
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ˙. ˙.
(D) II
&
68 ˙ ..
˙ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ ˙. ˙.
68

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ÿ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Timpani
? 6 6
8
8 ˙. œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ ˙. ˙.

Violin I
## 6 œ ‰ Œ ‰ œ ≈ œ #œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ #œ œ ≈ œ œ œ. nœ nœ œ. nœ ‰ Œ ‰
& # 8
68

Violin II
## 6 6
‰ œ œ œ œ œ
‰
œ ‰ 8
& # 8 œ. œ ≈ œ #œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ #œ ≈ œ œ ≈ nœ nœ nœ. œ

Viola
#
B # # 68 n œ . nœ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ nœ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ nœ ‰ Œ ‰ 68
œ œ œ. nœ nœ œ ≈ œ nœ œ.

Cello
D.B.
? # # # 68 œ . œ. nœ œ nœ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ nœ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ n˙. nœ. œ. œ œ
68

(continued)

2/5/2019 4:05:52 PM
Kim.indd 34
Example 1.1a.—(concluded)
260 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ
≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ œ
Fl.
## ‰
& # 68

Ob.
## œ ≈ œ #œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ nœ ‰
& # 68
bœ
A Cl.
≈ œ nœ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ œ œ
& 68 œ ≈ œ œ bœ ‰

œ œ nœ
Bsn. ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ‰
? ### 6 œ
8 œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ

Hn. & ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ‰ Œ ‰
68 œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
a2
D Tpt. ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ‰ Œ ‰
& 68 œ

Timp.
? 68 œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ‰ Œ ‰

Vln. I
## œ ≈ œ #œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ‰ ‰. ‰.
& # 68

Vln. II
## ‰ ‰. ‰.
& # 68 œ ≈ œ #œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ œ œ

Vla. B # # # 68 œ ≈ œ #œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ≈ œ #œ œ ≈ œ œ œ ‰ ‰. ‰.

Vc. ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ‰ ‰. ‰.
? ### 6 œ
8 œ #œ œ œ œ œ œ #œ œ œ œ œ

2/5/2019 4:06:02 PM
 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 35

Example 1.1b. Beethoven, no. 7, mvt. 1, mm. 255–62, Liszt arrangement.

9LYDFH
 “ “
  K  •  K   •    •     •    •     •   ‡
  K  K         
“ “ “ DVVDLORFR

  K  •  KK   •    •     •    •     •    K     
 K    • K  • 
      (
K • G ± K   •  
   K  K   K  K  •    •   K  •    •   K ÇÇ
•K
 K      K       K ÇÇ
q q
“
   
   KK     • 
     G   K
 •   •     •     •    •     •   K ( • ±
         
¹ G
    K  • K   G ±   K • ±
•    •     •    •     •   
             
q (

have provided a compelling reworking method for Liszt to preserve the “for-
mal features” of the original yet at the same time suggest a different way of
“producing sound” on his keyboard through his unique performance style.84
The familiarity and freshness are present as two sides of the same coin in Liszt’s
rendering.
In conclusion, examples 1.1a and 1.1b above illustrate how Liszt effectively
heightens the vitality of Beethoven’s movement, radically strips off orchestral
textures to capture the essence of the original, and convincingly maximizes the
massive orchestral effect at the climax by his individual pianistic resources, par-
ticularly the exploitation of registers. Liszt gives new life to the original theme
through his own performance style while preserving his “faithful” approach to
the original structure. His reworkings contribute to claiming the instrument’s
position as equivalent to the orchestra and simultaneously creating his own
visual and acoustic sensations for his own purposes.
Both Ingres and Liszt were capable of registering their own physical and
visual experience of familiar objects in the print and score, respectively. Just as
Ingres convincingly documented his physical navigation of the sculpture in a
visual print, Liszt notated his physical encounter with the existing music in a

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 36 ❧ chapter one

musical arrangement. Ingres’s shadows and perspectives become independent

completely from the original in the same way that Liszt’s projected contrasts
take on a life of their own. Both artists were capable of giving their physical
experience to their visual and visual/aural works. Although their reproductive
works lack a sense of the spatial setting in which they would have been appreci-
ated, the reproductive processes of Ingres and Liszt bespeak their inclinations
to realize a holistic experience of the model.

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 Chapter Two

“Partitions de Piano”
Concept

Liszt used the term partition initially for his arrangement of Berlioz’s Symphonie
fantastique (1834) in a letter to Adolphe Pictet in 1838:

If I am not mistaken, I am the one who first proposed a new method of tran-
scription in my piano score of the Symphonie fantastique. I applied myself as
scrupulously as if I were translating a sacred text to transferring, not only the
symphony’s musical framework, but also its detailed effects and the multiplic-
ity of its instrumental and rhythmic combinations to the piano. The difficulty
did not faze me, as my feeling for art and my love of it gave me double cour-
age. . . . I called my work a partition de piano [piano score] in order to make
clear my intention of following the orchestra step by step and of giving it no
special treatment beyond the mass and variety of its sound.1

Through his designation of partition, Liszt explicitly claims that he is usher-

ing in “a new method” for a piano arrangement by underscoring his fidelity
to the original. By “following the orchestra step by step,” he determines to
remain unremitting in his goal of “scrupulously” rendering the original as if
treating it as a “sacred text.” In addition to his adherence to the structure of
the symphony (“the symphony’s musical framework”), Liszt aims at capturing
the nuanced, variegated effects of the orchestral sounds (the “detailed effects”
and “the mass and variety of [the orchestra]’s sound”) as well as the intricacy
of the orchestral textures (the “multiplicity of its instrumental and rhythmic
combinations”).
In the same letter to Pictet, Liszt also continues to discuss the compositional
procedure and aesthetic underlying his partition of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantas-
tique, from which another group of his partitions of Beethoven’s symphonies is
extrapolated, relating the two groups of arrangements to each other:

The procedure I followed for Berlioz’s symphony I am currently applying

to those by Beethoven. The serious study of his works, a profound feeling
for their virtually infinite beauty and for the piano’s resources, which have

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 38 ❧ chapter two

become familiar to me through constant practice, have perhaps made me

less unfit than anyone for this laborious task.2

Liszt’s claim about the term partition and its meaning are further refined
and bolstered in his preface to his arrangements of Beethoven’s Fifth and
Sixth Symphonies (1840). The preface is a public announcement of the com-
poser’s intentions underlying his set of arrangements of Beethoven’s sympho-
nies, which appeared over a period of twenty-five years: the Fifth, Sixth, and
Seventh symphonies (published in 1837–38), the “Marcia Funebre” movement
from the Third (1841), and the remaining symphonies (1865).3 The most rel-
evant portions of the preface for our purposes are as follows:

1. The name of Beethoven is sacred in the arts. Today his symphonies

are universally recognized as masterpieces. who has a serious desire to
expand his knowledge or even to create something new himself, can
never analyze and study these symphonies enough.
2. By means of the vast development of its harmonic intensity, the
pianoforte can now, more and more, claim for its own use any and all
compositions written for the orchestra. In the scope of its seven octaves,
[the pianoforte] is able, with few exceptions, to reproduce all features,
all combinations, all figures of the most thorough and most profound
composition, all of which leaves the orchestra with no other advantages
than the differences of timbres and massive effects—advantages that
certainly are enormous.
3. I hold my work as well spent if I have succeeded in transferring to the
piano not only the large outlines of Beethoven’s composition but also all
of its subleties and smaller features, which so meaningfully contribute
to the perfection of the whole. My goal has been achieved when I have
done the same as the knowledgeable engraver and the conscientious
translator, who can grasp the spirit of a work and thus contribute to the
recognition of the great masters and to developing a sense for beauty.4

The existing literature has drawn attention to the preface largely in three
aspects, which have some parallels with those for the notion of partition: the
validity and superiority of Liszt’s arrangements, his experiments with the piano
in accordance with technical improvements in the instrument, and most of
all, his unwavering fidelity to Beethoven.5 First, in paragraph 1, Liszt defends
his craftsmanship in piano arrangements by establishing a new method of
rendering Beethoven’s symphonies, as opposed to the plethora of inept ones
available at the time.6 This view has frequently led most studies of the Liszt–
Beethoven symphonies to focus on comparisons between Liszt’s versions and
those of others.7

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 “PAR TITIONS DE PIANO” ❧ 39

Second, in paragraph 2, Liszt expresses his faith in the capacity of the piano
because of developments in the instrument.8 Liszt argues that his constant
experiments with the instrument have convinced him that the piano is capa-
ble of recreating the orchestra with “plentiful effects.” By taking into account
the broader context of Liszt’s expansion of pianistic resources in the 1830s, a
number of writings have been devoted to many instances of correspondence
between Liszt’s pianistic figurations used in his early orchestral arrangements
and in his other solo piano compositions of the time; these examples have pri-
marily focused on the highly virtuosic figurations in relation to his brilliant
performance career.9
Finally, in paragraph 3, Liszt likens his role to that of a “knowledgeable
engraver” and “conscientious translator,” immediately evoking his interac-
tions with the Parisian engravers discussed in the introduction. His resolve
to become a faithful engraver or translator of Beethoven’s music helps
establish him as the “Beethoven heir apparent.”10 By explicitly stating his
allegiance to Beethoven, Liszt strives to preserve the essence of the original
in the utmost detail.
Liszt’s remarks on the partition have led a number of scholars to generalize
the characteristics of the partitions as a group by seeing them as simply faithful
renderings down to the smallest detail of the original. This prevailing tendency
has stressed Liszt’s faithfulness as a cornerstone of his craft of arrangement, not
only in the partitions of the symphonies by Berlioz and Beethoven but also in
the whole group of partitions, with little consideration of the elements that dis-
tinguish one from the other. The editors of the Neue Liszt Ausgabe, for instance,
have noted the arrangements in the category of partition as piano scores follow-
ing the original “faithfully,” “exactly, almost note for note,” and “in the greatest
detail.”11 Maurice Hinson also defines the partition as “literally an exact replica
of the original” with only a change of instrumentation.12
The current view about Liszt’s partitions as a whole has also affected the
categorization of the partitions in the spectrum of Liszt’s entire oeuvre of his
arrangements. It conveniently treats the partitions as a whole in contrast with
free arrangements such as paraphrases, fantaisies, réminiscences, and illustrations—
although there have also been attempts to distinguish those terms. The simple
dichotomy between partitions and paraphrases/fantaisies ultimately generates a
one-dimensional perspective of Liszt’s arrangements—they fall into the catego-
ries of either a “faithful transcription” or a “free arrangement.”
It is necessary to understand Liszt’s concept of partition as belonging to his
transferal process both on the surface and on a deeper level. It is also impor-
tant to consider the concept by not only taking the partitions as a whole but also
investigating individual groups within the partitions. According to his thematic
catalog of 1877, Liszt’s arrangements of orchestral music occupy major posi-
tions among his piano partitions, as listed in table 2.1.13

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 40 ❧ chapter two

Table 2.1. Liszt’s Piano Partitions of Symphonies and Overtures

Source composer Composition Date

Ludwig van Beethoven Symphonies 5–7 1837–38
“Marcia Funebre” from no. 3 1841
Symphonies 1–4 (except “Marcia 1865
Funebre”), 8, 9
Hector Berlioz Le roi Lear Overture 1831
Les francs-juges Overture 1833
Symphonie fantastique (1st edition) 1834
Gioachino Rossini Guillaume Tell Overture 1838
Carl Maria von Weber Oberon Overture early 1840s
Der Freischütz Overture early 1840s
Jubel Overture 1846

Although Liszt did not employ the term partition in a systematic fashion in
his catalogue, the group of partitions in table 2.1 generally shares two elements.
First, the original compositions are large-scale orchestral music, symphonies or
overtures, which Liszt transferred to his piano score—in this case, exclusively a
score for solo piano, not for two pianos or four hands.14 The original composi-
tions in the group of partitions in Liszt’s catalogue of 1877 also include chamber
music such as Beethoven and Hummel’s septets, not included in table 2.1, yet
the change of medium in the transferal is still a significant point. In addition,
the arrangements of orchestral music far outnumber those of chamber music
in the originals of his piano partitions. Second, in his remarks about the term
partition as well as his preface to his Beethoven project, Liszt explicitly distin-
guished his partitions from other arrangements in asserting that his follow the
originals with exceptional detail and depth. The two elements that help define
the concept of partition of table 2.1 are thus the change of medium from large-
scale orchestral music to solo-piano score and the particular type of transferal
and reworking that stresses the arranger’s scrupulous attention to the original.
Liszt’s concept of partition is challenging and problematic. It requires the
arranger’s skill to adjust the original medium to the new one, while demand-
ing that the arranger make the score sound just like the original. It challenges
pianist-composer-arrangers to approximate multiple instruments with their ten
fingers, while preserving their adherence to the utmost detail of the original.
As discussed earlier, the prevailing view of the partition has emphasized that
Liszt’s partitions strictly follow the originals in a measure-for-measure manner
without casting any doubt on whether they in fact do. In other words, the view

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 “PAR TITIONS DE PIANO” ❧ 41

suggests that Liszt imposed no additions or deletions on the structure, and

generally remained faithful to the original melody and harmonic progression.
Indeed, in listening to such a meticulous arrangement of the orchestral score,
one may certainly have the impression of a scrupulously literal rendering. One
may be even persuaded that the arrangement is a simple reproduction of the
original.
Paradoxically, from the process of making the piano score sound like the
model orchestral score emerges not simply the arranger’s static act of replicat-
ing the original with “photographic” precision; what makes it successful is the
arranger’s dynamic involvement in reworking the original to offer convincing
solutions appropriate for the new medium. A detailed investigation of Liszt’s
arrangements, as we will observe, demonstrates that his transferring process
actually involves various kinds of modifications, reworkings, and even transfor-
mations in order to interweave the orchestral textures into the piano score and
approximate the orchestral effects and sonorities in pianistic terms.
The issue of faithfulness and creativity in the field of arrangement has
received attention from a number of scholars and musicians in different direc-
tions. In his writings and compositions Ferruccio Busoni uses the term tran-
scription (Transkription) not only in a conventional sense of transferal from one
medium to another, but also to denote the transferal of an abstract musical
concept (“Einfall”) into notation during composition, or from notation into
sound during performance.15 For the conventional type of “transcription,”
Busoni also uses another term, Übertragung, which is interchangeable with the
term Transkription in his oeuvre.16 The term Übertragung means “translation” in
a literary sense from one language to another; in Busoni’s sense, it involves a
degree of interpretation, because literal translation in a word-for-word manner
is incapable of conveying the original intent and meaning.17 Extrapolated from
his view about the translator’s role in Übertragung emerges the proper role of
an arranger, who is required to go beyond a measure-for-measure approach to
the original in order to capture the integrity of the original successfully.
Busoni’s latter concept of “transcription” represents his famous and auda-
cious claim that virtually every aspect of music making is an outcome of “tran-
scription” through its successive stages from initial thought through notation
to performance.18 The important issue for our current discussion is the role
of the performer that Busoni stresses. Busoni considers performance as a type
of “transcription” because it involves the translation of the written text into
sound; the performer’s task is to interpret the signs dictated by the composer’s
notation and reinvigorate them with his or her own perspective, bringing life
to the abstract musical idea from its static notated state.19 From Busoni’s per-
spective, arrangers are also required to display their elastic concept of trans-
feral by enlivening an otherwise static replica of the original through their
creative ability.

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 42 ❧ chapter two

In his generic discussion of “transcription,” Stephen Davies unites the

two poles of fidelity and creativity into a “single act” in both performance
and transcription.20 By likening the transcriber’s role to the performer’s—
which immediately recalls Busoni’s remarks above—Davies claims that both
transcriber and performer eventually share a concern that is “essentially cre-
ative in pursuing the goal of interpreting faithfully the composer’s text.”21
In other words, the performer’s creativity involves the transformation of the
“notes-as-written into the notes-as-sound,” whereas the transcriber’s creativ-
ity stems from his adaptation of the original suitable for a new medium.22
Both performance and transcription, according to Davies, take faithfulness
to the original composer’s intentions as one of their primary goals, although
they constitute “intrinsically creative activity.”23 Although his discussions
lack specific contextual, analytical, and interpretative evidence to support
his claim, Davies aptly encapsulates a fundamental problem intrinsic to the
piano arrangement, which bears witness to the difficulty in drawing a clear-
cut boundary between fidelity and creativity.
In her seminal article on the concept of early Romantic performance,
Mary Hunter argues that faithful obedience and original creativity are part of
a single act. Romantic performers were urged to enter into all the intents of
the composer, while simultaneously imbuing the work with their self-expres-
sion.24 Thus, fidelity and self-expression are not separate phenomena; yet the
two aspects intertwine to encapsulate the essence of the idea of interpretative
performance.25 Liszt himself already claimed the performer’s role as recreat-
ing the work of the composer. In his book Des bohémiens et de leur musique en
Hongrie (1859), he defended his role as a virtuoso who contributes to changing
“a mute and motionless” creation of a composer into “a living being.”26 The
“collapse” of the oppositions of composer and performer, originator and ves-
sel, in Hunter’s terms, is thus quintessentially posited in Liszt’s creative act of
performance, composition, and by extension, transcription.
Liszt’s deliberate choice of the term partition situates his exceptional scrupu-
lousness explicitly in the forefront of his transferal. Behind his overt fidelity lies
his creativity in providing convincing solutions to the problems inherent in the
transferal. Concurrently, the driving force of many of those creative renderings
stems from his conscientious attention to the original orchestral sounds and
effects, as the musical examples will further substantiate in subsequent chap-
ters. Liszt’s partition, therefore, represents the pinnacle of his overt fidelity to
the original and thus the validity of his unimpeachable status as an arranger.
And yet it simultaneously reveals his concealed creativity through his unceas-
ing and painstaking compositional process in order to offer a convincing
outcome in pianistic terms. An investigation of specific examples has already
been undertaken,27 yet the examples in this study will not only provide a wider
spectrum of Liszt’s multifaceted reworkings but also focus on the seemingly

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 “PAR TITIONS DE PIANO” ❧ 43

paradoxical dynamic of fidelity and creativity intrinsic to Liszt’s transferal, in

which the two aspects are in fact interdependent.
If we relate the concept of partition to a dynamic interaction of fidelity and
creativity, and if we apply this concept to the entire group of compositions
under the name partitions, as delineated in table 2.1, one of the issues that
arises is whether we should regard these compositions as variants of a single
form of partition, or consider each an individual case. We have already observed
that Liszt applied the compositional procedure that is specifically related to his
designation of partition to both his Symphonie fantastique and his earlier set of
Beethoven’s symphonies. Can, then, this procedure be similarly extrapolated
to his other partitions, including his arrangements of overtures by Berlioz,
Rossini, and Weber? Cases like these demand an investigation to uncover the
extent to which, and manner in which, the composer has used the same kind
of existing orchestral music.
Liszt used a distinctive compositional strategy that both links all of the parti-
tions and simultaneously distinguishes them. Because he regarded the music of
Berlioz, like that of Beethoven, as “sacred text,” his arrangements of the orches-
tral works of both composers include carefully inscribed notational devices
and attention to detail. Liszt undertook his arrangements of Berlioz’s overtures
in 1837, around the same time that he was working on his earlier partitions of
Beethoven’s symphonies.28 His relationship with Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique,
begun in the early 1830s, continued through the second half of the decade.
The later groups of partitions of overtures by Rossini and Weber, however,
may be distinguished from the earlier partitions. For instance, Liszt’s arrange-
ment of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture entails reworkings that evoke his
paraphrase techniques, such as are found more frequently in his contempora-
neous song transcriptions. In addition, his arrangements of Weber’s overtures
eliminate the meticulous instrumental cues completely, deviating from the
essential characteristics of the partition from the outset.29 From these differ-
ences emerges the impulse behind the focus of this study of the group of parti-
tions. The focus of the notational issues in the next section is drawn from the
partitions of “sacred texts”—the Berlioz and Beethoven arrangements—which
display more copious, conspicuous, and characteristic devices in notation than
other partitions.

Meticulous Notation

Detailed Instrumental Cues

Liszt’s meticulous approach to notation distinguishes his partitions from the typ-
ical orchestral arrangement. Previous assessments of Liszt’s detailed notation

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 44 ❧ chapter two

have focused on his specific designations of instruments, based on his letter to

Breitkopf & Härtel in 1863:

By the title of Partition de Piano (which is to be retained and translated into

German as “Clavier-Partitur” or “Pianoforte-Partitur”?) I wish to indicate my
intention to combine the performer’s wit with the effects of the orchestra
and to make the different sonorities and nuances felt within the restricted
possibilities of the piano. . . . For this aim I have often indicated the names
of the instruments: oboe, clarinet, timpani, etc. as well as the contrasts of the
string and wind instruments. It would undoubtedly be strangely ridiculous to
pretend that these designations are sufficient for transferring the magic of
the orchestra to the piano; nevertheless, I don’t regard them as superfluous.
Apart from their rare utility as instructions, the pianist of some intelligence
can use them for getting accustomed to accenting and grouping the motives,
to making the main ones stand out and suppressing the auxiliary ones: in a
word, to adapting himself to the norm of the orchestra.30

Before discussing his instrumental cues, it is worth noting that this letter
of 1863 was written when Liszt was completing his partitions of the entire sym-
phonies of Beethoven, a quarter of a century after publishing his earlier set of
Beethoven partitions (1837–1841). By using the same title and the same preface
for his later set of Beethoven partitions, Liszt made it clear that he continued to
pursue the aesthetic purpose of his earlier partitions—meticulous treatment of
“sacred” texts.
The existing literature has discussed the use of Liszt’s specific instrumental
cues largely in two respects: (1) it represents his aspiration to be faithful to the
original and his microscopic attention to the original composer’s intentions;
and (2) it also reveals his attempt to communicate with the pianist or reader by
giving information about the instrumentation of the original orchestral score
and thus assisting in projecting its essence.31 Liszt’s meticulous cues for instru-
ments represent his awareness that the piano does not have the advantage of
the distinct timbres of the various orchestral instruments. As already discussed
in the introduction and chapter 1, many critics and reviewers of music and
art in Liszt’s time, including E. T. A. Hoffmann and Charles Blanc, pointed
to the lack of colors in reproductive arts of musical transcriptions and visual
engraving.
The lack of colors was not always a fatal defect, however, if it was aided by
instrumental cues. To take a well-known example, Robert Schumann found
the instrumental designations laudable and useful when he undertook his
famous review of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique based solely on Liszt’s arrange-
ment of the symphony; he praised Liszt’s arrangement by calling it “one that
indicates the most important details of instrumentation.”32 Schumann reiter-
ated his support for the instrumental cues in his reviews of a four-hand piano

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 “PAR TITIONS DE PIANO” ❧ 45

arrangement of a symphony by Karl Reissiger, suggesting the addition of cues:

“If we add to this [arrangement] as correct and euphonious an instrumenta-
tion as might be expected from an experienced chapel-master, and remember
that the symphony is written in the good orchestral key of E-flat major, we shall
have a tolerably good idea of it.”33 Furthermore, in his assessment of Liszt’s
partitions of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth symphonies in 1840, G. W. Fink notes
that “throughout the whole work all orchestra instruments are indicated with
great precision.” He regards the instrumental cues as “an advantage, almost
an obligation, which no arrangement of an orchestral work for the pianoforte
should lack.”34
Liszt was not the first composer–pianist to inscribe instrumental cues care-
fully on the piano score. A critic for Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1832
already regarded the cues as a “novel innovation” in his review of Christian
Brunner’s four-hand arrangement of two symphonies by Mozart.35 Arrangers
of Liszt’s time occasionally inserted instrumental cues. For instance, in Ernst
Rudorff’s two-piano arrangement of Ignaz Moscheles’s Piano Concerto in G
Minor, op. 58, the cues help the second pianist to gain a fuller sense of the
orchestral part and play the role of the accompaniment well in a concerto.36
Whereas instrumental cues previously had been used sporadically to indi-
cate the prominent instruments, or stemmed from a practical concern for
the second piano’s accompaniment, Liszt’s use of instrumental designations
constituted an essential element of his partition project. He believed that the
instrumental cues should be considered not “superfluous” but an integral part
of transferring the orchestra to the piano.
As illustrated in example 2.1, Liszt’s use of the instrumental cues helps the
reader or performer to grasp the constant shift of instrumental timbres of the
original. Otherwise, this passage would be simply transferred to a series of
monotonously repeating patterns on the keyboard. With the aid of the cues,
however, each unit of the repeating pattern is distinguishable from the others
as representing a specific instrumental timbre.
Although example 2.1 imparts detailed cues in order to help the pianist
understand the original fully, the issue that arises is whether Liszt is using
the cues simply as an informative tool. To put it in another way, what does he
expect the pianist to do with the cues in his or her execution? Is the pianist
simply imagining the individual instrument(s)? In his remark about instru-
mental cues in his letter of 1863 cited above, Liszt expresses his wish to “com-
bine the performer’s wit with the effects of the orchestra” through his detailed
designations. How would he have expected a capable pianist to follow the cues
about the sonority of the orchestra to bring off an effective performance?
Liszt himself often attempted to produce a particular instrumental sonor-
ity on the keyboard in performance. In his preface to his set of Beethoven
symphony arrangements, he said that he believed the piano is capable of

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 46 ❧ chapter two

Example 2.1. Le roi Lear, mm. 276–93, Liszt arrangement.

 7HPSR, )O&O T

 TT ÇÇ » 9O
œ G G G G G TT
  G G G G  T Ç
»
    
   (  ( ( M M     (  ( ( (
( 1 ( FUHVFSRFRDSRFR
9F&E
 ‡ » œ ± G      œ œ œ ± G
  
  
   ¦ ¦   
¦ ¦
 Ç
 ÇÇ » » œ G G G G G œ G G G G  G  œ ± G
      
 
  ( ( ( (     (  ( ( ( 7UE
1 M ( &O

{ { ( 
{ 
{
M M
     »  
 
  ±
  
     
 ¦ ¦     
¦ ¦ 7UE)J
¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ (
 )LDWL
 { { { { { { {
  G G G G G    
                                    
1 9O (
( ( ( ( M $ VHPSUHSLFUHVF
     œ   œ » œ          
 
      ¦ ¦
 ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦

producing variegated orchestral sounds, aspiring to expand the piano’s abil-

ity to equal status with the orchestra.37 Liszt’s experiments with instrumental
sonorities on the keyboard are also evident from several anecdotes about his
teaching. According to Madame Auguste Boissier’s report of his teaching in
1832, for example, Liszt urged his pupil Valérie, Boissier’s daughter, to envi-
sion the sound of one particular instrument on the keyboard: “He showed her
how to pluck arpeggios, with emphasis on the last note, so that a harp sound
would be produced.”38 August Göllerich, an Austrian conductor and writer on
music and one of the older Liszt’s favorite pupils, recorded the contents of
master classes with Liszt during the period 1884–86.39 According to Göllerich,
Liszt gave an instruction to his student that “the theme must sound penetrat-
ing, like the sound of the trumpet.”40 This anecdote suggests that when Liszt
expected to hear a certain sound from the piano, he likened the sound to that
of an individual instrument.
Extrapolating from the anecdotes just quoted, we may assume that Liszt
would have demanded from a pianist a certain articulation and touch appro-
priate for an individual instrument in his orchestral arrangements. Another
of Göllerich’s accounts offers insight into Liszt’s intentions behind his

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 “PAR TITIONS DE PIANO” ❧ 47

instrumental cues and their rendering in performance. Liszt comments as fol-

lows on the rendering of the horn staccatos in his arrangement of the Allegretto
movement from Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony:

Here be guided exactly by the indicated instrument groups, for that is why
they are indicated; this business is not done ineptly. . . . A staccato from the
horns naturally always sounds more sustained than from the other instru-
ments; you must also play it that way.41

Liszt was well aware that various articulations of staccato are available on the
piano, and from them he attempted to select a specific type of staccato appro-
priate for the horn. Liszt thus endeavored to emulate individual instruments
through his experimentation with pianistic resources: a particular articulation
and touch. Despite the keyboard’s restricted range of tone compared with an
orchestra, the pianist is required to observe Liszt’s specific instrumental cues
and render the passage under the cues in a nuanced manner, to evoke the
timbres of individual instruments of the orchestra. He therefore did not simply
envision the instrumental cues as an informative device but demanded pianists
to display their “wit” in rendering individual instruments.

Performance and Expressive Markings

Throughout his partitions, particularly those of a “sacred text,” Liszt often

expanded the specific instrumental cues into scrupulous prose instructions to
the performer. As indicated by his “Remarks for the copyist and the engraver”
on the manuscript of his completion of the Beethoven symphony arrange-
ments in 1863, he wanted certain types of his notational devices to be strictly
observed.42 His control of notation thus extends beyond his meticulous cues
for instruments into everything he put in the score. To gain a fuller insight
into Liszt’s partitions, therefore, it is necessary to investigate his plethora of
notational aids, including performance directions, fingerings, and expressive
and dynamic markings, as well as additional staves and three-staved notation.
Although the notational issue will be substantiated in the musical analyses in
subsequent chapters, the following discussions indicate some of the notable
characteristics of Liszt’s notational devices.
Before exploring the notation used in his partitions, it is essential to under-
stand Liszt’s individual approach to notation in the broad context of early nine-
teenth-century piano notation, especially that of virtuoso pianist-composers.
The driving force behind Liszt’s novel notation in the 1830s can then be seen
as part of various attempts to improve notation at the time. David Rowland
has investigated piano notation in Paris during the era of Chopin and Liszt
by drawing on the Parisian journal Le pianiste, published from 1833 to 1835,

Kim.indd 47 2/5/2019 4:06:19 PM

 48 ❧ chapter two

as well as diverse other sources.43 Comments in those sources reveal that the
notation was inadequate to indicate the subtleties desired in performances.
The acknowledgement of such notational limitations prompted virtuoso pia-
nists to experiment with notation.
Piano notation also developed side by side with two more elements:
advances in the instrument that helped expand the keyboard’s range; and the
phenomenon of virtuoso public performances, which involved a wide range of
dynamics and dramatic tempo fluctuations.44 In response, each of the virtuoso
pianist-composers sought out an individual approach to notation. Liszt was one
of the progressive composers in the vanguard of this experimentation. Not
only did he use the famous rectangular sign for tenuto in his Grandes études pub-
lished in 1839, he also deployed various signs for tempo fluctuation—includ-
ing a series of lines and boxes to indicate grades of ritardandos and accelerandos
in his first Apparition (1834).45
In addition, piano notation may be characterized as “prescriptive” rather
than “descriptive” according to Charles Seeger’s definitions: the former is sub-
jective and portrays only an approximation of the resulting sound in perfor-
mance, whereas the latter is objective and represents graphically the sounds
that are heard.46 Piano notation seen as “prescriptive” demonstrates many
instances of illogic, because there is often a disparity between the notation and
the actual practice of a pianist. For example, if a notation requires a quick
release of a certain note and at the same time prolonging it by a pedal, that is
illogical on the surface but becomes logical in execution if we consider what
the performer actually does.47 In this regard, the “performer’s wit” contin-
ues to play an important role in Liszt’s carefully designed notational devices
throughout; in some instances when there is incongruity between his notation
and the actual sound, the devices invite further explanation, with which we will
now engage by means of musical analysis.
Liszt’s experiments with notation can be viewed as his attempt to transfer as
much of his performance style to the score as possible.48 Kenneth Hamilton
emphasizes the importance of Liszt’s performance directions not only to
his compositional and performance style but also to the intended musical
effect of the composition; for instance, the direction Andante con moto for the
“Invocation” from the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses is sometimes interpreted
as “fairly placid” (in Hamilton’s words) but also as “fast and fiery” (in Göllerich’s
words).49 Hamilton ultimately warns performers to take Liszt’s markings fully
into account in their playing in order to preserve his compositional and his
performing intentions. Similarly, Jonathan Kregor suggests that Liszt’s scrupu-
lous markings represent his careful control over the written text, providing the
performer “little latitude for independence” in performance and interpreta-
tion.50 In the context of his notational experiments in the early 1830s, Liszt’s

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 “PAR TITIONS DE PIANO” ❧ 49

assiduous efforts to accurately notate music stem from his attempts to record as
much of his own performing style on the score as possible.
It is no coincidence that the copious varied and detailed markings in
Liszt’s partitions have a parallel with his expansion of traditional markings
during the first half of the 1830s, as discussed above. Throughout his orches-
tral arrangements, the expressivity and richness of his markings enable Liszt
to preserve much of the original in the transferal process, while document-
ing his own performance manner and also offering his reinterpretation of
the original. In the case of Liszt’s arrangement of Berlioz’s Symphonie fanta-
sique, Kregor makes the compelling argument that Liszt’s abundant markings
represent his individual approach to combining “reproduced music” and
“re-created performance,” helping to give advice to the listener or reader by
means of his prose text itself.51
Among the partitions under consideration here, Liszt’s performance and
expressive markings are far more prevalent in the partitions of orchestral music
by Berlioz, particularly that of the Symphonie fantastique, and by Beethoven than
in the others. As illustrated in example 2.2, the abundance of detailed mark-
ings immediately catches our attention. Liszt accentuates the bassoons and
oboe by instrumental cues in measures 275 and 278, making them a skeleton
of the bass and soprano lines, respectively. For the bassoon line from measure
278, Liszt adds a tenuto marking and writes un poco marcato to obtain a particu-
lar type of keyboard touch. At the same time the pianist is required to perform
the entire passage poco calando (gradually decreasing in tempo) and perdendosi
(dying away). As the oboe’s role in the top line gives way to the violin from
measure 283, the additional marking les notes supérieures très accentuées accentu-
ates the thematic line more clearly and distinguishes it from the previous oboe
line. As the extended crescendo builds up intensity in accordance with Berlioz’s
intent, the passage reaches another marking, affrettando (rushed accelerando),
in measure 289, finally reaching the forte tutti enhanced with another marking
of Liszt’s, con passione. Liszt’s carefully written indications throughout example
2.2, therefore, not only demonstrate his meticulousness in notation but also
heighten the nuances and dynamics of individual instruments or their com-
bined sounds, simultaneously offering a variety of keyboard articulations and
performance styles that reinvigorate the original in its new medium.

Layout of Orchestral Textures

Liszt exploits additional staves for various purposes in his orchestral arrange-
ments. First, it is obvious that he frequently uses them for his ossias, which pro-
vide alternatives to passages, often difficult ones. On occasion, however, the
ossias reveal two contrasting sides of reworking the passage, both faithful and

Kim.indd 49 2/5/2019 4:06:20 PM

 Example 2.2. Symphonie fantastique, mvt. 1, mm. 274–92, Liszt arrangement.


 @ K    Ç Ç Ç  ÇÇ   Ç  K   œ ǜ 2E

  ± œ œÇ @ 


  Ç ÇÇ
    @ K    Ç Ç Ç
 (  
‰ SHUGHQGRVL

Ç
 ÇÇ    ÇÇÇ ÇÇ Ç  SRFRFDODQGR
 Ç @ ÇÇ Ç  Ç   Ç @ Ç
 ‡ Ç Ç Ç
)J    
  œ œ  T
 Ç ± Ç K      OHVQRWHVVXSpULHXUHVWUqVDFFHQWXpHV
1 
 (± (  (±  Ç  Ç Ç T  @  

FUHVF PROWR   
              


               
Ç K Ç Ç Ç Ç Ç  @      
  

  FUHVFHQGR
XQSRFRPDUFDWR
 1        
           K K 
    @                       
         
DIIUHWWDQGR 1 CÉFRQSDVVLRQH
                          
               
M SLFUHVFHQGR VHPSUH
¦ C ¦

liberal, simultaneously (see the discussion of example 3.3 from Liszt–Rossini

partitions in chapter 3).
Liszt deploys the additional staves for another purpose in his arrangement
of the Finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1865). The Finale would have
certainly challenged Liszt to transfer both the voices and orchestra to the key-
board. Liszt had previously arranged Beethoven’s Ninth for two pianos (1851)
by transferring the orchestral parts and voices to the first and second piano,
respectively. When he undertook the two-piano arrangement, Liszt already
acknowledged the challenges generated by the combination of the vocal and
instrumental parts, as expressed in his letter to Breitkopf & Härtel in 1864:

In my edition of the Ninth Symphony for two pianos, prepared for Schott,
the possibility was offered to me of reducing the most essential part of the
orchestra-polyphony to ten fingers, and of handing over the chorus part to
the second piano. But to screw both parts, the instrumental and vocal, into
two hands cannot be done either à peu pres or à beaucoup près!52

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 “PAR TITIONS DE PIANO” ❧ 51

Example 2.3. Beethoven, Symphony no. 1, mvt. 1, mm. 54–64, Liszt arrangement.

    
  
 


                                
 

             
      
     

         
                         
 

       
     

     

  
 

     
     

    
   


       
    

    

   
 
     





 

 
                             
     

  
      
  
 

   
       
  

                    
  
 
      
      
    
 
   


      
        
   
      
     
   


In his solo-piano arrangement of the Finale, Liszt uses the two upper addi-
tional staves to write out the four-part chorus of the original throughout the
movement, resolving the problem of integrating the voices and the full orches-
tra simultaneously.53
Although the additional staves for the ossias are frequent and familiar, and
those for transferring the vocal part from the Finale of Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony have the practical purpose of separating them from the instrumen-
tal parts in an orchestral arrangement, in a few instances Liszt’s additional
staves have unique and independent roles. As illustrated in example 2.3, the

Kim.indd 51 2/5/2019 4:06:21 PM

 52 ❧ chapter two

additional staves can hardly be called an ossia, because they do not provide a
substitute for what is written above, but instead have their own material.
The consensus is that Liszt’s use of additional staves reveals what he elimi-
nated in his transferal: in the separate staves, he includes what he considered
essential to the original but could not incorporate into the piano score prop-
erly, admonishing the performer to be aware of its omission in performance.54
In this regard, the additional staves in example 2.3 may indicate what he could
not or did not transfer into his piano score, yet its purpose goes beyond that.
In the piano score, Liszt first focuses on the main thematic lines by trans-
ferring the triplets of violin I and flute to the right hand, while the left hand
renders the salient feature of the timpani’s salient dotted rhythm. Liszt’s own
expressive markings marcato and sempre staccato e leggiero for the timpani and
violin I, respectively, heighten the two distinctive layers of sounds and articula-
tions: moreover, the staccato triplets become more articulated with the aid of
specific fingerings. Along with these two independent layers of sound, Liszt
incorporates the accompaniment parts of the remaining instruments as har-
monic support. He preserves the sustained pitch G from the trombone, care-
fully selects other notes from the original accompaniment, and delineates all
of them so they do not intrude on the important melodic and rhythmic lines.
Liszt’s layout thus captures the simultaneity of the disparate orchestral textures
and sounds clearly and convincingly, each with its unique articulation and
character. The light triplets in the top and the characteristic dotted rhythms
in the bass serve as a skeleton, while the selected accompaniment parts in the
middle register lend another independent layer of sound.
The additional staves also show Liszt’s insightful layout of the orchestral
texture. These staves immediately convey that some of the accompaniment
parts have been eliminated in his version. But they do not simply indicate
what is present in the original and omitted in the piano version. Liszt would
have not necessarily been obliged to offer the separately spaced staves
to inform us of what had been removed. When he believes it necessary to
include the additional staves, however, the written-out parts help the pianist
or reader to imagine the overall sonority of the original. Furthermore, Liszt
did not provide such additional staves frequently—only in a few instances,
notably in the partitions of Beethoven’s symphonies.55 Although the rea-
son for his particular use of the additional staves is not easy to pinpoint, it
should be related to his resolve to become a conscientious translator of his
predecessor’s music, as expressed in his preface to the set of Beethoven parti-
tions. Moreover, by using the device as a means of communication between
composer-arranger and performer, Liszt attempts to invite the performer to
adopt his assiduous attitude towards the original.
Liszt’s experimentation with staves is also evident in his use of three-staved
notation. Whereas his additional staves mentioned above, which are written

Kim.indd 52 2/5/2019 4:06:22 PM

 “PAR TITIONS DE PIANO” ❧ 53

Example 2.4a. Beethoven, Symphony no. 9, mvt. 1, mm. 531–33, Liszt

arrangement.
DWHPSR
“
 WHQ WHQ WHQ
       K    
@            
”1 1 1 <{
PG
<{ <{
@  ±    ± ±    ±
± K    ±
<   <   K  
<
         K    
@           K      
”     K 
  
q q q

in small notes, suggest that they are not always intended to be performed, the
three-staved notation conveys a different meaning. As illustrated in example
2.4a, all of the material in the three independent staves is meant to be per-
formed in full.
In the original score as shown in example 2.4b, there are essentially three
different types of texture: the dotted rhythm in the woodwind and brass, the
angular accompaniment of bassoons and string tremolos, and the timpani’s
rolls. They are all reiterated consistently and relentlessly to maintain an enor-
mous tutti sound, ultimately reaching the memorable initial statement of the
theme in ff unison (from m. 539, not shown in ex. 2.4b). In Liszt’s rendering of
example 2.4a, the top and the bottom staves realize precisely the two textures
of the dotted rhythm and the angular accompaniment. At the same time the
middle stave conveys the timpani rolls on D, which are carefully incorporated
into the spaced texture. Moreover, he adds the F# at the octave to the middle
stave. The reasoning behind this is that the winds include a lower octave of
F#, which cannot be sounded on beat 1 of the measure, and thus he sounds it
in the middle of the measure. The three-stave rendering makes the sustained
notes in the upper voice clearer. His use of the middle stave thus compensates
for the effect of the timpani rolls and the sustained sound. Liszt deploys the
three-staved notation to heighten not only the spacious aura of the tutti sound
but also to convey all of the instrumental effects visually and acoustically as
much as possible.
In many of Liszt’s piano compositions, the three-stave notation is inextri-
cably bound to the renowned “three-hand” texture of piano virtuosity.56 This
device was customary for Liszt’s contemporaries such as Sigismund Thalberg,
who often emphasized the notes of the main thematic line with accent marks

Kim.indd 53 2/5/2019 4:06:23 PM

 Example 2.4b. Beethoven, Symphony no. 9, mvt. 1, mm. 531–33.
a tempo
531         
Fl. 1  @ 
” K  
     
Fl. 2  @ 
”
@          
Ob. 1  
”
K  
Ob. 2  @       
”
          
Cl. 1  
(B @) ”
 
Cl. 2   K  
(B @)      
”
K  K ¦  K 
Bsn. 1
 @  ¦ K ¦ K ¦ ¦ K ¦
¦  ¦  ¦ ¦
” ¦ ¦
K ¦  K ¦  K 
Bsn. 2
 @  K ¦ K ¦ ¦ K ¦
¦  ¦  ¦ ¦
” ¦ ¦
531
Hn. I. II         @  
     
” G
         •
Hn. III. IV          
”
Cl.

          
(D)        
531
”
    ±   ±   ±
Timp.  ( ( (
Ž Ž Ž
” 1
531 K    K 
  
Vln. I @   
K

           
”
K    
K
Vln. II  @  



K

           
”
K    
K
Vla. ! @    K
  
           
”
        K    
  K  
Vc. @  K
”   
  ¦ K
K

¦
K ¦
K

¦
K
¦ K

¦
D.B. @  ¦  ¦ 
” ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦

Kim.indd 54 2/5/2019 4:06:24 PM

 approaching the reproductive arts ❧ 55

Example 2.5. Beethoven, Symphony no. 9, mvt. 1, mm. 291–302, Liszt

arrangement.

 

       
        
 

  
    
 
     
           

             
  
 



      

      

 
  
    
 


        
   

 

above each one to help the performer and reader differentiate melody from
accompaniment. Robert Schumann described Thalberg’s technique of “his
grasping single notes among [the] masses, so that we sometimes imagine we
hear different voices.”57
In his orchestral arrangements, Liszt preserves and revitalizes this conven-
tional device. The three-stave layout helps him spread the score out in order
to clarify the intricate orchestral texture, which would not have been possible
through accent marks on melodic notes or separately stemmed lines alone.
As illustrated in example 2.5, Liszt provides the notation for the performer to
acknowledge the three distinct layers of orchestral texture, instruments, and
timbres more clearly in both visual and acoustic dimensions. The winds in the
top play a series of sustained notes and the bass pizzicatos hammer out the bot-
tom, while the strings in the middle stave maintain the salient rhythm embed-
ded in the Scherzo movement of the symphony.58
To conclude, an investigation of Liszt’s notation has demonstrated how fully
he acknowledged the limitations of the keyboard in rendering the orchestral
score; how effectively he made his notational devices compensate for those
limitations; and ultimately, how successfully his meticulous notation helps to
reinforce the integrity of the original orchestral score, while simultaneously
providing his own interpretation of the model. Liszt regarded the meticulous

Kim.indd 55 2/5/2019 4:06:29 PM

 56 ❧ chapter two

instrumental cues as an essential element in reinforcing his assiduous approach

to the original down to the smallest detail; he used the cues to inform the
performer of the essence of the original; and most of all, he insisted that
the pianist render the individual instrumental sounds and effects. The “per-
former’s wit” that Liszt stressed serves as a significant element not only in his
specific instrumental cues but also in his other scrupulous notational devices.
Continuing the discussion of Liszt’s partitions but diverting our attention from
his meticulous, faithful, and “sacred texts” of partitions, the next chapter brings
out a more liberal approach to the partition of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture.

Kim.indd 56 2/5/2019 4:06:30 PM

 Chapter Three

Between “Text” and “Event”

Liszt’s Guillaume Tell Overture

In his famous conception of the Stildualismus (dualism of styles) that under-

pinned his Die Musik des 19. Jahrhunderts [Nineteenth-Century Music], published
in 1980, Carl Dahlhaus called upon Beethoven and Rossini to make a broader
aesthetic claim of the conceptual binary “text” and “event.”1 He argued that
Beethoven and Rossini became symbolic progenitors that epitomize the “two
cultures of music” fundamental to Western music.2 The “dualism of styles” that
the two composers embodied presents the contrast between the score-based
“text” and the performance-based “event.”3 The implications of this opposi-
tion rapidly develop early nineteenth-century dichotomies between German
and Italian musical cultures, instrumental and operatic music, depth and sur-
face, music as text and as practice, and “fidelity to score and improvisation.”4
The repercussions of Dahlhaus’s conception produced a flurry of scholarly
responses and critiques.5 The most recent approach is that leading scholars of
both camps of Beethoven and Rossini have been in dialogue with each other.6
They analyze the philosophical and historiographical inferences of Dahlhaus’s
text–event dualism while simultaneously challenging the traditional binary
constructions, and proposing new ways of understanding Beethoven and
Rossini’s music by freeing them from the discourse of duality in which they
have become entangled.
Where do these modifications of the claimed Beethoven-Rossini text–
event dualism leave us for understanding Franz Liszt’s case? Liszt was one
of the significant observers, practitioners, and participants in shaping and
reshaping the legacy of the symbolic duo. He was a genuine, faithful inter-
preter and adherent of Beethoven through his wide array of roles as per-
former, composer, financial donor, and conductor, as represented in his deep

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 58 ❧ chapter three

engagement with the festivals surrounding the erection of the Beethoven

monument at Bonn in 1845.7 Liszt also resolved to become a “conscientious
translator” of Beethoven’s music through his lifelong project of arrangements
of the nine symphonies by Beethoven (1837–41, 1863–65).8 Liszt’s relation-
ship with Rossini is documented scantly, only in some general accounts.9
Nevertheless, Liszt’s project in tribute to Rossini is evident in an array of his
compositions “after” Rossini: his variations on excerpts from Rossini’s early
operas in 1829; his fantasies on songs from Rossini’s collection of Les soirées
musicales, 8 ariettas, and 4 duets in 1835; and his arrangement of Rossini’s
Guillaume Tell Overture (1838).10
Liszt’s arrangement of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture draws our atten-
tion because it straddles the boundary between faithful “text” and creative
“event” in his manner of transferring and reworking of the original. As seen
already in chapter 2, the arrangement belongs in the same category of par-
tition de piano as his monumental set of arrangements of Beethoven’s sym-
phonies. Liszt’s arrangement of Guillaume Tell Overture thus underscores
the idea of textual fidelity by adhering to the structure of the original faith-
fully. Yet, the arrangement also displays some characteristic reworking tech-
niques that distinguish this piece from the mainstream of his partitions, as
will be illustrated in musical examples below. Moreover, the frequency of
performance of this Liszt–Rossini partition remarkably outweighs that of the
other partitions. Furthermore, the contemporary reviews of Liszt’s playing
of his Guillaume Tell reveal a significant difference from the reception of his
Beethoven partitions: for instance, the former highlighted his use of “fantas-
tic tricks,” whereas the latter underscored the properties of “precision” and
“diligence.”
This chapter begins with contemporary performance accounts of Liszt’s par-
tition of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell in contrast with his partitions of Beethoven’s
symphonies. Then the primary focus of this study lies in illustrating the dis-
tinctive reworking techniques that Liszt deployed for his Rossini partition. First,
Liszt’s process of increasingly enriching the texture of the English horn tune in
the “Ranz des vaches” section has a parallel with his treatment of melodies in
his contemporaneous transcriptions of Schubert songs, which were often per-
formed together with his Guillaume Tell. Second, free writing is more copious
and conspicuous than in any other partition, incorporating the cadenzas and
embellishments that would have been heard from singers performing Rossini’s
operas. Finally, Liszt’s creative pianistic version of the timpani’s memorable
rolls suggests him extemporizing, contributing to the fantasy-like quality of
this partition. All in all, Liszt’s Guillaume Tell embraces the dichotomy between
“text” and “event.” His designation of partition makes the piece worthy of seri-
ous attention in itself, while simultaneously epitomizing a virtuoso-centered
and ephemeral event.

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 between “text” and “event” ❧ 59

Performance Accounts

Liszt’s partitions in general all served as staples of his performances.11 The fre-
quency of performance of the Liszt-Rossini partition, however, remarkably out-
weighs that of the other partitions: almost forty times for the former in sharp
contrast with the four public performances of the excerpts from the Liszt–
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique as well as several performances from the Liszt–
Beethoven symphonies, particularly the “Storm” movement of Beethoven’s
Sixth Symphony.12 The stunning performing record of the Liszt–Rossini par-
tition indicates its sensational audience reception. The popularity of Liszt’s
Guillaume Tell stems originally from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell itself, which was a
great success from its premiere on 3 August 1829 and remained in the opera
repertory throughout the nineteenth century.13 The Italian preoccupation
with opera and Liszt’s response to the demands of the Italian audience all led
him to use his arrangement of the Guillaume Tell Overture to begin his concert
in Rome in 1839.14 In what follows, comparing the contemporary assessments
of the Liszt–Beethoven partitions and his Rossini partition suggests that the audi-
ence had already noted that Liszt had a different approach to orchestral music
by Beethoven and Rossini.

Liszt’s Partitions of Beethoven’s Symphonies

Liszt’s playing of the last three movements of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony has
loomed large in virtually every account of him performing his Beethoven parti-
tions.15 As was common in numerous anecdotes about Liszt’s playing, one critic
in Paris (1839) underscored Liszt’s ability to “transform” the piano into the
orchestra; but more importantly, he essentially grasped Liszt’s scrupulousness
in rendering varied effects and characters of Beethoven’s individual instru-
ments such as “the grandiose monologues of the winds” and “the demonic
pizzicatos of the basses.”16 Two critics, Heinrich Adami and G. W. Fink, particu-
larly draw our attention because of their detailed, insightful accounts of Liszt’s
faithfulness to the original. Adami, a Viennese music critic, left a substantial
number of valuable reviews of Liszt’s concerts particularly centered on the vir-
tuoso’s extensive concert series in the city in 1838, 1839–40, and 1846.17 In the
concert of 19 November 1839, which included Liszt’s arrangement of the last
three movements of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony,18 Adami praises particularly
the properties of “fidelity” and “diligence” “without arbitrary additions to or
omissions of its [the work’s] spirit” in Liszt’s rendering.

The reworking of this magnificent and complex composition for the piano-
forte was as daring an undertaking as it was difficult if the aim was not merely
to produce a brilliant concert piece, but rather to reproduce such a work

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 60 ❧ chapter three

with artistic fidelity and diligence without arbitrary additions to or omissions,

responding to its spirit and innermost being, and with artistic faithfulness.
And only an artist, like Liszt, who in addition to an infinite reverence for
Beethoven also possesses the rare gift of understanding the great German
master—only such an artist could and should venture such a dangerous
undertaking.19

Adami finds Liszt’s fidelity to the original laudable for several reasons. First,
Liszt’s arranging of a large-scale orchestral work itself amounts to a “daring,”
“difficult,” and even “dangerous” task. In this context, Liszt’s faithful rendering
even further highlights his superiority in this challenging type of arrangement.
Second, Liszt’s fidelity stems from his “artistic” pursuit, as opposed to practi-
cality and entertainment. Finally, the fidelity helps to illuminate Liszt’s com-
prehensive understanding of Beethoven’s music and ultimately his unceasing
allegiance to his predecessor.
G. W. Fink also regards Liszt’s faithful rendering and his reverence for
Beethoven as complementary in his partitions.20 Fink provided a significant
assessment of Liszt’s partitions of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies in
1840. On the Fifth, he writes:

We are convinced that this work has been created with reverence for the
great deceased artist’s composition, with painstaking care, and that it was
undertaken with the intention of giving back faithfully everything possible
for the pianoforte of the entire instrumental mass and all that the orches-
tral work so vividly is able to put before our senses—yet all rendered by one
person.21

Fink further provides specific comments about Liszt’s meticulous approach to

notation. On the Fifth, he points out Liszt’s fingering: “In not just a few appro-
priate places, Liszt has marked the fingering above, or sometimes below and
next to, [the notes played by] the hands, depending on the clearest way to
read it in each place. These specifications by such a celebrated pianist must be
by all means highly desirable.”22
In his assessment of the Sixth, Fink underscores the issue of the “techni-
cal difficulties” intrinsic in Liszt’s partition.23 Fink does not explicitly point out
that the “difficulties” in Liszt’s playing stem from faithfulness in his rendering.
However, the meticulousness in piano arrangement and technical challenges
in performance are not mutually exclusive: the more precisely the original
orchestral score is rendered, the more intricate the corresponding piano score
becomes as a corollary, and the more demanding the rendition. Although
Fink pays attention primarily to Liszt’s new mode of performance style, he
essentially captures the nature of Liszt’s partition as exceptionally detailed and
demanding, ultimately making the partition difficult and hard to appreciate by

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 between “text” and “event” ❧ 61

the “mixed audience.”24 The properties of “fidelity” and “diligence”—which

Adami used for his enthusiastic responses to the same concert—become one
of the driving forces that make Liszt’s Beethoven partitions challenging to
understand and thus excluded from the larger public.

Liszt’s Partition of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture

Liszt’s performances of the partition of Rossini’s overture captured the ears

and eyes of the audience of the time, just as the Beethoven partitions had.
Moritz Saphir, a representative Viennese critic as an editor of Der Humorist and
admirer of Liszt’s playing, accounts for how successfully Liszt’s arrangement
and its performance conveyed the orchestral sounds on the piano in one of
his Viennese concerts of 1838.25 Liszt’s partition of Guillaume Tell Overture was
one of his stock pieces in his London concerts of the 1840s.26 It was greeted
with enthusiastic applause and calls for an encore, as reported by the Halifax
Guardian about one of the London concerts in 1841.27
London audiences and critics were amazed at the unparalleled power that
Liszt “accomplished with ten fingers,” as the Times reported on 2 July 1840:

The next piece was the overture to William Tell, which brought all the per-
former’s power at once into action. . . . Liszt with exquisite taste and tact
confined his additions to the harmonies; and though this composition is
probably one of the fullest scores that Rossini ever wrote, yet the most com-
plete orchestra by which we have ever heard it performed never produced
a more powerful effect, and certainly was very far behind Liszt in spirit and
unity of execution. How all this is accomplished with ten fingers we confess
ourselves unable to guess; and even could description convey any idea of
Liszt’s performance, its possibility would still appear incredible, except to
those who heard it.28

This report is noteworthy because the writer praises Liszt’s faithfulness, not
his excessiveness that was more customary in descriptions of the performing
style of the time, noting his “exquisite taste and tact confined his additions
to the harmonies.” By “the harmonies” we assume that the writer means the
accompanimental figurations, not the chords. The point here is that the mel-
odies are neither changed nor “paraphrased.” Although the writer’s focus is
more on Liszt’s performance conjuring up the orchestra on the keyboard,
he grasped Liszt’s adherence to the original structure. This contemporary
account reveals that Liszt conveyed his concept of partition, fidelity to the
“text,” while simultaneously projecting the virtuosic, “event”-centered perfor-
mance aspect of the piece.
Liszt’s partition of Guillaume Tell Overture was primarily intended to amaze
his audience and exhibit both his virtuosic compositional and performing

Kim.indd 61 2/5/2019 4:06:32 PM

 62 ❧ chapter three

ability. For example, Liszt’s rendering of the “Ranz des vaches” at one of his
London concerts on 31 October 1840 captured the attention of Carl Reinecke:

His [Liszt’s] marvelous, unsurpassed bravura and virtuosity were always

blended with poetic feeling and the keenest musical intelligence. . . . If, how-
ever, it came into his head to dazzle the ignorant throng a little, he would
allow himself to be carried away by all manner of fantastic tricks, at which
even I, a mere boy, had to shake my head. I remember, for instance, my
astonishment when in his otherwise wonderful rendering of the Overture
to William Tell he hammered out the Ranz des vaches with the side of his right
index finger!29

Reinecke was amazed at “all manner of fantastic tricks” that Liszt deployed.
Crucially, these “tricks” that Reinecke observed immediately contrasted with
the “fidelity,” “precision,” and “diligence” that Adami and Fink had praised in
Liszt’s rendering of Beethoven’s symphonies.
One of the distinctive aspects in the performance accounts of the Liszt–
Rossini partition is that whereas the praise for Liszt’s performances of his parti-
tions of the Beethoven symphonies resided in the “precision” of his arranging
ability that captured the essence of the original in every detail, such an element
of “precision” does not seem to be associated with his partition of Rossini’s over-
ture. Although the London critic from the Times in 1840, as discussed above,
witnessed Liszt’s observance of the original structure, the faithfulness Liszt
accomplished in his Rossini partition is not to the same degree as what he had
done in his Beethoven partitions. Rather, what dazzled the audience was what
Liszt added to the Rossini partition, just as Reinecke’s mention about Liszt’s
“fantastic tricks.”

Reworking Techniques

Notation
Liszt’s meticulous approach to notation distinguishes his partitions from the typi-
cal orchestral arrangement. Nevertheless, Liszt–Rossini partition witnesses the
drastic simplification of the cues.30 Liszt carefully select only a few solo instru-
ments or instrumental groups that play a significant role in the original overture:
the five cellos and timpani in the opening Andante (5Vc., Timp.), the wood-
winds punctuating the “storm” section (Fl., Ob., Cl., or Fiati, indicating wood-
wind instruments), the pastoral scene of the English horn and flute (C. ing., Fl.),
and the famous introductory fanfare of the Trombone (Tr.) both in the final
galop as well as the demanding horn that joins later (Cor., Tr.).31 The density
and richness of the designations—for both solo instruments and the remaining

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 between “text” and “event” ❧ 63

parts—in the previous partitions of Berlioz or Beethoven symphonies or over-

tures give way to a select few in the his partition of Rossini’s overture. This nota-
tional difference seems to be minor in Liszt’s reworking, but it may suggest that
Liszt’s approach to the Rossini overture stems less from his attempts to arrange
the original in the most meticulous detail, as he had done before, than from his
attempts to focus on the most essential features of the original.

The Opulence of the “Ranz des vaches”

The middle section of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture, “Ranz des vaches”
(Call to the dairy cows), is an especially memorable pastoral scene.32 Rossini
imbues the nostalgic tune with English horn solos and adds the brighter sound
of the flute and triangle.33 The first phrase of the melody in the English horn
is shown in example 3.1a. Rossini’s economy of orchestration helps highlight
the melancholic tune of the English horn and its pastoral image with the
solo instrument’s own color and timbre. As illustrated in example 3.1b, Liszt
converts the accompaniment to a more sonorous pianistic texture with wide-
spread rolled chords.
On a deeper level, the pizzicatos are rendered by low octaves and arpeggios,
and the sustained chords in the horns and bassoons are represented by chords
in the mid-range of the piano. The chords are rearticulated each measure
to show the pizzicato sounds in the strings. Liszt thus closely approached the
details of the two contrasting groups of instruments with a different articula-
tion of each in the accompaniment. The absence of a pedal indication seems
contradictory to the rendition of the opulent rolled chords, which usually
require the sustaining pedal. The lack of pedal, however, is an expression of
the pizzicato. It is simply not possible to evoke the pizzicatos if the pianist uses
the pedal. Thus the absence of pedal is a judicious choice that Liszt made to be
faithful to the details of the original in a more nuanced manner.
When the “Ranz des vaches” tune repeats, Liszt changes the texture of each
appearance over the course of his arrangement. What if Liszt had been consis-
tent with the texture of example 3.1b throughout the section, just as Rossini
had? What if he had arranged the sparse Rossinian orchestral writing liter-
ally into a pianistic texture consisting of a melody with light accompaniment
throughout, as in the opening phrase of the pastoral tune? If he had done so,
his score would have become a simple reproduction of the orchestral score
playable by amateur pianists. In his preface to his Beethoven partitions, Liszt
already criticized such “literal” and “superficial” piano arrangements, from
which he attempted to distinguish his own arrangements.34 Such a desire
provided another opportunity for Liszt to exploit the rich resources of the
keyboard. A series of examples below illustrate how his process of enriching
sonority and texture unfolds gradually over the course of the section.

Kim.indd 63 2/5/2019 4:06:34 PM

 Example 3.1a. Rossini, Guillaume Tell Overture, opening of “Ranz des vaches,” mm.
176–80.
  

 
 

  

                       
  
    
 
     

  

             
   

 
             

  
    
             

   

  
      

 

 

 



   

          




             

     


Example 3.1b. Guillaume Tell Overture, opening of “Ranz des vaches,” mm. 176–80,
Liszt arrangement.


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Kim.indd 64 2/5/2019 4:06:35 PM

 between “text” and “event” ❧ 65

As the melancholic “Ranz des vaches” reiterates and develops, Liszt’s score
also becomes increasingly denser, thicker, and fuller. When the nostalgic
English horn is combined with the flute and triangle, the original texture is
transformed into the virtuosic brand of three-hand texture and technique in
Liszt’s score, as illustrated in examples 3.2a and 3.2b.35 The virtuosic three-
hand texture leads to a thickened texture in both hands at measure 219 of
example 3.3a, reaching its peak of density and opulence at the conclusion of
the section (last system of ex. 3.3a).
A comparison of examples 3.3a and 3.3b demonstrates that Liszt’s ossia pro-
vides a faithful rendering as opposed to his increasingly accumulating process
of texture and sonority underneath. The more literal renderings in measures
218 and 220 alternate and are juxtaposed with the freer side of the rework-
ing in measures 219 and 221–22. The faithful rendering in measures 218 and
220, in the midst of the increasing thickened texture, provides a guidepost for
listeners following the original composition. Yet Liszt’s virtuosic rendering in
measure 219 and from measure 221 on intrudes on the original tune, keeping
up interest in the repeating pastoral tune and finally culminating in its ampli-
fied sonority and effect in mm. 223–25. The sonorous trill figures of measures
221–22 in example 3.3a particularly draw our attention, because they are com-
pletely original material by Liszt. The new figures are constructed on Rossini’s
harmonic background, but they contribute an additional layer of sonorous
music. The trill figures do not hinder the clarity of the original melody, yet
make the passage sound fresh.36 Moreover, the trills give the impression that,
to sustain the interest, Liszt did not want to repeat what he had done before; it
is as if he were improvising based on the repeating pattern of the original mel-
ody, which he had probably done frequently in his compositional process.37
Liszt’s enriching process throughout examples 3.1–3.3 transforms the char-
acter of the simple Rossinian pastoral scene into his virtuosic language. The
impulse behind this change may stem from the difficulty in rendering the pas-
toral mood, image, and sound of the original properly in his piano score. The
difficulty, however, motivated a completely different track, one that makes his
version individual. In addition, the change in the original character is not con-
fined to a moment but proceeds over the course of the section. It is worth
underscoring that Liszt signifies Rossini’s authorial presence through the pas-
toral tune and the instrumental cue of the English horn; without these ele-
ments, the pastoral section of this partition could be mistaken for Liszt’s own
composition for solo piano.
Strikingly, Liszt’s reworking of Rossini’s “Ranz des vaches” reminds us of
those found in his song arrangements written in the same year of 1838, partic-
ularly those of Schubert’s 12 Lieder. Rossini’s “Ranz des vaches” indeed implies
a song-like texture in its prominent solo melody and the light accompani-
ment. Liszt could have conceived of it as another song texture, as he had dealt

Kim.indd 65 2/5/2019 4:06:35 PM

 Example 3.2a. Rossini, Guillaume Tell Overture, mm. 209–10.


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Kim.indd 66 2/5/2019 4:06:39 PM

 between “text” and “event” ❧ 67

Example 3.2b. Guillaume Tell Overture, mm. 209–10, Liszt arrangement.

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with Schubert song arrangements around the same time. For example, Liszt’s
arrangement of Schubert’s “Ave Maria” exhibits how he turns the strophic song
into his own virtuosic piano version using a similar process of gradually increas-
ing enrichment to his section of Rossini’s “Ranz des vaches.” As illustrated
in examples 3.4a and 3.4b, Schubert’s accompaniment provides the initial
inspiration for Liszt’s first strophe. Yet in Liszt’s version it is doubled in both
hands to thicken the texture from the beginning, while the melody is lowered
an octave to facilitate the thumb-melody in the three- or four-hand texture.38
Whereas Schubert’s setting of the second and third strophes proceeds in an
almost identical manner to the first one, Liszt develops the strophic song into a
virtuosic piano version by enriching the texture and sonority, adding virtuosic
accompaniment patterns, as illustrated in examples 3.4c and 3.4d.
Moreover, Liszt’s arrangement of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture,
along with his song arrangements of “Ave Maria” as well as “Erlkönig” and
“Ständchen von Shakespeare” (all coming from the 12 Lieder), were the most
frequently performed arrangements in Liszt’s public concerts during his virtu-
oso years.39 This was especially true during his years in Germany, 1840–45 and
in England in the early 1840s. This performance context of the Liszt–Rossini
partition helps explain the purpose of such an opulent, sonorous, and virtuosic
approach to the partition. As seen in Reinecke’s record above, this partition was
primarily intended to amaze his audience and exhibit both his virtuosic com-
positional and performing ability.
Liszt’s arrangements of Schubert’s songs in general have been appreciated
in their own right and regarded as an independent genre by scholars, mainly
because of his complete transformation of the song into a virtuosic piano
score.40 Although Liszt’s arrangement of Rossini’s overture still belongs to
the realm of partition, as it transferred the original in an overall faithful man-
ner, his treatment of Rossini’s pastoral scene in an individual way allows us to
regard it as differing from other partitions and arrangements. Liszt’s version of
the “Ranz des vaches” is only part of the entire overture and is much shorter

Kim.indd 67 2/5/2019 4:06:40 PM

 Example 3.3a. Guillaume Tell Overture, mm. 217–25, Liszt arrangement.


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Kim.indd 68 2/5/2019 4:06:41 PM

 Example 3.3a.—(concluded)

  
  
       
 

  
   
  
 
 

                                   
                  



    
       
    
 

        
       

         
  

                                    
                  

  
 
 
         
        
 
 

Kim.indd 69 2/5/2019 4:06:41 PM

 Example 3.3b. Rossini, Guillaume Tell Overture, mm. 217–25.
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Kim.indd 70 2/5/2019 4:06:41 PM

 Example 3.4a. Schubert, “Ave Maria,” beginning of first strophe.
  

 
        

 

           

      
                                   

       
       
     

Example 3.4b. “Ave Maria,” beginning of first strophe, Liszt arrangement.

  

 
 

         


  
 
      
     
    
    
    
    
     
                 

  






 


    

  
 


                           


    
   
    


   
  
                           
    
 


                                                                                    
                            
                    
                       

Example 3.4c. “Ave Maria,” beginning of second strophe, Liszt arrangement.

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 72 ❧ chapter three

Example 3.4d. “Ave Maria,” beginning of third strophe, Liszt arrangement.

 


  







 










 
 


       
  

  





   






  

  
 

than his versions of Schubert’s songs, and thus one may be hesitant to treat it
as “independent.” Yet the relationship between this part of the partition and
the song arrangements, with respect to the compositional date, the reworking
process, and the performing context, can bolster the claim that Liszt’s partition
of Rossini’s overture challenges the boundary between fidelity to the original
and liberation from it, and does so in a more pronounced manner than in his
other partitions.

The Improvisatory Passages: The Agitation of the Timpani

In the opening Andante of Rossini’s music, the timpani’s role draws our atten-
tion immediately because of its salient features, not only sonically but also struc-
turally, as illustrated in examples 3.5a and 3.5b.41 In Liszt’s version (ex. 3.5b),
the soft timpani rolls are completely transformed into pianistic figuration (mm.
22–23). The way Liszt renders the timpani’s roll is intriguing: he initially emu-
lates the rolls in a literal sense, as a conventional trill, which then turns into a
more chromatic, dramatic, and rumbling bass line: the agitation of the timpani.
Liszt’s rendering of the timpani thus lends an impression of the process of his
extemporizing, which in turn is realized in his written-out composition.
More importantly, a detailed look at Liszt’s rendering indicates how faith-
fully he approaches the timpani rolls. In Rossini’s score, the bass on A# under-
neath the roll in measure 22 serves as an important structural pitch, which
leads to B of a cadence on V of E major in measure 24. In Liszt’s response, his
rendering of the chromatic scales is ostensibly new material, yet it makes the
bass A# literally the lowest note and also preserves the register of the bass. His
chromatic scales thus rely on the implied bass, anchor constantly on the bass,

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 between “text” and “event” ❧ 73

Example 3.5a. Rossini, Guillaume Tell Overture, mm. 17–23.

  
  

 


    
  









  




  




 
  

 


 

    




  

 

  
    

 
 


   
 
 
  



                                 
 


 

                         
 



         


and move in the original range of the double basses. The scales also echo the
E–A# motion in measures 21–23 in the bass, as marked in brackets. His rework-
ing thus reveals both his close attention to the integrity of the timpani’s rolls
and his artistry in extending them into his pianistic version.42
Liszt offered freer and more fantasy-like passages in his partition of Rossini’s
overture than in any other partitions. As observed above, the timpani rolls were
perhaps derived from his improvisatory practice in which a standard tremolo
changes into other figurations. The improvisatory-like passages, as illustrated
in examples 3.6a–d, make the Liszt’s Guillaume Tell align more with the com-
poser’s realm of fantasy through cadenzas and embellishments. These pas-
sages appear with the marking of “quasi cadenza” in his ossia (ex. 3.6a); a
delicatamente scale in the penultimate measure of the phrase (ex. 3.6b); and
an ad libitum passage that concludes the characteristic fanfare-motive of the
introduction to the Finale, suspending the moment for the following gallop
(ex. 3.6c). As shown in example 3.6d, the extended chromatic scale toward
the conclusion of the entire piece makes an indelible impression against the
backdrop of the marching rhythmic pattern of the Finale. The chromatic scale
up to the middle of the passage, as marked in brackets, belongs to Rossini. Yet
its extension to the extreme is Liszt’s. Rossini’s scale served as a source of inspi-
ration for Liszt to extemporize and recompose it, suspending the moment (see
the change to 44 meter from the original 42 meter) and thus making his render-
ing unique.

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Kim.indd 74
Example 3.5b. Guillaume Tell Overture, mm. 17–23, Liszt arrangement.

 

  
  


      
      
                       
   




    







 
 




     
   
          
 
       
             

           
    
    
     



       
    
 
                                                                 
   

2/5/2019 4:06:49 PM
 Example 3.6a. Guillaume Tell Overture, ossia “quasi cadenza,” mm. 201 and 206–8,
Liszt arrangement.
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        K    K  K  K  K   K     K    K    K  K  K  K    K     K    K 
  2VVLD
 
    K   K     K   K     K    @ 

  K   @     K   @      K 
 
     
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Example 3.6b. Guillaume Tell Overture, mm. 193–94, Liszt arrangement.

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Example 3.6c. Guillaume Tell Overture, ad libitum passage, mm. 240–42, Liszt
arrangement.



 
 
 
     

     

   
     
 
     
 
 
  

 

Kim.indd 75 2/5/2019 4:06:49 PM

 76 ❧ chapter three

Example 3.6d. Guillaume Tell Overture, mm. 455–60, Liszt arrangement.


 K           K  “  K   K    K       
     K    K   K      K   
    K     
      
               
       
$OOHJUR9LYDFH
“{ { { { { { { { {
{ { { { { { { { 
    

                  
  (   
G    
                             
  ¦ ¦ ¦     ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ 
¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦

The improvisatory-like passages, as shown in examples 3.6a–d, are more

noticeable and prominent in the Liszt–Rossini partition than in his other par-
titions, in which they appear sporadically in only a few instances; there are
almost none throughout the set of Beethoven symphonies but a few in the
Liszt–Berlioz Symphonie fantastique and the Liszt–Weber overtures.43 Such des-
ignations as “quasi-cadenza” and “ad-lib”—which are directly associated with a
fantasy-like quality—are completely absent from other partitions. The impro-
visatory-like passages make the partition of the Liszt–Rossini Guillaume Tell dis-
tinctive. And yet in Liszt’s categorization it remained a partition, not a fantasy.
It follows the original structure closely, with no extensions or deletions, and in
other respects is like the partitions.

Liszt’s Dynamic Text–Event Dualism

Liszt’s arrangement of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture was written about a

year after his earlier arrangements of Beethoven’s symphonies were finished.
Liszt showed his reverence for both Beethoven and Rossini, but his attempts to
align himself with each of his predecessors are different: unwavering allegiance
to the former and more liberality toward the latter. Although the audience still
heard Rossini’s music through Liszt’s faithful observance of the original struc-
ture, the performance accounts and several of his distinctive reworking meth-
ods help to show us a freer, more flexible and individual type of arrangement

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 between “text” and “event” ❧ 77

than his earlier partitions. After all, a Beethoven symphony may be a “sacred
text,” but a Rossini opera is a platform for performance in the same way that a
Rossini aria is an opportunity for the soprano to show off her skills and expres-
sivity. Liszt’s Guillaume Tell, nevertheless, reveals that the text–event dualism is
not straightforward but unfolds in a dynamic way. On the one hand, a sense
of dualism is ineradicable in Liszt’s treatment of Beethoven score as “sacred
text” and Rossini’s as a platform for performance. On the other hand, Liszt’s
Guillaume Tell—if we isolate this particular partition from the group of partitions
as a whole—straddles the distinction between the score-based “text” and the
performance-based “event.” The piece remains a partition, not a fantasy. The
subsequent chapter shifts our focus from his partitions during his virtuoso years
to his partitur-type arrangements for two pianos written in his Weimar period,
demonstrating how a new direction arose from the new medium of two pianos.

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 Chapter Four

Translating the Orchestra

Liszt’s Two-Piano Arrangements
of His Symphonic Poems

During his Weimar years, from 1848 to 1861, Liszt made far fewer faithful
arrangements of orchestral music for solo piano that he had during his vir-
tuoso years of the 1830s and 1840s.1 The traveling virtuoso pianist became
a “serious” composer when he reigned as Kapellmeister at the Grand-Ducal
court in Weimar.2 Yet his metamorphosis into a self-conscious composer
did not thwart his earlier interest in orchestral arrangements for keyboard,
as evident in his technically and acoustically stunning arrangement of the
overture to Wagner’s Tannhäuser (1848). Despite the fact that the number
of orchestral arrangements for solo piano sharply decreased, during the
1850s and early 1860s there is a noticeable increase in the number of four-
hand and two-piano arrangements in Liszt’s oeuvre. The majority of the
arrangements are of his own twelve symphonic poems, as well as his two
symphonies with chorus published between 1856 and 1862, as shown in
table 4.1.
Some of Liszt’s correspondence, including his letters to Louis Köhler in
1856, discloses his preference for his two-piano settings over their four-hand
counterparts, distinguishing the two types with respect to recipients, func-
tion, and compositional approach.3 Reorienting our focus toward Liszt’s
two-piano arrangements reveals that the oeuvre holds a unique position in
the development of the medium during the second half of the century. This
chapter offers insight into the distinctive aspects of his two-piano arrange-
ments and details about Liszt’s compositional methods in his transferring
and reworking musical material.

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 translating the orchestra ❧ 79

Table 4.1. Liszt’s Two-Piano Arrangements of Orchestral Compositions at Weimar

Date composed/
Source composer Composition published
Ludwig van Beethoven Ninth Symphony 1851/1853
Liszt’s twelve symphonic poems
Festklänge 1853/1856, rev.
c.1860
Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne 1854–56/1857
Tasso 1854–56/1857
Les préludes ?1855/1856
Orpheus 1855–56/1856
Mazeppa 1855/1857
Prometheus 1855–56/1856–57
Héroïde funèbre 1854–56/1856–57
Hungaria 1855–56/1857
Die Ideale 1855–56/1858
Hunnenschlacht 1857–60/1861
Hamlet 1858–60/1861
Liszt’s symphonies with chorus
Eine Faust-Symphonie 1856/1862, rev. 1870
Eine Symphonie zu Dantes Divina 1856–57/1858–59
Commedia

The Distinctive Position of Liszt’s Two-Piano Arrangements

Liszt’s arrangements, both for four hands and for two pianos, align them-
selves within the mainstream of the media of the time. Judging by the lists of
compositions in the Handbuch der musikalischen Literatur and its supplements
(1817–27), edited by Carl Friedrich Whistling and Friedrich Hofmeister, far
fewer two-piano arrangements were published throughout the nineteenth cen-
tury than arrangements for solo piano and four hands.4 The disproportion
between four-hand and two-piano arrangements is also true of Liszt’s works.
Between 1834 and 1883, he published sixty four-hand arrangements compared
with thirty arrangements for two pianos, with eight of the latter being concerto
arrangements and arrangements for eight hands on two keyboards.5 The dis-
proportion in their publication is reflected in turn in the disproportion in the
existing secondary literature. Arrangements for two pianos in the nineteenth

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 80 ❧ chapter four

century, in comparison with those for solo piano or four hands, have been
studied only cursorily or invoked as part of an umbrella subject, “piano tran-
scriptions.”6 Not surprisingly, Liszt’s two-piano arrangements occupy a decid-
edly marginalized position in the literature.7
Two-piano arrangements, unlike solo and four-hand arrangements,
become more common during the last two decades of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Wilhelm Altman’s catalogue, Verzeichnis von Werken
für Klavier, excerpted from the Whistling–Hofmeister Handbuch through
1942, provides brief but useful information about two-piano arrangements
of various genres as published from the 1850s through the early 1940s.8 The
genres include symphonies, overtures, piano concertos, dances and marches
written for orchestra, and chamber music.9 One-fourth of the two-piano
arrangements published during those years are of orchestral music—mostly
symphonies and symphonic poems.10 Even given the small number of two-
piano settings during the second half of the nineteenth century, there was
an overall increase toward the end of the century.11 The repertoire in all of
the genres reached its peak of production in the 1880s to 1910s.12 Although
two-thirds of the arrangements of orchestral music stem from those decades,
Liszt’s arrangements are distinctively situated in the earliest stage of this rep-
ertoire: his arrangement of Beethoven’s Ninth was published in 1853 and
those of his own twelve symphonic poems in 1856–61, not to mention his two
symphonies with chorus, Faust (1862; rev. 1870–80) and Dante (1858–59).13
Moreover, it should be noted that even in the golden age of the two-piano
arrangement, the number of two-piano publications is only one-fourth that
of the four-hand publications.14 Liszt’s oeuvre has a higher proportion: closer
to one-third. Therefore, the relatively copious output of Liszt’s arrangements
for two pianos has an unusual significance in this overall marginalized por-
tion of the repertoire.15
Liszt’s transferal technique, as will be discussed in detail in musical analyses,
moves forward by advocating fidelity to the original orchestral compositions.
Such a method was unusual in the domain of two-piano arrangement prior to
or during his time; it was more common from the 1880s to the 1910s.16 Liszt’s
scrupulous two-piano arrangements, therefore, establish his distinctive and
progressive position within the spectrum of “faithful” orchestral arrangements
for two pianos. It would not be overstating the case to say that Liszt ushered
in a new method in the field of orchestral arrangements for two pianos in the
mid-century by consistently advocating a more conscientious approach to the
original. Liszt’s two-piano arrangements, in a word, were in the vanguard of
technical and aesthetic development of the medium during the second half of
the century.

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 translating the orchestra ❧ 81

Purposes

Liszt outwardly expressed different attitudes toward four-hand and two-piano

settings of his symphonic poems, as illustrated by to a letter to Louis Köhler
written May 24, 1856:

At first I tried a four-hand arrangement of it [my symphonic poem], which

would be more practical for sales. But I soon abandoned this mutilation when
I realized that in the four-hand composition the intertwining of the hands
gets too much in the way of my sonic structure. The two-piano arrangement,
if I am not wrong, sounds reasonable. Bülow, Bronsart, Pruckner, etc. have
played it several times, and certainly you will find in Königsberg a partner
whom you [could] induce [to play] it.17

Liszt made a distinction between four-hand and two-piano arrangements,

regarding the former as “more practicable for sales” yet incapable of capturing
his “tones,” while the latter, although it appears acceptable (“sounds reason-
able”), remains the province of advanced pianists.
Similarly, as stated in a letter from 1857 to Wladimir Stasoff in St. Petersburg,
Liszt regarded his two-piano arrangements as having little to do with commerce
but rather as appropriate for a few groups of competent pianists; moreover, he
preferred the two-piano versions, which help preserve the essential elements of
the original:

In addition, you will not be unaware that arrangements for two pianos—
the only ones suitable for conveying the design and grouping of ideas of
certain works—are little in favor among music sellers and sell poorly. The
great mass of pianists are hardly capable of playing them on the piano, and
care very little (except for a desire to be on good behavior and to show
some respect for another human [i.e., the composer]) about any matters
of intellectual and emotional substance that could be related to the move-
ments of their fingers.18

In the two letters above, Liszt not only establishes a distinction between
four-hand and two-piano arrangement—“for consumption” versus “unsale-
able”—but also ultimately implies a hierarchy between the two.19 In addition,
he suggests that his two-piano arrangement requires more than the typical
capabilities of “the great mass of pianists.” From the outset, therefore, Liszt
attempts to elevate the status of his two-piano arrangements to the level of vir-
tuosic renderings unplayable by all but the most experienced pianists.
Compositional and publication information regarding Liszt’s two-piano
arrangements is bound up with how he privileged the medium over its

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 82 ❧ chapter four

four-hand counterpart, despite some inconsistencies in a few arrangements.

The majority of Liszt’s two-piano versions—ten out of the twelve—appeared
simultaneously with the corresponding orchestral scores.20 More signifi-
cantly, Liszt himself arranged the entire set of his symphonic poems for two
pianos, whereas initially he had his pupils and associates prepare a few of the
four-hand arrangements.21 Furthermore, Liszt paid greater attention to the
details of the original in his two-piano arrangements, whereas in four-hand
versions he usually deployed more simplified, shortened, and less demand-
ing figurations.22
Liszt’s immediate sharing his two-piano arrangements with his acquain-
tances suggests that the medium played a special role for him. Several
accounts in his letters reveal that he distributed to his associates the scores of
his symphonic poems and two-piano arrangements simultaneously; on some
occasions, the two-piano version went out prior to the orchestral score. For
instance, along with an 1857 letter to the wife of Wilhelm von Kaulbach, whose
painting inspired Liszt’s symphonic poem Hunnenschlacht, the composer sent
her his manuscript of the arrangement.23 The impulse behind such eager shar-
ing was apparently not only his belief in the medium of two pianos as the most
effective means to convey the essence of his own orchestral compositions, but
also his desire to ensure that his audience obtain a fuller and richer compre-
hension of the original. Through his two-piano settings Liszt was also able to
respond to impatient members of his audience who were anxious to hear his
latest music, as Liszt reported in a letter to Eduard Liszt in 1863, recounting his
encounter with Princess Marcelline Czartoryska:

During her residence here she on several occasions expressed the wish to
become acquainted with some of my compositions (to which, whether inten-
tionally or not, she had hitherto not paid much attention). I played with her
my arrangement of the Symphonic Poems for 2 pianofortes—the Héroïde
funèbre, Tasso, and Les préludes—which she received with kindly and courteous
tolerance.24

Performance Anecdotes

A group of professional pianists were the primary performers of Liszt’s two-

piano arrangements of his symphonic poems. Liszt himself was at the center of
these renditions with his pupils.25 Francis Planté and Camille Saint-Saëns were
among the pianists who promoted Liszt’s symphonic poems by their perfor-
mances of these arrangements,26 which were favorably received by his contem-
poraries.27 Liszt himself described the two-piano performances of Les préludes
and Tasso in his letter to Princess Carolyne on May 10, 1866:

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 translating the orchestra ❧ 83

Rossini’s matinée, with Les Préludes and Tasso—Planté was at the second
piano—succeeded beyond my expectations. Little by little people seem
to take on a certain opinion of my talent as composer—but we are still at
the preliminaries. Last evening, we again played Les Préludes and Tasso with
Planté at the home of Princess Marceline. She had gathered a carefully cho-
sen group of twelve to hear these things. Tomorrow evening we will play the
Dante [Symphony] with Saint-Saëns at Gustave Doré’s. Saint-Saëns and Planté
are passionate for my symphonic poems, which are secretly beginning to
make their little way.28

Liszt’s letter offers insight into the important functions of his two-piano
arrangements in private gatherings. Through such events, Liszt and his col-
laborating pianists were able to render comprehensible performances of newly
composed music before a “carefully chosen group of twelve [in the audience].”
Through their two-piano medium, Liszt’s symphonic poems were “secretly
beginning to make their little way” to forge his image as an orchestral com-
poser.29 The private concert would have also provided a forum for the selected
guests to discuss and evaluate Liszt’s innovative symphonic poems, sometimes
before the actual concert performance, as illustrated in a performance of
Liszt’s Hamlet for two pianos in Károly Thern’s home.30
In addition to such private performances, Liszt’s two-piano arrangements
simultaneously appeared in the public sphere as concert pieces performed
by professional pianists. The most representative examples of public perfor-
mances of Liszt’s arrangements is probably the concert series arranged by
Walter Bache in London during 1865–1887.31 As one of Liszt’s pupils and a
prominent British pianist of the time, Bache organized the concert series to
promote Liszt’s compositions, particularly those for large-scale orchestra, on
his return to London after studying with Liszt for two years in Rome (1863–
65). One of Bache’s strategies was to include the two-piano arrangements of
Liszt’s Les préludes, Die ideale, Orpheus, and Mazeppa, all of which took on great
significance in programming.32
Bache’s particular strategies in presenting Liszt’s music draw our attention.
Bache deliberately introduced a two-piano version of the symphonic poem first
and then its orchestral version.33 If members of the London audience followed
Bache’s plan, they would have had a foretaste of Liszt’s new orchestral music.
By hearing the arrangement in advance, a cultivated listener would have
been prepared to hear the new composition in performance. Bache clearly
acknowledged the original intent underlying Liszt’s differing approaches to
his two-piano and four-hand settings. Bache was particularly aware that Liszt’s
two-piano arrangements retained far more fidelity to the original than his four-
piano versions, which is precisely why Bache recommended Liszt’s two-piano
arrangement of Festklänge instead of the corresponding four-hand one; in the
printed program for his London concert series on February 25, 1875, Bache

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 84 ❧ chapter four

overtly stated that he believed the faithful two-piano arrangement would help
the audience become acquainted better with the details of the original.34
What Bache attempted and achieved through his concert series was, on the
surface, not different from the generally conceived function of nineteenth-
century piano arrangements: a means to learn the latest music, to promote
the original composer and composition, to prepare the public for subsequent
concerts, to give critics and reviewers an opportunity to pay attention, and to
prompt discussion afterwards. It is important to note, however, that Bache’s
concerts also reflected the composer’s own conception about two-piano
arrangements as belonging to the sphere of professional pianists and able to
provide a fuller understanding of the original. Bache’s concerts ultimately ele-
vated the status of Liszt’s two-piano arrangements of the symphonic poems to
independent concert pieces in their own right and treated them as worthy of
being repeated in performances during the composer’s lifetime.

Liszt’s Transferal and Reworkings

Liszt’s transferring techniques reveal how comprehensively he understood the

resources available on the two keyboards. His techniques are often inextrica-
bly linked to the programmatic content of the original symphonic poem. On
occasion Liszt even provides a complete rereading of his own symphonic work
in his pianistic considerations, in which he effectively uses the physical, visual,
and acoustic sources available on the pianos.

Distinctive Types of Distribution

The use of two keyboards naturally leads arrangers to take into account the
ways they can distribute musical material over the instruments, how they treat
the pianists, and how they can exploit new effects through the interaction
between the two. On special occasions Liszt offers a new way of thinking about
distribution, in which his meticulous approach to the original and his creative
approach to two keyboards demonstrate the individuality of his transferal
techniques.
As illustrated in the opening of Les préludes (exx. 4.1a and 4.1b), Liszt strik-
ingly cuts the phrase in the middle by dividing the unison strings between the
pianos, effectively moving the theme from the second piano (in a low register)
to the first piano (in a higher register).35 It is no coincidence that this division
corresponds to the shift in instruments from a grouping of four string parts to
a grouping of three. Liszt’s deliberate redistribution in mid-phrase represents
his faithful response to the subtle distinction of timbres by means of the shift
from one group of strings to the other.36

Kim.indd 84 2/5/2019 4:07:03 PM

 Example 4.1a. Liszt, Les préludes, two-piano version, opening.

œœ œ
‰ œ œ œœœœœ œ
Andante.

&c ∑ ∑ ∑ Ó
2 4 5

œ œœ
p Quartet
œ œ
1. Pianoforte.
?c ∑ ∑ ∑ Ó ‰ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ œ
œœ
Andante.

&c Ó . Œ Ó . Œ Œ Œ ∑
œ œ œ . œj œ œœœ œœ
œ
2. Pianoforte
p Quartet
?c Ó œ Œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ. œ œ œœ œŒ ∑
œ. œ. œ. œ œ œ œ œœ œ œœ œ
J œ

Example 4.1b. Liszt, Les préludes, opening, only string parts.

œœœ œ
Andante.

&c Ó Œ Ó Œ Œ œ
œ . œj œ œœ œ
pizz. arco

œ œ œœ
œœœœ
Violin I
p
œ œœœ œ
&c Ó Œ Ó Œ Œ œœ œ
œ . œj œ
pizz. arco

œ œ œœ
œœœœ
Violin II
p
œœ œ
Bc Ó Œ Ó Œ Œ Œ Ó Ó Œ œœ
œœ œ
pizz. arco

œ œ
Viola

p
?c Ó œ Œ Ó œ Œ Œ œ . œj œ œœ œœ ∑
arco

œœœœ
pizz.

p
Cello

?c Ó j œœœ œœœœ
œ Œ Œ œ. œ œ
arco

œ Œ Ó ∑
pizz.

œ
p
Double Bass

Kim.indd 85 2/5/2019 4:07:04 PM

 86 ❧ chapter four

As well as representing his faithfulness to the score, Liszt’s division also

creates a novel effect in both visual and aural dimensions not inherent in the
original uniform writing for strings. Through this distribution and interaction
between the two pianos, Liszt’s reworking enables both audience and per-
former to experience a wider spectrum of sound than that available on one
keyboard. In addition, when considering the physical placement of the two pia-
nos, whether placed tail to tail or side by side, the movement of the thematic
line from one piano to the other corresponds to a subtle change of timbre,
while at the same time creating a different type of visual and aural sensation.
The movement of two halves of a single thematic line between the pianos is
made more noticeable in performance; moreover, it requires the pianists to
listen to each other attentively to execute a continuous thematic idea through
their interplay.
Liszt could have transferred the opening thematic line to only one piano,
or he could have made the two pianists play it in unison, as a literal rendering
might have done; the result, however, would inevitably have been a consistent
and monotonous sound on the keyboard. Liszt’s division avoids the potential
defect of the literal reproduction and offers a solution to the lack of color
that is often deplored in piano arrangements. By using the resources avail-
able on the two keyboards fully and effectively, Liszt’s reworking, through his
skillful distribution of musical material, transports audience and performer
into a larger musical space, ultimately eliciting his own novel effects in his
two-piano score.37
The excerpts from Liszt’s Dante Symphony shown in examples 4.2a and
4.2b, illustrate another way that Liszt deploys a distinctive type of distribu-
tion and coordination between the pianos. At first sight, piano 1 and piano 2
share a series of incessant two-note motives, yet piano 1 follows the wind parts,
whereas the figuration in piano 2 evokes the tremolos in a series of triplets in
the strings. Because the movement of the right hands of the pianos is oblique
rather than not synchronized, the right hand of piano 2 does not simply
double the material of piano 1 uniformly; instead, piano 2 follows piano 1 an
eighth note later, as if chasing or imitating what has just happened. Moreover,
the oblique movement of the two pianists occurs in the midst of an accelerando
in a rapid tempo, creating an effect akin to tremolo pulsations in the strings.
Liszt’s reworking thus simultaneously fulfills the dual demands of capturing
the characteristic main motive and simulating tremolos.
The way in which Liszt accomplished the tremolo effect is notable. He could
have used conventional keyboard idioms, including broken octaves. Instead,
he decided to take advantage of the interaction between the pianists, who must
carefully time their imitations to approximate a tremolo-like effect.
Despite the distinction between strings and woodwinds in the original,
which Liszt could have approximated by assigning the string tremolos to one

Kim.indd 86 2/5/2019 4:07:21 PM

 Example 4.2a. Liszt, Dante Symphony, reh. E, two-piano version, mm. 79–81.

j # œ n œj # œ n œ. ‹ œ # œ. œ . # œ # œ.
Allegro frenetico
4
& 4 n œœ # # œœ ‰ œœ # # œœ ‰ # œœ # ‹ œœ ‰ # œœ # n œœ ‰ ‹ # œœ n # # œœœ ‰# œœ n # œœ ‰
# œ n œ
. . J > J J J
. n œ # œ. n œ # œ . # œ # œ. # œ œ.
? 44 # œ Jœ. ‰# œ œJ ‰
Ped. Ped.
1. Pianoforte

J ‰ J ‰ J ‰ J ‰

& 44 ‰ ## œœœ ‰ #‹n œœœ ‰# ‹ œœœ ‰ # n# œœœ ‰‹ # œœœ ‰n # # œœœ ‰## œœœ ‰ n ## œœœ
‰n # œœœ ‰# n œœ ‰# œœœ ‰# #n œœœ
#œ
>
. # œ .
œ n œ # .
œ n œ # œ. # œ # œ. # œ œ.
? 44 # œ Jœ ‰ J ‰ J J ‰
2. Pianoforte
J ‰ ‰ J ‰
Ped. accelerando Ped.

Kim.indd 87 2/5/2019 4:07:26 PM

 Example 4.2b. Liszt, Dante Symphony, reh. E, mm. 79–81.

> # >œœ n œ. ‰ # >œœ n # œœ. ‰

Allegro frenetico
j # >œ n œ. >œ . # >œ # œ.
accel.

4 # œ n # œœ ‰ œ œ ‰
& 4 # œœ # n œœ. ‰ œ # œ ‰ #œ
J J J J
J
Oboe
p
4 >œ # œ.
&4 ∑ Ó ‰ ∑
E. Hn.
J
F
4 > > j > j > > j > j
& 4 # œ n œ. j ‰ # œ n œ. ‰ # œ n œ. ‰ œ œ. ‰ œ # œ ‰ œ # œ. ‰
Cl. (B b)
J .
p
>œ # œ.
4 ∑ Ó J ‰ ∑
&4
F
B. Cl. (A)

>œ # œ. >œ # œ. # >œ # œ. # >œ œ.

? 44 # >œ œ. ‰ >œ œ.
a 2.

Bsn. J J ‰ J ‰ J ‰ J ‰ J ‰
p
r.
4 ∑ Œ ‰ ≈Rœ Œ œ ∑
Hn. (F) &4 .
f
4 #œ. nœ. # œ . n œ . ‹ >œ . # œ . œ. #œ. #œ. #œ.
Violin I & 4 #!œ . #œ.
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
p
4
& 4 ‹ œ!. # œ!. œ!. # œ!. œ . # œ!. # >œ . n œ . # œ!. n œ!. œ. œ.
Violin II
! ! ! ! !
p
#œ. #œ. #œ. ‹œ. # >œ . n œ . œ. #œ œ. #œ.
B 44 !œ . #œ. ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !. ! !
Viola
!
p >œ . # œ .
#œ. nœ. œ. #œ. #œ. #œ. #œ. nœ.
Cello
? 44 #!œ . nœ.
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
p
D. B.
? 44 ∑ ∑ ∑
accel.

Kim.indd 88 2/5/2019 4:07:29 PM

 translating the orchestra ❧ 89

piano and the salient motives in the woodwinds to the other, he chose not to
make an overt distinction between the two groups of instruments in his pia-
nistic layout and distribution. Seeing the potential similarity between the two
with respect to contour, he attempted to capture the simultaneity of two differ-
ent layers of textures of the orchestral score, the etched two-note motives and
tremolos, focusing on their combined effect.
He further extended the material to recreate his own performance man-
ner, imposing a new type of technical virtuosity on the pianists. The result
of his reworking captures the disparate textures of the articulated motive
and tremolos simultaneously, not through an overt distinction in layout, but
through a unique performance manner that exploits the interaction between
the pianos.

Virtuosic Display as a Response to Programmatic References

The addition of virtuosic pianistic figurations is one of Liszt’s characteristic rework-

ings throughout his orchestral arrangements. Such virtuosic display provides an
effective vehicle for Liszt to convey the particular orchestral effects and program-
matic reference to his own symphonic poems. As illustrated in the excerpts from
his Mazeppa in examples 4.3a and 4.3b, the stunningly virtuosic figuration in piano
1 is the result of Liszt’s pianistic rendering. The figuration transforms the undu-
lating triplets in the strings (the upper parts of both violin 1 and 2) into bravura
arpeggios that unfold widely across the keyboard.38 The orchestral figurations are
consistent for over sixty measures (mm. 118–47 and mm. 180–211).39 Had Liszt
transferred the figurations in a literal manner, his rendering would have been
monotonous. Instead, the newly devised virtuosic figurations represent his attempt
to sustain interest in the consistent orchestral accompaniment in the piano score,
while simultaneously transforming it to a dazzling pianistic one.40
Liszt’s conventional virtuosic figurations, however, gain particular meaning
in relation to his faithful response to the original orchestration, which is essen-
tially used to highlight the program. In his analysis of Mazeppa, Saint-Saëns
praised Liszt’s use of orchestration to aptly portray an image of an immense
and unlimited landscape as the backdrop to Mazeppa’s disturbing ride and his
resulting disorientation. Saint-Saëns was particularly impressed with the “mar-
velous orchestral effect” Liszt created toward the middle of the composition,41
at a point where the divisi writing in the strings produces idiomatic undulating
figurations in an expansive range with “height and depth,” while the remain-
ing string parts participate in “a mass of little sounds of all types,” either piz-
zicato or col legno. Saint-Saëns thus describes both the vastness in range and the
delicacy in the sound of the strings; example 4.3b shows the part of the middle
section described by Saint-Saëns, corresponding to his remark about the use of
the strings.

Kim.indd 89 2/5/2019 4:07:40 PM

 90 ❧ chapter four

Example 4.3a. Liszt, Mazeppa, “Un poco meno Presto,” two-piano version,
mm. 118–21.

b œ œ8 - - - œ- - - b œ œ8 - - - -œ- b œ 8œ- - - - -œ b œ 8 -œ- - - - œ-

Un poco meno Presto.

bb 4 ‰œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ œ œœ œœ
œ
& 4
° p leggiero´ volanteœ ´
? b b 44 ‰ œœ́ ‰ œJ ‰ J ‰
b œ œ́ œœ́ b œœ Jœœ́
1. Pianoforte

œ́ J ‰Œ œ́ ‰ J ‰ J ‰ ‰ ‰Œ
J œ œœ œœœœœ J œ œœ œœœœœ
p
> j j
Ossia.

b w> b˙ œ >
bb 4 b w œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ ww b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ˙˙b œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œœ
f marcata assai la melodia.

& 4 ‰ ‰ J ‰ J‰
° p (quasi tremolando.) °
b 4 ‰ ‰ ‰ ‰
& b 4 b w œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ b ˙ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj j bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œj‰
> œ w ˙ œ
> > > J
bw b >˙ .. œ w ˙ œ
Un poco meno Presto

b 4 b ˙ ..
& b 4 bw œ w
J
˙ Œ ‰ œ
J
bw b >˙ .. œ w
2. Pianoforte f espressivo dolente.

? b b 44 ˙ œ
J Œ ‰ J

Saint-Saëns’ interpretation helps reinvigorate the meaning of the seem-

ingly conventional virtuosic figuration of example 4.3a. Liszt could have
transferred the undulating pattern of the strings in a literal manner, as his
ossia for piano 2 suggests. The virtuosic figuration that Liszt carefully selected
can be characterized as arpeggios, which require skips and sweeps across a
wide range of the keyboard, as if approximating the image of the immense
landscape. Liszt’s own addition of the performance marking “leggiero volante”
(“lightly flying”) at a soft dynamic, in conjunction with other disparate figura-
tions that include leaping staccatissimo notes on the beat in the left hand and
low B♭–F alternating figures, all help create a sense of a “mass of little sounds
in all types.” The bravura figurations Liszt recreated for the strings, there-
fore, represent his scrupulous attention to the close correlation between a
particular orchestral effect and a programmatic reference. Liszt’s own vir-
tuosic figuration dazzles the ears—and the eyes—of the audience, yet on a
deeper level it ultimately demonstrates his conscientious approach to the
essence of the original and his ability to use conventional virtuosic figuration
in a programmatically significant role.

Kim.indd 90 2/5/2019 4:07:43 PM

Kim.indd 91
Example 4.3b. Liszt, Mazeppa, mm. 118–21.
Un poco più mosso, sempre agitato assai
Flute
b ∑ ∑
&b 44
a 2.

Oboe
b b ˙ .. œ
&b 44 b w
J
f espressivo dolente
bw b ˙ ..
E. Hn.
œ
&b 44 J
f espressivo dolente

Cl. in A
b ∑ ∑
& b b b b 44
bw b ˙ .. œ
B. Cl.
? b J
b 44

a 2.
f espressivo dolente
Bsn. B bb 44 b w b ˙ .. œ
J
f espressivo dolente
Tpt. b ˙ .. j
& 44 binw Es. œ
bw b ˙ .. œ
F espressivo dolente
Div.
bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
b bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ œ bœ œ œ œ œ œ œ ‰ œ œ ‰
3 3 3 3 3 3
&b 44 œ
Vln. 1 pizz. 3
p
*)
3
bœ œ
b œ b œ3
&b 44 Œ œ œ Ó
bœ
3 3 3 3 3 3
œ
b b œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ b œœ œœ œœ œœ ‰ œœ ‰
&b 44 œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ œœ
Vln. 2
p
3 3
b Œ Œ Ó
&b 44 Ó
col legno
bœ œ œ bœ œ œ
(f) marcatissimo marc.
B bb ∑ œ́ œ́ Œ
44 œ́ œ́ œ œ
Viola
ÿ
rin f
ÿ
3 3

B bb 44 Ó œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ Ó
col legno
pizz.
(f)
œ bœ b œœ
? b j ‰ œ ‰ J ‰ J ‰ Ó œ ‰ Œ
b 44 œ J J
Cello f
? b Œ œ œ3 œ Œ œ œ3 œ Œ Ó
b 44 œ
(f) col legno
pizz.

D. B.
? b ‰ Œ Ó ∑
b 44 œj
(f)
(continued)

2/5/2019 4:07:52 PM
Kim.indd 92
Example 4.3b.—(concluded)
a 2. œ
Fl.
b ∑ Ó Œ ‰ J
&b
f
Ob.
b w ˙. ‰ œ
&b J
f
E. Hn.
w ˙. Œ
&b

A Cl.
bb ∑ Ó Œ ‰ œ
&bbb J
f
Ob.
w ˙.
? bb Œ

Bsn.
B bb w ˙. ‰ œ
J
f
B b Tpt. & w ˙. Œ
w ˙.
bœ. 6 œ. œ. 6 œ. bœ. œ. œ œ œ œ
Vln.
b œ. bœ. œ. œ. œ. bœ. œ œ œ œ
&b ‰ ‰
3 3
3
b œ œ
&b Œ bœ œ Ó
bœ œ bœ œ
6 6
Vln.
b b œœ .. œœ .. b œœ .. œœ ‰ œœ ‰
&b œœ .. œœ .. œœ .. œœ œœ

3 3
b Ó Œ Œ Ó
&b bœ œ œ bœ œ œ
marc.
Vla. B bb ∑ œ́ œ́ Œ
œ́ œ́ œ œ
ÿ
rf
ÿ
3 3

B bb Ó œ œ œ Œ œ œ œ Œ Ó

bœ
Vc.
j œ œ J
b œœ
œ
? bb
œ ‰ J ‰ J ‰ ‰ Ó J ‰ Œ

? bb
œ Œ œ œ3 œ Œ œ œ3 œ Œ Ó
(arco) (col legno)
D.B.
? bb j ‰ Œ Ó ∑
œ

2/5/2019 4:08:06 PM
 translating the orchestra ❧ 93

Techniques and Program: Hunnenschlacht (“The Battle of the Huns”)

Liszt’s two-piano rendering of Hunnenschlacht heightens the battle between two

opposing forces—the Huns and Romans—and its resolution inherent in the
original program, while simultaneously reinterpreting them to his own ends.
The major source of inspiration for Liszt’s 1857 symphonic poem was Wilhelm
von Kaulbach’s painting Die Hunnenschlacht (1834–47),42 a large fresco that
depicts the battle, as reproduced in figure 4.1.43 Liszt’s letter of 1879 to Walter
Bache provides insight into how he was envisaging the ideas of the source while
simultaneously reinterpreting them:

Kaulbach’s world-renowned picture presents two battles: one on Earth and

one in the air, according to the legend in which warriors continued to battle
without cease even after their deaths, as spirits. In the middle of the picture
the cross and its mysterious light appear; it is this [the cross and its light]
upon which my symphonic poem is founded. The chorale Crux fidelis, which
develops little by little, embodies the idea of Christianity’s final victory with
its powerful love of God and men.44

As seen in Kaulbach’s copy of the fresco, shown in figure 4.1, the ceaseless
battle is fought on two levels: one on Earth and the other in the air. Liszt takes
the cross that appears in the top left-hand corner of the painting and makes it
the main symbolic concept of his composition.45 His own reading ultimately
led him to deploy the chorale Crux fidelis (“Faithful Cross”) as an embodiment
of Christianity’s victory.
Liszt offered the program to his symphonic poem in both French and
German, to bolster his rereading of the painting and to ensure that the audi-
ence would understand his message properly.46 As set out in his program, Liszt
portrays the two contrasting themes of the Huns and Romans with distinc-
tive musical characteristics.47 As illustrated in example 4.4a, Liszt attempts to
heighten the ferocious character of the Huns’ theme when it first appears in
its entirety in the section Più mosso, Allegro energico assai. The theme is sharply
etched with detailed articulations of staccatos triplets and an accented two-
eighth-note figure, while other parts pound unyielding triplets alternating with
those in the theme.48 The alternating triplets in the theme and accompani-
ment that characterize this passage create a dialogue that emphasizes the alter-
nation of triplets and duplets in the theme itself.49 The angular, terse motivic
ideas, accents built on chromatic passing notes, and strong forward move-
ment all help to convey the fierce character of the Huns, and their violence in
battle.50
In the corresponding two-piano score, as illustrated in example 4.4b, Liszt
preserves the original character of the theme, but its layout is highly charac-
teristic. Whereas the Huns’ theme is presented solely in the first violin in his

Kim.indd 93 2/5/2019 4:08:17 PM

 94 ❧ chapter four

Figure 4.1. Wilhelm von Kaulbach, The Battle of the Huns on the Catalaunian Plains
on June 20, 451 CE (1837), copy, oil on canvas, 137.5 ´ 172.5 cm, Inv. 918. Photo
credit: bpk Bildagentur / Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie / Art Resource, NY. Used with
permission.

orchestral score, Liszt distributes it between the hands of piano 1. This divi-
sion creates a distinction and alternation between the triplet and accented
two-eighth-note figure, both of which comprise a single thematic line in the
original. This particular layout in turn entails a cross-hand technique in exe-
cution, highlighting the accented two-eighth-note figure with an additional
visual effect.51 The inscription “very weightily and sharply marked” (sehr heftig
und scharf markiert) reinforces the articulation.52 Liszt further stresses the two-
eighth-note figure by doubling it in the right hand of piano 2, while the left
hand provides a dissonant background of the unyielding triplets moving in
tritone-related bass lines.53
By separating the accented two-eighth-note figure, Liszt was able to con-
centrate on the characteristic figure in combination with grating accented dis-
sonances, intensifying the ferocious character of the Huns. At the same time
Liszt took full advantage of the two pianos by making the figure visually rec-
ognizable in execution: piano 1 uses the cross-hand technique, synchronized

Kim.indd 94 2/5/2019 4:08:21 PM

 Example 4.4a. Liszt, Hunnenschlacht, reh. A, “Più mosso,” mm. 29–32.

 
  






  %  





  




    


 
         




         

       

   
         
     







 





 
   

           
 
 
           
 



                 
   

 


      

            
#$

Example 4.4b. Liszt, Hunnenschlacht, reh. A, “Più mosso,” two-piano version, mm.
29–32.




 



                                    


       
  
   





    
  

       


            
               
  
  



    


         

  
 
       

 

             
  

    
  
   
 
                                     
      

    

Kim.indd 95 2/5/2019 4:08:23 PM

 96 ❧ chapter four

with the right hand of piano 2. The two pianists thus display a uniform sound
and execution on the surface to heighten the original character of the Huns’
theme; yet at the same time, their rendering creates a distinctive visual, aural,
and physical experience through Liszt’s musical distribution and performa-
tive power.54
The musical characteristics of the Romans’ theme (ex. 4.5a) are exactly
the opposite of the Huns’ theme; the overall diatonic theme of the Romans
sharply contrasts to the chromatic, dissonant theme of the Huns.55 Whereas
the Huns’ theme is constructed on a terse motive in two beats with a series of
staccato eighth notes, the Romans’ theme is extended to a two-measure unit
that repeats four times to shape an eight-measure phrase. In contrast to his
creative rendering of the Huns’ theme in example. 4.4b, Liszt transfers the
contrasting Romans’ theme in a more literal manner, as illustrated in examples
4.5a and 4.5b; nevertheless, his addition of a bass chromatic scale in conjunc-
tion with the theme lends it a different character from the original.
Liszt’s addition of a chromatic scale-passage in example 4.5b creates an
indelible impression. This completely new material serves a distinctive role
related to the particular programmatic content of Hunnenschlacht and Liszt’s
reading of the program in his pianistic terms.56 At the entrance of the chro-
matic scale, Liszt or the editor inserted the inscription geisterhaft (ghostly),
which also appears at the beginning of the symphonic poem to evoke an omi-
nous and foreboding atmosphere just before the battle breaks out. The com-
poser further emphasized the “ghostly” mood of the first section, Tempetuoso,
allegro non troppo, through a performance note: “Conductors: the entire color
should be kept very dark, and all instruments must sound like ghosts.”57
On a surface level, Liszt’s added chromatic-scale passage suggests timpani
rolls,58 capturing the ominous atmosphere through the indication sempre pp.
These additions, however, change the original character of the Romans’ theme
in the tone poem. The ghostly mood of this section is, in fact, absent in the
original orchestral score; moreover, it would not be appropriate for the pris-
tine nature of the Romans.59 Liszt added the contrasting layer of a chromatic
bass to his own ends, seeming to portray the dark force of the introduction’s
ghostly mood as a continual threat to the Romans by reintroducing it in the
midst of a pure statement of their theme. The result of Liszt’s rendering of the
Romans’ theme is not a literal approach to the original, but a new reading that
deliberately juxtaposes the Romans’ theme with the contrasting force of the
Huns. In this reading, the two pianos become two opposing physical forces,
creating an impression of continual battle.
In contrast with the previous themes, the Crux fidelis melody is the embodi-
ment of Liszt’s belief in God and religion, dissociated from any connection to
the themes of mankind. As illustrated in examples 4.6a and 4.6b, it is modal,
conjunct, and in free rhythm, consisting almost entirely of whole notes and

Kim.indd 96 2/5/2019 4:08:23 PM

 Example 4.5a. Liszt, Hunnenschlacht, eight measures before reh. C.

? bb c > > œ. Œ >

a 2. ten. ten. ten.

œ Œ œ ≈ œ œ œ. œ.
3

b ≈ . . . . .
3 3

˙. œ. œ œ. œ. œ. œ. ˙. œ. œ œ.
.
œ. ˙
Bsn.

p marc. .
Ÿ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
sempre piano

? bb c w w w w w
b
π
Timp.

bb c
sempre pianissimo

Vln. I & b ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑
b
Vln. II &bb c ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑

B bbb c
˙@ ˙@ ˙@ ˙@ ˙@ ˙@ ˙@ ˙@ ˙@ ˙@
Viola

p sempre piano

? b c > > œ. >

ten. ten. ten.
Œ
œ. œ ≈ œ. œ. œ. œ œ. œ. œ. ≈ œ. Œ œ. œ œ.
3

bb ˙.
3 3

˙. œ. œ œ. . ˙. . .
Cello

p marc. . .
> œ. . œ
sempre piano

? b c œ Œ Ó Œ œ. Œ œ. Œ Ó Œ œ Œ œ. Œ Ó
pizz.

bb
p
D. B.
p

Example 4.5b. Liszt, Hunnenschlacht, nine measures before reh. C, two-piano

version.

? b c
trem.

bb ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙ ˙
1. Pianoforte π Ped. geisterhaft. sempre pp
? b c‰ ‰ ‰
b b nœbœnœ bœœ# œnœnœbœ œnœ nœ bœnœ bœœ#œ nœnœ bœ œnœ nœbœnœ bœœ# œnœnœbœ
œb œ œ bœ nœ œnœ œ#œœœnœ œ b œ œ bœ nœ œ nœ œ #œœœnœ œbœ
◊ 3
3

> > >

? b c œ. œ ≈œ. œ. Œ ˙ .
ten. ten. ten.

≈œ œ. Œ œ. œ œ.
3

bb
3 3

œ
œ. œ œ. . œ. . ˙ . œ. œ. .œ . .
˙. .
? b c > > >
2. Pianoforte

≈œ. œ. Œ
ten. ten. ten.

œ Œ œ œ œ. œ.
3

bb ≈ . . . .
3 3

˙. œ. œ œ. œ. œ. œ. ˙. œ. œ œ.
.
œ. ˙
◊ .

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 98 ❧ chapter four

Example 4.6a. Liszt, Hunnenschlacht, The Crux fidelis, mm. 96–101.

B bbb c ∑ ∑ w- w- 32
Choral.

T. Tbn.
w w
P marcato
b 32
Violin I & b b c œj ‰ Œ Ó ∑ ∑ ∑
œ
b 32
& b b c ‰ . œ œ ≈œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ‰ Œ ∑
arco

. . œ œ œ. n œ œ. b œ œ. n œ n œ b œ œ œ œ
F .
Violin II
. . .
.
B b b b c ‰ . œ œ. ≈ œ œ. ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ. ≈ œ œ. ≈ nœ œ ≈ b œ œ ≈ nœ nœ ≈ bœ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ ≈ ≈ ‰ Ó 3
2
arco
Viola . . . . . #œ œ. nœ œ. œ œ.
F
? b b c ‰ . œ œ ≈ œ œ. ≈ œ œ. ≈ œ œ. ≈ œ œ. ≈ n œ œ ≈ bœ œ ≈ n œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ ≈ ≈ œ œ. ≈ œ œ. ≈ œ œ ≈ nœ 32
arco

b . . . . . . #œ œ. nœ œ. . nœ.
F
Cello

œ œ œ œ œ
J ‰ Jœ ‰ n Jœ ‰ b Jœ ‰ n œJ ‰ b Jœ ‰ œ ‰ # œ ‰ œ ‰ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰
? bb c J ‰ J ‰ J ‰ J ‰ 32
pizz.

D. B. b J J J J
(mf) marc.
Mark the 4 crochets. Beat alla breve. ( h )

- w- w>
B b b b 3 ˙˙ w w
œ
Œ C ∑
T. Tbn. 2 œ
wild.
b
& b b 32 Œ Œ Ó Ó Œ Œ C ∑
arco furioso

n œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ. nœ œ œ œ œ
Vln. I

ƒ 5
S 5 S 5 S 5 .
bb b 3 Œ
wild.

& 2 Œ Ó Ó Œ Œ C ∑
furioso

n œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ. œ œ œ œ œ. nœ œ œ œ œ
Vln. II

ƒ 5
S 5 S 5 S 5 .
Vla. B b b b 32 ∑ ∑ C ∑

? b 3
œ Vc. b b 2 n œ. ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈œ œ ≈ nœ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ C œ Œ Œ Œ Œ

? b 3 j ‰ œ
b b 2 nœ ‰ œj ‰ Jœ ‰ œ ‰ œj ‰ œj ‰ n œj ‰ j ‰ œj ‰ j j
œ ‰ œ ‰ C ∑
D.B.
J J œ

half notes alternating between triple and duple meter in an attempt to repli-
cate the rhythm of Gregorian chant.60 The plainchant melody “develops little
by little” until it culminates in an apotheosis, as Liszt described in his letter to
Walter Bache from 1879 (quoted above).
Examples 4.6a and 4.6b illustrate part of the process of the theme’s gradual
development and transformation. It should be pointed out that the setting of
the Crux fidelis theme dissociates it immediately from the rest of the orches-
tra in two respects. First, it enters abruptly without any harmonic preparation.
Second, it intrudes on a strikingly contrasting ongoing texture, based on a
particular motive, here named the “Agitato” motive, shown in example 4.6c.61
The contrast is readily apparent: the ongoing Agitato motive is short, staccato,
and driving, whereas the Crux fidelis theme is longer, marcato, and conjunct,

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 Example 4.6b. Liszt, Hunnenschlacht, The Crux fidelis, mm. 96–101, two-piano
version.
b 6
&bb c ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ 4
œ œ œœ œ œ
? b b c ‰ . œœ œœ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œœ œœ n œ œ ≈ b œ œ ≈ n œ œ ≈ b œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈# œ œ ≈ n œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ ≈
1. Pianoforte sempre staccato e piano

b nœ œ b œ œ n œ œ b œ œ œ œ #œ œ n œ œ œ œ nœ 46 œ
œ œ œ œ œ œ nœ œ
>w w>
sempre piano.
b 6
& b b c œj ‰ Œ Ó ∑
w 4
w
F
> >
2. Pianoforte Choral.
? b b c œœœ ‰ Œ Ó ∑ w w 6
b J 4

b 6 ƒ> wild. ƒ> ƒ > >

&bb 4 Œ œ
Œ Ó Ó Œ
œ œ œ
Πc
nœ œ œ œ. œ
œ n œ œ œ. œ
5
œ
. n œ œ œ œ œ.
1. Pno. 5 5 5

? b b 46 ≈ œ œ ≈ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ ≈ œ œ ≈ c œ
œ b nœ œœ œ œ nœ œ œ œ nœ œ œ
œ n œ. œœ œœ œ œ œœ œ œ œ œ n œ œ œœ œœ œ œ n œ œ œ œ œ œ
bb b 6 >˙ w> w> œ.
& 4 ˙ w w œ Œ c

? b b 46 >˙ w> w> œ.

2. Pno.

b Πc

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 100 ❧ chapter four

Example 4.6c. Liszt, Hunnenschlacht, reh. C, “Agitato” motive.

C
b 3
The Tempo always remains the same in the various bar-changes.

&bb 4 ∑ Œ Œ j‰
n œ œ œ5 œ œ œ
1. V.

molto S
b 3
&bb 4 ∑ Œ Œ j‰
n œ œ œ5 œ œ œ
2. V.

molto S

B b b b 43 ‰ . ≈œ œ ≈œ œ ≈ œœ ‰ œ j
œ. ≈
agitato
Vla.
# œ œ. . . . >
p stacc.
. . . . > .j
? b b 43 . # œ œ œ œ œ œ œ
≈ n œœ œœ ‰ œœœ
œ œœ ≈
b j ≈ œœ œœ ≈ œœ œœ ≈ œœ œœ œ
œ . . . J.
Vc.

p stacc. . >
arco . . . . >
? b b 43 œj ≈ œ œ ≈ œ œ ≈# œ œ ≈ nœ œ ‰ œ
j
œ ≈
b .
p stacc.
D. B.

projecting a sense of calmness. As pointed out by Sandra Fallon-Ludwig, this

contrast heightens the disconnect between the Crux fidelis and the agitated
motive, which in turn highlights the opposition between Christianity and bar-
barism.62 The simultaneity of the contrasting textures also represents the two
incessant battles, “one on Earth and one in the air,” described by Liszt in his
letter of 1879. In his arrangement, the two pianos further embody the two lay-
ers of battles, intensifying the “disconnection” between the chant and its con-
trasting accompaniment.
As illustrated in examples 4.3–4.5, the impulse behind certain types of
Liszt’s transferal techniques comes from his response to the programmatic
references of the original symphonic poems. Liszt’s dazzling virtuosic piano
figurations appear unique, reinvigorated, and deliberately designed when cor-
related to a particular orchestral effect and programmatic reference (see ex.
4.3 from his Mazeppa). The salient features of the opposing themes and their
struggle become more heightened, poignant, and even revitalized by Liszt’s
highly characteristic use of the pianos in their layout and division, once again
conflating a visual, aural, and tactile effect and thus imparting to the audience
a new type of hearing experience in the new medium (see exx. 4.4 and 4.5
from his Hunnenschlacht).

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 translating the orchestra ❧ 101

The Two-Piano Experiments

Liszt’s development as a preeminent arranger-composer continued dur-

ing his Weimar years prominently through his two-piano arrangements.
Understanding Liszt’s distinctive approach to the two-piano arrangement
helps refocus our view of these works as members of a larger generic cat-
egory of “piano arrangements” to individualized representations of his com-
positional oeuvre. Liszt’s two-piano arrangements were situated uniquely in
the midst of the development of the medium during the second half of the
century by their relatively large quantity, meticulous approach, and virtuosic
characteristics. Moreover, Liszt’s particular relationship with the medium is
revealed through his overt preference for his two-piano versions over their
four-hand counterparts, his far more scrupulous approach to the former,
and performance testimonies that almost exclusively center on his two-piano
arrangements, in contrast to his rare mentions of those for four hands. The
performance anecdotes regarding public concerts, in particular, help define
his arrangements as virtuosic and independent concert compositions play-
able only by professional pianists.
Liszt was well aware of both the advantages and the disadvantages of arrang-
ing for two pianos. From the depths of his knowledge of the new medium
emerged Liszt’s judicious treatment of the two instruments with respect to
distribution, layout, and interaction. Liszt’s approach contributes to his indi-
viduality as a creative arranger, while at the same time reveals the underly-
ing conscientiousness in his efforts to intensify the characteristic features of
the original orchestral work. Moreover, Liszt’s distribution of the original
material often draws attention to the distinctive effects that result from the
arranger’s astute coordination of the pianos, as he telescopes visual, aural, and
physical movement from one piano to the other, creating a new experience
for the audience and offering unique performance challenges to the pianists.
Furthermore, Liszt’s response to the programmatic references of the original
symphonic poems becomes the impulse behind certain types of transferal tech-
niques. The aesthetic impetus that recurs throughout those techniques is a
result of the complementary concepts of fidelity and creativity.
The next chapter moves into a completely different realm of music, his
reworkings of Hungarian Gypsy–band music in his Hungarian Rhapsodies,
focusing on Liszt’s evocations of cimbalom playing. Whereas his orchestral
arrangements represent the pinnacle of his faithful approach to the models
on the surface and his artistic creativity underneath, his renderings of cimba-
lom playing immediately convey overt novelty in layout, texture, and sound, yet
scrupulous fidelity underneath.

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 Chapter Five

Interpretive Fidelity
to Gypsy Creativity
Liszt’s Representations of
Hungarian Gypsy Cimbalom Playing

Liszt’s first fifteen Hungarian Rhapsodies (which mostly appeared in 1851–

53) immediately draw attention to the pianist-composer’s creativity in pia-
nism through his technical innovations and brilliance. Whereas his distinctive
approach to notation, layout, and technique is considered his contribution to
stylistic innovations in the keyboard idiom, the predominant display of tech-
nical brilliance is often thought to cross the line into self-indulgent show-
manship.1 The negative view of him as a showman stems in part from the
anti-virtuosity polemics that culminated in the German press of the 1840s.2 In
this intellectual environment, Liszt as the virtuoso of his age became suspicious.
His performance of arrangements often radically transformed the original in
order to draw attention to spectacle and physicality.3 Such a style was a target
for critics who condemned the virtuosity for its own sake as too corporeal and
too sensual, devoid of intellect: in short, “superficial,” “trivial,” “empty,” or sim-
ply, in “bad taste.”4
In his book Des bohémiens (1859), discussed in chapter 2, Liszt defended
his role as a virtuoso who has a duty to give life to the “mute and motion-
less” creation of a composer.5 He celebrated Gypsy virtuosity, ornamenta-
tion, and improvisation and essentially attributed the major impetus for his
creativity to the “exotic” and “natural” elements of Gypsy performance.6 Yet
the controversies surrounding his book—among others, that he gave too
much credit to a peripheral group of Gypsy musicians for their contribution

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 103

to Hungary’s national music—have undermined his goal and relegated it to

his alleged “falsely interpreted” idealization of Gypsy music.7 Liszt’s imagined,
Romanticized, and quixotic representation of Gypsy music affected contempo-
rary reception of both his Des bohémiens and his Rhapsodies, and to some extent
that reception has also thwarted research on his reworking methods of captur-
ing Gypsy-band performance styles in realistic detail.
At the other end of the reception spectrum, scholars of Hungarian music
have emphasized how faithfully Liszt emulates the elements of Hungarian pop-
ular Gypsy bands and reproduces existing tunes and the style of their playing
in his Rhapsodies 1–15, lending the impression that it is “as if we heard Gypsy
ensembles in them.”8 However, such a bold assertion raises many questions:
What is the meaning of his fidelity to Gypsy-band music in the midst of these
highly brilliant piano showpieces? How does he faithfully approach the sponta-
neous creativity of Gypsy musicians on the keyboard with his ten fingers? How
does his discovery of Gypsy music push the limitations of the piano into the
territory of “impossible” sounds and timbres? How does he elevate the popu-
lar and “low” aspects of Hungarian Gypsy–style music, peripheral to the main-
stream of the European musical tradition, to the level of Western Romantic
keyboard idioms, or even surpass them?
A number of scholars in Hungarian music have developed a systematic
approach to Hungarian Gypsy–band pieces by classifying them according to
rhythmic and melodic features, harmonic peculiarities, formal structure, and
techniques associated with distinctive instruments.9 As this method has devel-
oped, recent scholars of Hungarian music have reoriented the prevailingly
shallow assessments of Liszt’s Rhapsodies towards a level of artistic, aesthetic,
and stylistic significance by illuminating how the Hungarian Gypsy style deeply
and fundamentally affected his compositional thinking.10
Although Liszt borrowed many musical parameters from Hungarian Gypsy–
style music, one element that has not been discussed in detail in the previous
literature is his relationship with the cimbalom, a distinctive instrument that
formed an integral part of the Gypsy ensemble. This chapter investigates Liszt’s
conscientious renderings of cimbalom playing and his creative reworkings of
it in his Rhapsodies. Through detailed musical analyses of Liszt’s renderings, I
argue that his fidelity to the borrowed material and his creativity in his pianistic
terms are mutually motivating and interdependent.
This chapter proceeds in two parts. Part 1 provides contextual dimensions for
understanding the cimbalom in renowned Gypsy bands that were active in the
orbit of Vienna from the 1780s onwards, Liszt’s relationship with the instrument,
and some of its fundamental idiomatic techniques. Contemporaneous articles
about the cimbalom, “Die Musik der Ungarn” from Neue Zeitschrift für Musik
(1852) and the method book Cimbalom iskola (1886) by Géza Allaga, provide use-
ful examples for exploring several essential techniques of the instrument.11

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 104 ❧ chapter five

Part 2 delves into Liszt’s creative renderings of the cimbalom and identifies
seven salient features of the instrument’s timbre and technique: (1) cimbalom
shimmering and the tremolo; (2) cimbalom trills and their visual effect; (3)
cimbalom flourishes and their distinctive contour; (4) cimbalom repetition
and single-note hammering; (5) cimbalom repetition in fast sections and its
percussive effect; (6) the cimbalom player and interaction with the violinist;
and (7) cimbalom improvisation and hallgató style. His reworkings create a
skillful coalescence of sensitive attention to the integrity of the instrument and
inventive pianistic solutions, thus portraying the cimbalom player vividly and
bringing Gypsy-band performance to life.

Part 1. Liszt’s Relationship with the Cimbalom

The Cimbalom in Select Late Eighteenth-Century Hungarian Gypsy Bands

The cimbalom is a type of expanded dulcimer, a large trapezoidal box with
strings stretched across a wooden sounding board, one to four strings for each
note.12 It is played with small mallets or hammers, and is thus also called a
“hammered dulcimer” (see fig. 5.1).13 Despite its Persian origin, the instru-
ment became associated with the national music of Hungary, Romania, and
neighboring countries; its association with the Hungarian style became pro-
nounced through its use by wandering Hungarian Gypsy bands.14
The Hungarian cimbalom was an essential constituent of a Gypsy ensem-
ble as both a melodic and a harmonic instrument. Some aspects of the instru-
ment reflect the influence of Western European art music, since the typical
Gypsy-band instrumentation of two violins, cimbalom, and bass is “basically
European.”15 Professional Hungarian Gypsy musicians absorbed and adapted
this new type of instrumentation. Bálint Sárosi remarks that the ensemble led
by Panna Czinka (d. 1772)—whom Sárosi called “the first proper Gypsy band
in history”—consisted of such four members: a primás (a leader playing the
violin), another violin playing kontra in accompaniment, cimbalom, and bass.16
Paul Gifford hypothesizes that although the cimbalom had already appeared
in Hungary, the Hungarian Gypsy association with the instrument is derived
from the instrumentation of the Baroque trio sonata.17 In this regard, the
cimbalom, like the violin, is not solely a folk instrument in the strict sense.18
The new type of instrumentation prompted the new musical style, to which the
Gypsy-band musicians immediately responded, cultivating a new musical taste.
It is at this point in history that Gypsy musicians and their music become inti-
mately tied to the development of the Hungarian cimbalom.
The traveling cimbalom player in a Gypsy band carried his instrument on
his back, supporting it by ropes or leather straps crossed over his shoulders.19

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 105

Figure 5.1. Hammered dulcimer. Title page of Charles Roylance’s How to Learn the
Dulcimer: Without a Master.

When he played it, he put it on his knees as in the description above, or a table
or barrel, because the instrument does not have legs.20 Figure 5.2 depicts a
Hungarian Gypsy cimbalom player in the second half of the nineteenth cen-
tury playing the instrument on a barrel. Figure 5.3 portrays a wedding where
the Gypsy musicians accompany (in the right corner of the picture) and the
cimbalom player attempts to pull a barrel for his instrument.
The handful of renowned Gypsy bands active around Vienna during
this period bear witness to an important juncture of “folk” and “art” music.
According to Matthew Gelbart, the distinction between “folk” and “art” music
was not clear until it began to grow toward the end of the eighteenth cen-
tury.21 One of the decisive factors behind the division, Gelbart claims, was
Enlightenment interests that redefined music with respect to its origins rather
than its functions of “high” and “low,” and that was used to privilege the notion
of “national” music over and against “artificial” music.22 By tracing the com-
plex history of the terms folk and art from the 1760s to Wagner, by focusing
on Scottish culture that fueled the discourse of the two terms, and by relat-
ing Scottish cases also to German musical thought and Romantic idealism that
were reliant on assumptions about authenticity and simplicity, Gelbart makes
an argument that the two categories often overlapped.
Indeed, Gypsy music seemed to straddle the artificial divide: The way their
music was understood and perceived belonged to a “folk” category, based on
stereotypical attributes of folk music, including musical illiteracy, oral trans-
mission, non-authored works, and intuitive and spontaneous improvisation.
Yet simultaneously, the music by the renowned Gypsy bands reflected the

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 Figure 5.2. Hungarian Cimbalom Player, wood engraving after a drawing by
J. G. Fuellhaas in the second half of nineteenth century. Used by permission of
INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo.

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 107

Figure 5.3. Gypsy band in a wedding, mid-nineteenth century. Miklós Barabás,

The Arrival of the Bride (1856), copy, oil on canvas, 127 x 159 cm. Photo credit: bpk
Bildagentur / Hungarian National Gallery / Alfredo Dagli Orti / Art Resource,
NY. Used with permission.

influence of the structural and harmonic elements of the European Classical

tradition. Sárosi remarked that in pieces by János Bihari (1784–1827) and
his famed band, “painful attention is being taken that the melody should be
harmonizable and the broken chord continually appears as an important
melody-building element.”23 In this regard, Bihari’s band and others had
a close relationship with the Classical tradition as practiced in the Empire’s
urban areas. This Gypsy-band music, understood as both “folk” and “art,” was
Liszt’s compositional model, which he first heard in his early teens and drew
on throughout his life.

The Cimbalom in Western Art Music: Hebenstreit and His Pantalon

One of the earliest appearances of the cimbalom in Western art music is closely
related to the accomplishments of the hammered dulcimer virtuoso Pantaleon
Hebenstreit (1668–1750). He played a crucial role in the development of the
dulcimer and its cultivation at European courts during the 1710s and 1720s.24

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 108 ❧ chapter five

He developed the hammered dulcimer of the time, which was small and lap-
held or tabletop, into a large and heavy instrument, called the pantalon, after
him.25 More importantly, his pantalon was fully chromatic except for the lowest
octave, in contrast with the previously diatonic instrument; it was considered
an unprecedented technical advance in the development of the instrument
until V. József Schunda invented a true chromatic cimbalom in 1874.26
Although little known today, Hebenstreit was a virtuoso dulcimer player
who dazzled audiences all over Europe. His reputation was noted by contem-
porary German composers and commentators, including Johann Kuhnau, the
Bach family, Telemann, Fux, and Johann Mattheson.27 Kuhnau reported his
fascination with the unheard-of sound from Hebenstreit’s pantalon playing
in a letter of 1717 to Mattheson.28 Hebenstreit performed “all sorts of caprices
with the bare sticks,” which gave an impression not only of the rapidly moving
mallets in a physical and visual dimension but also of the stunning techniques
he deployed on a compositional level. The mallets used to strike the instru-
ment demand a high degree of technical artistry. In order to achieve a proper
striking angle, the player is required to manage a notch attached to a wooden
mallet for his index finger and the mallet’s intricate movements.29 The techni-
cal demands also involve the player’s ability to use the mallets elastically with
the flexibility of his wrist.
It is also intriguing that Hebenstreit exploited different types of coverings
for his mallets, not only the “bare sticks” but also “sticks with cotton.” Prior to
Schunda’s concert cimbalom in the 1870s, Gypsy cimbalom players had com-
monly used wooden-tipped mallets to strike the cimbalom strings; the tone
color produced by the lightweight wooden hammers was bright, thin, and per-
cussive.30 It was a modern tendency to create a softer sound for the cimba-
lom hammer by wrapping the end of the hammers in cotton, wool, or felt.31
Hebenstreit’s use of the cotton sticks can therefore be considered exceptional
in the development of the instrument.32 More importantly, the cotton-covered
mallets, which transform the previously thin and percussive sound into a softer
one, would have been more suitable for the four-part European ensemble set-
ting into which the cimbalom was absorbed and adopted. The different types
of mallet coverings could have helped further to produce kaleidoscopic tim-
bres when combined with different types of strings made of gut or metal.33
It is noteworthy that the musical genres through which Hebenstreit
exhibited his virtuosity included “preludes, fantasies, fugues,” all of which
are related to the “capriccio.” Even in the context of nineteenth-century key-
board literature, the term was not used in a consistent manner 34 Regardless
of application, the capriccio prioritized the performer’s whim and free-
dom to extemporize over rigid form, meter, and figuration. Such freedom
would have been suitable for capturing the multi-faceted sounds of the cim-
balom unfolding in a wide spectrum; moreover, the free style facilitated a

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 109

rubato-style performance manner of cimbalom playing. In a few instances of

his cimbalom renderings, Liszt uses the expression “a capriccio,” referring
to the performance manner associated with the capriccio. He seems to intend
two contrasting characters: the rhapsodic style for the majority of the exam-
ples, and a witty character in others.
More importantly, Hebenstreit’s performing repertoire suggests he would
have seen the potential of the many similarities between the pantalon and key-
board with respect to sounds and effects. The genres such as preludes and fan-
tasies mentioned above are related to keyboard compositions. In fact, most of
Hebenstreit’s music was reliant on improvisation or free transcription of other
works, especially those for keyboard, on the pantalon.35 It should be noted
that the pantalon influenced the development of the fortepiano in the 1710s
and 1720s.36 Christoph Gottlieb Schröter (1699–1782), one of the early piano
builders in Germany and Austria, claimed to have invented his keyboard in
1717 with the “two hammer-action models”—one striking the strings from
below and the other from above.37 The inspiration for the hammer action
operated from Schröter’s keyboard was a performance by Hebenstreit.38 The
piano builder in particular called the down-striking hammer action the “panta-
lon-action” by analogy with the manner of performance on a pantalon.39
Having benefitted from Schröter’s models and also Cristofori’s descrip-
tion of the fortepiano (written by Scipione Maffei in 1711), another German
keyboard builder, Gottfried Silbermann, designed a particular device called a
“pantalon stop” (Pantalonzug), intended to imitate the pantalon’s sustaining
sound.40 In fact, one of the distinctive properties of the pantalon was a reso-
nating sound due to its lack of a damper mechanism, creating an aural blend
when new strings were struck while the previous ones were still sounding. This
resonating sound on the pantalon prompted early piano builders to introduce
a stop or knee-lever that removed the dampers from the strings (much more
conveniently managed by the right pedal on a modern piano), evoking the
undamped sound of the pantalon.41
Aside from the emulation of the blending of sounds, early piano builders
adapted the manner in which pantalon players silenced resonating strings.
When the pantalon player desired to stop the sounding of the strings, he
had to use his hands and even forearms or coat sleeves in order to damp the
strings, momentarily making his physical position stray from that of the cur-
rent musical discourse; this is probably the reason why Kuhnau stated that
“M. Pantaleon made his leaps” in his report cited above.42 To make the stop
device more practical, the early builders would have compensated for the
strenuous efforts required for the pantalon performer. It is evident that early
piano builders such as Schröter and Silbermann wished to capture the distinc-
tively delicate timbres of the pantalon as well as its demanding technique on
their keyboards. The pantalon-action and the pantalon-stop reveal how these

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 110 ❧ chapter five

builders attempted to emulate the admired sounds of the pantalon and adapt
the technical challenges involved in the pantalon playing to their instruments.
It would not be going too far to claim that the close relationship between
the development of the pantalon and fortepiano paved the way for further
interplay between the cimbalom and piano in the piano adaptations of the
instrument in the Western art-music tradition. The cimbalom and the piano
are both hammered instruments that create percussive sounds and effects.
The distinctive timbre of the cimbalom would have been less demanding for
arrangers, including Liszt, to render on the piano than on other instruments.
The fortepiano of Haydn and Schubert, with its distinctively sharp, thin,
percussive, and metallic timbres, would have sounded closer to a cimbalom
than does today’s piano.43 Thus Western art-composers would have observed
its potential for approximating the cimbalom. Although Liszt’s pianos from
the 1830s were more expanded in size, volume, and register than Haydn’s fort-
epiano, they still produced lighter, brighter, and more percussive and delicate
sounds than those of modern pianos.44 Liszt would have seen the piano as the
perfect candidate for approximating the cimbalom, expanding what his prede-
cessors had done to forge his individual idioms in his Rhapsodies.
Just as Hebenstreit deployed technical tricks with his two mallets on the cim-
balom, musical examples of Liszt’s evocations of the cimbalom demonstrate
how he explored all the possibilities of rendering it with his two hands on the
keyboard. In addition, just as Hebenstreit promoted the dulcimer’s status,
Liszt exalted the marginalized position of the cimbalom player (and Gypsy-
band players in general) by developing cimbalom evocations that went beyond
the conventional types of rendering that frequently appeared in the piano
arrangements of Hungarian Gypsy music from the 1780s and as practiced by
his Western art-music predecessors.

The Development of the Cimbalom over the Course of the

Nineteenth Century

Over the course of the nineteenth century the cimbalom was transformed
from a small and portable instrument into a larger concert instrument with an
extended range. In 1865 the renowned Hungarian author Mór Jókai character-
ized the cimbalom as the “Hungarian piano,” suggesting that the expanded
capabilities of the cimbalom equated to those of the piano.45 The “modern”
cimbalom, however, had to wait until 1874, when József V. Schunda in Budapest
made a concert version of the instrument. It featured a cast-iron interior frame;
chromatic tuning; a weighted damper pedal that could mute vibrating strings
with ease; and an extended range of slightly over four octaves.46 This expan-
sion replaced the old features of the small portable cimbalom as practiced by
Gypsy musicians during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.47

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 111

One of Schunda’s achievements was to standardize the system of bridge

placement and pitch layout. Before he established the system, there were
various configurations of pitch layout in the instruments built during the
eighteenth century and into the early nineteenth century.48 This variation
makes it difficult to assess precisely what model Liszt would have heard and
experienced. Although Schunda’s concert cimbalom is more elaborate than
that used by the most renowned Gypsy-band musicians, and although it was
invented later than Liszt’s Rhapsodies, it can still provide insight into the pecu-
liar system of pitch layout inherent in the cimbalom. Figure 5.4 illustrates the
most usual form of the pitch layout of the concert cimbalom, for which Liszt,
Bartók, and Stravinsky probably composed.49
The layout in figure 5.4 shows that the strings run across the instrument
and over bridges that are placed in various ways. Typically, the player hits the
string with one of the hammers relatively near the bridge, which elevates that
string above the neighboring strings. For some strings, the bridge is very close
to one or the other side of the instrument, so that virtually the whole length of
the string is sounded. For the lowest notes at the bottom of the instrument, the
strings alternate, going over a bridge on the left (for low D, F, G, A, and so on)
or on the right (for E, F#, G#, and so on). In the middle of the instrument, the
bridge on the left is replaced by a set of bridges about two-fifths of the way in
from the left. Strings that go over these bridges can be struck on either side of
the bridge; the left portion of the strings will sound a note a fifth higher than
the right portion (so, for instance, the lowest and longest such string sounds
G on the left but C on the right). At the top of the instrument, some strings
go over two bridges (or in some cases over two and under one), dividing them
into still smaller portions in order to sound higher notes. As a result of this lay-
out, notes that are next to each other in the scale are often far removed from
each other from the player’s perspective, creating challenges (and opportuni-
ties) that are unique to the cimbalom and other hammered dulcimers.
The unusual pattern of pitch layout elicits distinctive types of kinetic move-
ments in execution, which in turn create additional visual effects. For example,
to render a trill on the pitches G–A♭ in the middle register, the player would
not strike his mallets on the two adjacent courses (notes) we would expect of a
standard trill; the G course is in the lower left side of the middle register and
the A♭ is on the upper right side. The player therefore has to move his mallets
rapidly and quickly back and forth between these distant courses, adding to
the dramatic effect of his performance.
For a composer attempting to approximate the cimbalom technique on
the piano, the peculiar layout of pitches on the instrument creates a problem:
because the cimbalom lacks the linearity of pitch layout found on the piano,
it is not always clear which pitch to assign to which hand on the piano and
which staff on the score. In his pianistic renderings of the instrument, Liszt

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Kim.indd 112
Figure 5.4. Pitch layout for concert cimbalom. Diagram from http://beyondkarpaty.mutiny.net/2010/09/cimbalom-tuning-
soviet-style/. Used with permission.

2/5/2019 4:09:39 PM
 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 113

acknowledged this problem. He provided his own solutions by deploying a par-

ticular notational device and layout, as well as a technique for his two hands to
capture this intrinsic characteristic of the instrument, as the musical analyses
in part 2 of this chapter will reveal.

Liszt’s Own Remarks on the Cimbalom

In his Des bohémiens, Liszt provides a description of the cimbalom that occu-
pies the entire section on the Gypsy orchestra, suggesting that he regarded
the instrument as essential and unique to a Gypsy band.50 He provides a physi-
cal description of the instrument, including its soundboard, range of strings,
wooden hammers, the use of a strap around the player’s neck, and the table
on which the instrument is sometimes placed for performance.51 In addition,
Liszt acknowledges the origin of the instrument and its variants in the tradition
of European stringed instruments, all of which led him to focus on its specific
use by Hungarian Gypsies.52
Liszt then shifts to the role of the cimbalom as both a harmonic and a
melodic instrument and its resulting distinctive sounds and timbres:

This instrument is still well spread amongst the peasants of little Russia, who
generally suspend it by a strap round the neck, which enables them to play
without resting it upon a table. This, however, they have to do when it is
desired to augment the sonority of its metallic vibrations. Like the violin, the
zymbala lends itself to the ornamentations of little notes, trills, and runs at
every organ-point.53

For the harmonic components, it creates a “highly resounding” sound and

“metallic vibrations,” while for the melodic ones it displays “ornamentations”
and “runs.” Liszt further explains the important role of the cimbalom in per-
formance: to serve as a principal instrument on a par with the first violin in
the Gypsy ensemble. The capacities of the cimbalom as harmonic, melodic,
accompanimental, and solo instrument, as discussed above, ultimately enable
the cimbalom player to interact and coordinate with the violinist: in this inter-
action, Liszt considered the cimbalom together with the first violin to be the
soloist of the band.

The first violin and zymbala attract the principal interest; filling the great role
of the musical drama about to be played; absolutely after the manner of the
primo uomo and prima donna of the old Italian opera. They may be called the
soloists of the band; if we may be allowed to borrow a term from the jargon of
the spurious Bohemian of Paris.
The zymbala shares with the first violin the right to develop certain pas-
sages and to prolong certain variations indefinitely according to the good

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 114 ❧ chapter five

pleasures of the moment. He is necessarily one of those who conduct the

musical poem; having either created it at leisure, or being about to improvise
it at the moment; and he imposes upon others the duty of surrounding him,
sustaining him, even guessing him in order to sing the same funeral hymn or
give himself up to the same mad freak of joy. From time to time a violoncello
or a clarinet becomes distinguished and claims a share in the prerogative of
unlimited improvisation. Some few of these have acquired a certain renown;
but in spite of that they remain exceptions.54

The following excerpts continue Liszt’s description of the cimbalom’s

role to supply the rhythm and control the pace of the music in performance.
Moreover, he captures the image of the player’s agile movement of the wooden
hammers that strike the strings, just as the cimbalom virtuoso Hebenstreit dis-
played “all sorts of caprices” by using his sticks.

The first violin (whose technique sometimes differs materially from ours)
unfolds all the wonders suggested by his imagination, whilst the zymbala sup-
plies the rhythm, indicates the acceleration or slackening of time, as also the
degree of movement. He manipulates with singular agility and as if it were a
sleight-of-hand performance the little wooden hammers with which he trav-
els over the strings, and which in this primitive piano perform the duty we
assign to ivory keys.55

Liszt’s description of the cimbalom was not written superficially, but with
great attention to the instrument. One might ask where he acquired his knowl-
edge of it. Although he studied the sources of modern folklore specialists with
whom he was acquainted,56 his learning of the instrument stemmed more
from “direct experience”57 with lively Gypsy bands as well as his close relation-
ship with people associated with the cimbalom.

Liszt’s Direct Encounters with Gypsy Bands

Liszt’s fascination with Hungarian Gypsy music is well documented in his let-
ters and writing.58 His encounter with a live Gypsy-band performance already
occurred in his teens through a performance of Bihari’s that made an indelible
impression on the eleven-year-old composer, as revealed in his praise for the
outstanding Gypsy musician’s prowess in the oft-quoted letter from the 1840s:

I was just beginning to grow up when I heard this great man [Bihari] in
1822. . . . He used to play for hours on end, without giving the slightest
thought to the passing of time. . . . His performances must have distilled
into my soul the essence of some generous and exhilarating wine; for when I
think of his playing, the emotions I then experienced were like one of those
mysterious elixirs concocted in the secret laboratories of the Middle Ages.59

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 115

By the mid-nineteenth century, the music of Gypsy ensembles was so popu-

lar that every town in Hungary had its own band.60 Ferenc Patikárus (1827–
1870) and his band, one of the leading ensembles of the time, left a memorable
impression on Liszt.61 The Délibáb (Mirage) and Hölgyfutár (Woman’s courier)
reported in 1856 that Liszt was captivated by the performance of Patikárus and
his band: “Liszt (as has been mentioned several times already) likes the skillful
[G]ypsy musicians very much. . . . Lately, when Ferkó Patikárus and his band
played to him he listened to them completely oblivious to food and drink.”62
Furthermore, Liszt directly interacted with Patikárus’s ensembles on another
occasion, joining in their performance with his piano and providing his own
improvisation on the Hungarian tunes on his piano:

When on the occasion of the ceremonial lunch arranged in the Péter piano
room in honor of the world famous pianist Ferkó Patikárus’s moving violin
music was heard, Liszt jumped up and, pulling out a piano, joined in the
gypsy music. Those who were present at the celebration unanimously pro-
claim that the great artist never played with such enthusiasm as when after
the true-to-life performance he transferred the original Hungarian tones to
the piano in a brilliant improvisation.63

Liszt’s Continuing Relationships with Cimbalom Players, Builders,

and Pedagogues

Liszt’s longstanding relationship with Gypsy cimbalom virtuosos confirms his

constant and continuous interest in the cimbalom. Liszt had been acquainted
with the cimbalom virtuoso Pál Pintér and his brothers József and Zsiga from
1873 on.64 Liszt heard the performance of Pintér when Liszt was welcomed
into the Gypsy band of Pál Rácz in November 1873 in Budapest at a social eve-
ning to celebrate the fiftieth jubilee of Liszt’s concert debut.65 At this event,
according to Legány’s account, Liszt walked over to the Gypsy orchestra, focus-
ing his interest not on the leader, the violinist, but on the cimbalom player,
Pintér, who came to the forefront in the orchestra.66 When Pintér demon-
strated Schunda’s concert cimbalom in 1874 at the World’s Fair in Paris, Liszt
also participated in the event and engaged with the cimbalom virtuoso’s play-
ing.67 Moreover, he became an admirer of Schunda’s concert cimbalom.68
Liszt’s relationship with Allaga and Schunda has been documented: for
instance, he wrote to Allaga about his admiration for Schunda’s concert cim-
balom, and Allaga dedicated an early cimbalom method book of his to Liszt.69
One of Allaga’s contributions to the concert cimbalom was the establishment
of the first published methodology for the performance technique in the last
quarter of the nineteenth century, as illustrated in Cimbalom iskola [Cimbalom
school] published in Budapest in 1874, edited by Schunda (henceforth

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 116 ❧ chapter five

referred to as Allaga’s method book).70 Although this book was written in the
1870s, a couple of decades later than Liszt’s Rhapsodies, it still can provide use-
ful examples to explore several essential and distinctive cimbalom techniques
on which Liszt would have drawn. The following discussions thus investigate
several fundamental and distinctive types of cimbalom technique as delin-
eated in Allaga’s method book, to help set the stage for Liszt’s approximation
of those techniques in pianistic terms. While taking material primarily from
Allaga’s method book, specific examples will also be drawn from contemporary
articles about the cimbalom—Gustav Pressel’s “Die Musik der Ungarn” from
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (1852), as well as Schubert’s Divertissement—as repre-
sentative of the style hongrois tradition.71

Cimbalom Techniques

The examples from Allaga’s method books written during the 1880s–1900s,
including Cimbalom iskola, represent the first and foremost systematic approach
to the technique of the cimbalom. Despite the continuing technical advances
in the instrument, Allaga’s books provide a model for subsequent meth-
ods published throughout twentieth century.72 Allaga’s method book is thus
more associated with the so-called modern concert cimbalom invented by
Schunda in 1874 than with the instrument Liszt would have envisioned for his
Rhapsodies, though Liszt became acquainted with the book in his later years.
Although there were instrumental advances and corresponding technical
developments between Liszt’s Rhapsodies of the 1850s and Allaga’s method
book of the 1890s, the book still can be useful in Liszt studies. It is likely that
Gypsy cimbalom players in the mid-nineteenth century used many of the tech-
niques delineated in the method book. Accordingly, the following examples
introduce several fundamental and distinctive types of cimbalom technique
included in Allaga’s method book to help provide insight into what types of
techniques the cimbalom player of Liszt’s time might have deployed.
Trills and tremolos are two of the fundamental techniques of the cimbalom.
Example 5.1a illustrates the execution of a trill, and examples 5.1b and 5.1c
show tremolos on one note and on two notes, respectively.
The trill illustrated in example 5.1a appears conventional, but on the cim-
balom it involves an unusual physical movement in execution, due to the lay-
out of the courses, as discussed earlier. In a similar manner, the performance
of tremolos on two notes, as in example 5.1c, makes additional demands on
the cimbalom player’s choreography, which becomes even more visually stun-
ning when a succession of trills and tremolos unfolds.
As illustrated in example 5.1b, tremolos occurring on one note are char-
acteristic of cimbalom playing. These require repeated rebounding of the
hammer in one hand (here it is the left hand, designated as number 1 in the

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 117

Example 5.1a. Allaga, Cimbalom iskola, 11, cimbalom trills.




             

Example 5.1b. Allaga, Cimbalom iskola, 40; cimbalom tremolos on one note.

 
tremolo tremolo














 
 


  

 
Example 5.1c. Allaga, Cimbalom iskola, 40; cimbalom tremolos on two notes.

        


       

score), whereas tremolos or trills on two notes, as in examples 5.1a and 5.1c,
involve strokes alternating between the hands but on different strings. The
tremolos in example 5.1b are produced by allowing the hammers to bounce
repeatedly after each stroke. The hammer is held loosely in the hand, helping
it to bounce rapidly off the strings and to strike the string again and again,
virtually without effort. The player can change the pressure to keep up the
rebounding, making it feasible to execute the twelve rapid rebounds and reart-
iculations indicated in example 5.1b.
It is significant that the techniques requiring the rebounding of the ham-
mer as in example 5.1b and the wide-gap tremolos between two notes as in
example 5.1c are uncharacteristic of such tremolos on the piano or violin.
They are, however, quintessentially cimbalom-like. Throughout the method
book, the conventional sign of the mordent is used to denote “tremolos” for
the cimbalom. In the case of the tremolos on one note, as in example 5.1b, the
marking asks the player to continue to repeat the single note instead of a brief
two-note ornament as might normally be expected.
Though trills and tremolos are common techniques for many instruments
in Classical European tradition, they are essential elements of cimbalom play-
ing, compensating for the fast decay of tones on the instrument by sustaining
the sound, maintaining interest in long-held notes, and providing a resonant
background. More importantly, the trills and tremolos that distinguish the
sound of the Hungarian Gypsy band from Western European instruments

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 118 ❧ chapter five

create an unusual layer of sounds and effects on physical, visual, and acoustic
levels. The tremolos, in particular, frequently unfold across an extensive range
in a slow tempo, creating an unbroken layer of distinctive shimmering sound.
This particular technique became a major inspiration for Classical compos-
ers in their adaptations, as will be discussed with regard to the renderings of
Schubert and Liszt’s further developments.
Another important cimbalom technique, illustrated in example 5.2, empha-
sizes its percussive sound. The numbers 1 and 2 on the score indicate the left
and right hand of the cimbalom player, respectively; the numbers suggest
the opposite hands if the music is rendered in a piano score. The cimbalom
player’s right hand plays a melody by moving across the soundboard, as in the
exercise drawn from the section “Varied Tones” (“Veränderte Töne”) from
the method book. The left hand of number 1, on the other hand, consistently
repeats a single note by striking on one course, letting the hammer rebound
off the string so it can immediately strike it again. This hammering on one spot
with one hand is comparable to the tremolos on one note, as observed above
(ex. 5.1b). Both cases require a quick rebound and thus delicate control of the
hammer.
Example 5.2 demonstrates a practical purpose of the technique on a simple
level as well as an aesthetic reason behind the technique on a deeper level. The
example illustrates the roles of the two hands involved in the use of two mal-
lets. Because of the unusual pitch layout of the cimbalom, one hand staying
on a single note makes the performance far easier than making both hands
move simultaneously. Maintaining the two independent lines allows the player
not only to simultaneously present two different layers of textures, techniques,
and articulations, but also to create a texture like that of a tune over pulsing
chords. The practical, ergonomic considerations converge into the aesthetic
qualities of the technique. When played at a rapid tempo, the repeated note
of example 5.2 creates percussive intensity that builds up excitement. When
combined with another layer of different sound in the other hand, which plays
melodic material, the resulting texture is reminiscent of bariolage on the violin.
All of the techniques from Allaga’s method book discussed above help
enrich our understanding of contemporary descriptions of cimbalom playing
from Gustav Pressel’s article “Die Musik der Ungarn.”73 Pressel provides a brief
description of the role of the cimbalom in the slow section (lassú), in which
long fermatas are inserted, as illustrated in example 5.3. While the violins sus-
tain the notes, the cimbalom player has the task of filling out those fermatas
through three main techniques and effects: vibrating sounds, rapidly repeated
hammering of the same notes, or harmonic figuration as rendered in arpeggia-
tion between the two pauses in the example.74
The vibrating sound requires a different type of technique from that of the
hammering sound. The spectrum of technique and effect is wide: the player

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 119

Example 5.2. Allaga, Cimbalom iskola, 34.


                        
       






Example 5.3. Cimbalom playing in pauses, from Pressel, “Die Musik der
Ungarn,” 215.

### U œ
œ U
& œœ œœ œ
œœ œm
œœ

can use not only simple trills, as observed in example 5.1a from Allaga’s
book, but also wide-gap tremolos on two notes that create a shimmering
sound and a characteristic choreography of performance, as in example 5.1c.
The mordent sign that follows the second fermata in example 5.3 recalls that
used specifically for the cimbalom tremolos throughout Allaga’s book, sug-
gesting that the cimbalom player extends the shimmering sound (and his
role) beyond the pause.
The cimbalom player may also provide widely unfolding, resonant arpeggia-
tions between the pauses. Pressel claims that the cimbalom player is capable
of rendering such arpeggiation because the instrument—the “hammered dul-
cimer” in Pressel’s term—includes over three octaves with which to perform
harmonic figurations and tremolos at a fast tempo.75 Example 5.3 suggests that
it is on sustained notes that the cimbalom player can come most effectively to
the forefront by deploying the distinctive sounds and effects of hammering,
vibrating, or shimmering.
Pressel also discusses the role of the cimbalom as part of the Hungarian
Gypsy art of ornamentation. He describes two aspects of the creative process,
the creation of a tune and the creation of an accompaniment. For the for-
mer, he emphasizes that the use of ornaments, including mordents and runs,
is a necessary elaboration in rendering Hungarian tunes, whereas similar orna-
ments used for melodies in Western art music could become tasteless.76 He
likens Gypsy musicians’ “instrumental garb” for their folk tunes to the colorful
and varied “Hungarian national garb,” stressing that without such ornamen-
tal accompaniment the Hungarian songs would not be true to their national
type.77 What he takes into account, in particular, is the instrumental embel-
lishment as rendered on the piano, in which the tone easily fades away; yet a
full use of such instrumental ornaments would help to sustain the tone and
thus offer a vivid idea of Gypsy playing.78 Illustrating the two examples from

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 120 ❧ chapter five

Example 5.4a. Existing tune (“Tree and root are torn, I and dear / my love are
separated!”), from Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” 216.

>
r r j j r œ œj œ > U u.s.w.
Lassu (= Adagio.) Klagend.
b 2 > j
Gesang b
& b 4 œ̇ œ r r j™ œ˙ ™ œ œ œ ™ œœ ™™ œ œ œ œœ Œ m
œ œ œ œJ ˙
Baum und Wur- zel sind zer - ris - sen, Ich und Lieb - chen sind ge - trennt!

Example 5.4b. “Instrumental embellishment” of Ex. 4a, from Pressel, “Die Musik
der Ungarn,” 216.

 


    
     









 






   












 



























Pressel’s article, example 5.4a is an existing tune in a slow-tempo section

(“Lassu”) with the expressive marking of “lamenting” (“Klagend”), whereas
example 5.4b illustrates how the tune would be rendered in an instrumental
embellishment.
Although Pressel discusses this embellished version in the broader context
of Hungarian Gypsy–style ornamentation, the important issue for our current
discussion is how the cimbalom player is proactive in the process of instrumen-
tal embellishment through his distinctive techniques and effects. Explicitly des-
ignated as “Cymbal’s Tremolo Solo” in example 5.4b, the tremolos on one note
initiated by brief turning figuration suggest one of the idiomatic techniques of
the cimbalom, because it is easy to leave one hammer playing on a string while
the other hammer changes strings. In addition, the arpeggios under the desig-
nation of “(Cymbal.)” immediately recall those intended to create resonating,
harmonic sound between pauses, as in example 5.3 above.
In addition to providing ornamentation at the beginnings and ends of
phrases, the player could play the entire passage, joining in with solo instru-
ments such as violin or clarinet, or he could render the whole passage by him-
self. The cimbalom’s role is thus not confined to the filling-out or extension of
the fermatas, but also plays independently on an equal footing with the violinist.
Example 5.5, drawn from the “Folksongs” section of Allaga’s book, illus-
trates how the improvising cimbalom player would have rendered an existing

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 121

Example 5.5. Allaga, Cimbalom iskola, 73.

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tune with various types of ornaments in a slow rhapsodic-style section or piece.

The large-sized notes, presumably, already represent a certain degree of para-
phrase of an existing tune. The profuse ornaments further elaborate the tune,
shifting the emphasis from the original toward the art of ornamentation. As
discussed in the last section of part 2, Liszt often follows suit.
Example 5.5 provides insight into some general tendencies in the use of
ornaments. Throughout the passage it is notable that the ornaments almost
always move in an ascending direction, which is also customary for cimbalom
playing throughout the method book. The broken-chord arpeggiation often
develops into a melodic turn typical of cimbalom gestures. The arpeggiation
draws our attention to its distinctive effect and role; it requires a rapid hand-
over-hand motion, which in turn helps not only to create a unique tactile and
visual effect but also to suspend the tempo. The arpeggios make their appear-
ance momentous from the outset with an emphatic forte. They lend the impres-
sion of being more important than the note they finally reach. Indeed, as Judit
Frigyesi claims, the Gypsy musicians did not consider their embellishing simply
as “ornaments around a note but as a statement in its own right.”79

Cimbalom Techniques as Adapted into the Style-Hongrois Tradition

If Allaga’s book and Pressel’s article of 1852 provide insight into the essential
and distinctive techniques of the cimbalom, such techniques had already been
absorbed and adapted into compositions by leading Classical composers prior
to Liszt. The characteristic textures and sounds of the instrument were recog-
nized and used by Haydn, Schubert, and Weber, who established the precedent
of certain stylistic markers of the cimbalom in relation to the “lexicon” of the
style hongrois upon which Liszt would have drawn.80

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 122 ❧ chapter five

Liszt’s relationship with Schubert’s Divertissement à la hongroise, D. 818, in

particular provides convincing evidence of Liszt’s engagement with the conven-
tion of the style hongrois as practiced by the Viennese composer. Liszt provided
a “recomposed arrangement” of the second march movement of Schubert’s
Divertissement for his Mélodies hongroises d’après Schubert, S. 425 in 1838–39;
therefore, the composition was written before his Rhapsodies.81 Yet Liszt also
attempted to “correct” his predecessors’ attitude towards Hungarian Gypsy
music. He criticized Schubert’s Divertissement, along with Beethoven’s approach
to the repertoire, in his Des bohémiens of 1859:

One can convince oneself how little civilized musicians have understood
the nature of Gypsy art, when they took an interest in it, when one sees two
masters such as Beethoven and Schubert misunderstand the characteristics
essentially inherent in its form. Both tried to carry over to the sphere of their
art a few snatches of it. . . . But it is not difficult to recognize that [Schubert]
and Beethoven lent but very fleeting attention to these exotic productions,
that they did not consider them at all as samples revealing the new flora of
an unknown zone. . . . It is obvious from the way they treated the motives
they borrowed that they did not perceive an art different from all others,
constructed from completely different principles, on a completely different
foundation. They took the fragments that reached them as the stray and dis-
figured debris of rough and crude artists, and believed they gave them value
by tailoring them according to our rules and methods.82

Liszt criticizes Beethoven and Schubert in part to justify his own Hungarian
Gypsy–style compositions.83 At the same time he makes clear his dissatisfaction
with their approaches to Gypsy-band music and his resolution to rectify their
misunderstanding of the repertoire.
The first and third movements of Schubert’s Divertissement, for instance,
provide various examples of pianistic renderings of a wide spectrum of the
cimbalom sounds and techniques. A passage from the first movement of the
composition, shown in example 5.6, encapsulates the multifaceted aspects of
cimbalom sounds and techniques.
The passage begins with shimmering cimbalomesque tremolos, followed
by rhapsodic scales and up-and-down flurries, concluding with declamatory
repeated notes. When we observe the free and rhapsodic passage of example
5.6 in detail, the repeating pattern of the up-and-down melodic contour would
have been particularly suitable for cimbalom performance.84 The cimbalom
idiom is reliant on repetitions of the same physical pattern in different places
on the instrument. The repeating pattern in the Divertissement serves as a dis-
tinctive marker for the cimbalom evocation, unlike any similar type of rhap-
sodic or cadenza-like passages prevalent in virtuosic piano pieces.

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 123

Example 5.6. Schubert, Divertissement à la hongroise, D. 818, mvt. 1, mm. 134–39.

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Part 2: Liszt’s Renderings of the Cimbalom

Throughout his Rhapsodies, Liszt convincingly renders the multifaceted aspects

of cimbalom playing in pianistic terms. The following musical analyses demon-
strate Liszt’s creative renderings of the cimbalom by isolating them into seven
salient features associated with the instrument’s timbres and techniques:

1. Cimbalom shimmering and tremolos

2. Cimbalom trills and their visual effect
3. Cimbalom flourishes and their distinctive contour
4. Cimbalom repetition and single-note hammering
5. Cimbalom repetition in fast sections and its percussive effect
6. Cimbalom player’s interaction with the violinist
7. Cimbalom improvisation and hallgató style

All of the cimbalom renderings illustrate how Liszt successfully captures the
techniques and effects of the instrument in his creative pianistic terms, how
he meticulously expresses each technique and effect with a particular type of
notation, and how he integrates the instrument’s unique sounds with other
instruments of the ensemble to evoke the image of actual Gypsy-band perfor-
mance. The result is a skillful blend of sonic and performative fidelity and cre-
ative artistry.

1. Cimbalom Shimmering and Tremolos

Tremolos had long been used to evoke the cimbalom when transferred to a
piano arrangement, as evidenced by Schubert’s Divertissement and the published

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 124 ❧ chapter five

repertoire of Gypsy-band music from the 1780s.85 The earlier examples gener-
ally reduced the cimbalom figuration to a perfunctory level by confining its fig-
uration to simply reiterated patterns of tremolos, appearing mostly in a short
span, and relegating its role mostly to a subservient accompaniment in the left
hand. By contrast, Liszt further developed the tremolos in his own renderings
throughout; they appear far more extensively, prominently, and diversely, with
meticulous attention to the distinctive timbres and techniques native to cimba-
lom playing.
Liszt used the explicit designation of “quasi zimbalo(n)” in his published
scores to indicate that the pianist is to create a “shimmering” sound, as in the
oft-used passages from Rhapsodies nos. 10 and 11, shown in examples 5.7 and
5.8 respectively.86 Aside from the explicit cimbalom designation, one may ask
what makes the prominent tremolos cimbalom-like, not just pianistic. How
would a cimbalom player perform such passages? One way to explicate this is
to focus on Liszt’s notation. In example 5.7, Liszt’s delineation of the tremolo
passages in the piano score illustrates how he saw the potential of the move-
ment of the two hands on the keyboard as analogous to the movement of
the two mallets on the cimbalom. The tremolos are divided between the two
hands in alternation, written with a different direction of the stem for each
hand, as if the hands are functioning like a pair of mallets on the cimbalom.
Furthermore, the published score provided a specific fingering for the left
hand of the tremolos in a series of 3–2 (mm. 82–83) and then 3–1–2 (m. 84).87
The particular type of two-hand alternation and fingering are probably less
a result of Liszt’s attempt to facilitate a better pianistic execution with ease
than his close attention to approximating the delicate movement of the instru-
ment’s sticks that strike the strings. In example 5.8, by recalling the cimbalom
playing of tremolos from Allaga’s book, particularly those on two notes that are
distant from each other on the soundboard (recall ex. 5.1c), the succession
of widely-spaced tremolos that Liszt deploys becomes less pianistic and more
cimbalom-like.88
Several elements shared in examples 5.7 and 5.8 also demonstrate how Liszt
heightens both the visual and the aural prominence of the cimbalom tremolos.
The elements include the soft dynamic, the detailed dynamic markings, the
use of the damper pedal, and a free-rhythm passage under the specific designa-
tion “a capriccio” (no. 10) or “Lento a capriccio” (no. 11).
Liszt heightens the evocative, shimmering cimbalom effect by exploring pia-
nistic resources fully. He uses the damper pedal to deepen the resonant cimba-
lom-like sonority and create the effect of blending the harmony that is intrinsic
to the instrument. Liszt’s pedal markings used in his Rhapsodies often tend to
allow different harmonies to merge into each other, contributing to one of his
stylistic innovations.89 In this case, his aspiration to expand pianistic resources
goes hand in hand with his attempts to approximate the delicately blending

Kim.indd 124 2/5/2019 4:10:20 PM

 Example 5.7. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 10, cimbalom shimmering.
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Example 5.8. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 11, opening.



  

 

  
  
  
  
 
 

 


   


 
                                                                                                                                                                                         


   
    



 
 

     


    
  

   

                      
 

  

       
  
  

  
 
 


 
 
 
                                                                           

Kim.indd 125 2/5/2019 4:10:21 PM

 126 ❧ chapter five

sounds of the cimbalom. At the same time, Liszt is able to take advantage of the
piano’s damper mechanism to maintain sound and also to make the pianist’s
position control the mixed sounds without strenuous effort. By contrast, if we
recall Hebenstreit’s playing, he “made his leaps” playing an instrument with no
dampers. In addition, in the case of example 5.8 (no. 11), the use of the una
corda may also help imitate the soft sound elicited by the cotton-wrapped mal-
let striking the strings. Liszt’s exploitation of the piano pedals explicitly accen-
tuates and amplifies the aural impact of the cimbalom-like figuration.
Liszt uses dynamic and expressive markings to render the colorful cimba-
lom sounds and textures: dynamic fluctuations of the tremolos are articulated
by detailed crescendos and decrescendos, which evoke the increase and decrease in
intensity of the cimbalom player’s striking. In the culmination of one remark-
able (measure 88 of example 5.7; not shown), Liszt incorporates his meticulous
designations of the dynamic level while simultaneously expanding the cimba-
lom tremolos to an astonishing level by further widening the keyboard register.
In example 5.8, the smorzando (m. 7; not shown) requires the player to both
slow down the tempo and soften the tremolos until virtually no sound is heard,
as if the sound of the cimbalom player’s hammering is fading away to almost
nothing. Moreover, expressive markings such as espressivo and dolcissimo (mm.
3–4) emphasize the delicate nuances of the cimbalom as a melodic instrument
when it unfolds its characteristic turning figurations, which are interspersed
with the prominent tremolos throughout the section.
The temporal freedom creates a rhapsodic style that aptly portrays the impro-
vising cimbalom soloist. The dynamic and expressive markings mentioned above
already contributed to a rubato style of performance, while their free note-values
lend the impression of an a capriccio, improvisatory style. Example 5.7 further
exhibits temporal flexibility and fluidity. Almost every passage of the cimbalom
tremolos begins with long-held notes in rolled chords and concludes with a
pause with fermatas; the exception is the passage in measure 85, which does the
reverse. In contrast, the cimbalom tremolos between the suspended moments
increase their volume and intensity with a crescendo; moreover, it is likely that the
tremolos require acceleration, as customary for cimbalom playing. We can recall
Liszt’s description in his Des bohémiens of the cimbalom’s performance manner
as “the acceleration or slackening of time, as also the degree of movement.” The
temporal fluidity lends a fantasy-like character to the entire passage, as if the
cimbalom player were exhibiting his prowess as an improviser. In example 5.8,
the fantasy-like style is enhanced further by eschewing any definite sense of a
bass, creating a floating sound throughout.90
Examples 5.7 and 5.8 give a prominent role to the imagined cimbalom
player by exhibiting constant tremolos across an extensive range. The cim-
balom tremolos of example 5.8, in particular, appear in the introduction of
the composition. On a structural level, this is appropriate for the rhapsodic

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 127

introductory section that often precedes the customary slow–fast sequence of

Gypsy-band music. Moreover, it brings our attention to the improvising cimba-
lom technique from the outset. In both examples, Liszt therefore put the cim-
balom effect at the forefront of the performance, almost exclusively focusing
on the shimmering cimbalom sound.
What is significant in Liszt’s rendering of cimbalom tremolos is his empha-
sis on the timbre and physicality of the instrument more than any concrete
material such as melodic or rhythmic content. He saw the sonorous potential
of the cimbalom on his piano—a sophisticated, kaleidoscopic, yet wandering
and restless quality of sound.

2. Cimbalom Trills and Their Visual Effect

The imaginary cimbalom player performs trills in a visually stunning way, as illus-
trated in example 5.9a. The passage is centered on the two chromatic pitches of
A and G#. Although the result is a “trill” sound, Liszt’s specific fingering avoids
the customary playing of a pianistic trill with two fingers of the same hand.
Instead, Liszt uses alternating hands the way a cimbalom player would. Example
5.9a thus aims for a spectacle associated with cimbalom playing: the visual effect
is prescribed by the rapid hammering with the hands in alternation and the
repetitive 3–2–1 fingering. The Lisztian pianistic flourishes reach a culmination
in the repeating notes that distinctively evoke another cimbalom technique in
which the pianist’s two hands act like the hammers on a cimbalom.
Liszt’s fingering generates a different way of playing the standard pianistic
trill, contributing to his expansion of technical innovations. The spectacle of
the passage thus stems from Liszt’s novel approach to compositional method
through changes of performance style. In example 5.9a, however, Liszt’s fin-
gering and delineation of the two hands represents not just his attempts to
develop new pianistic techniques, but to transfer the hammering of the cim-
balom player convincingly to the piano score—thus capturing its actual swift
physical motions, articulated sound, and delicate timbres. Liszt’s faithful atti-
tudes toward the model are complementary with his innovative approach to
rendering it on the piano.
The technique and effect associated with the cimbalom in Liszt’s ren-
dering of example 5.9a was already noted by contemporary reviewers, as
Eduard Hanslick reported when he observed a similar technique in Liszt’s
performance:

[T]he Allegro offered many astounding effects exclusively associated with

Liszt, such as the hammering with both hands on a single key and the charac-
teristic imitation of the cimbalom. The way he reproduces the sound effects
of this favorite and basic Hungarian instrument is quite inimitable.91

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 128 ❧ chapter five

Example 5.9a. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 2, mm. 82–84.

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Example 5.9b. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 2, m. 84, replacement of the sixty-fourth notes.

    

                        


   
   
                     
        


     
   


Although Hanslick did not refer specifically to the passage of example 5.9a—it
occurs in the Andante section of the composition, which also has its fast section
marked Vivace—he immediately grasped from Liszt’s performance the sounds,
effects, and techniques that emulate the cimbalom. It is also noteworthy that
Hanslick describes the stunning spectacle generated from Liszt’s performance
manner of “hammering with both hands on a single key” to reproduce the
effect of the cimbalom.
Liszt further develops the passage of example 5.9a into a more brilliant one,
in its ossia shown in example 5.9b. Like the trills of example 5.9a, this passage
of example 5.b again evokes repeated strikes on one string of the cimbalom,
yet the trill sounds are now interspersed into a wider register of the keyboard.
Liszt’s choreography of the trill thus reflects his knowledge of the essence
of the cimbalom: that is, its tuning by fifths across the treble bridge. In other
words, because the treble bridge divides strings into unequal vibrating lengths
in a ratio of one-third to two-thirds, the tones on opposite sides of the bridge

Kim.indd 128 2/5/2019 4:10:23 PM

 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 129

are a fifth apart; thus moving up a fifth can be as simple as moving a ham-
mer across the bridge of a given string. The result of Liszt’s rendering involves
more pianistic choreography, in turn creating a stronger visual effect. This is
precisely what makes it cimbalom-like, while the passage on the surface imme-
diately contributes to the virtuosic Lisztian pianistic writing. His expansion
of the cimbalom trills and his exploitation of his two hands and ten fingers
are all reminiscent of the technical tricks that the earlier cimbalom virtuoso
Hebenstreit exhibited with his sticks. At the same time, Liszt further heightens
the peculiar tactile movement of the cimbalom playing and its effect by substi-
tuting idiomatic equivalents to cimbalom technique.
Examples 5.9a and 5.9b demonstrate how Liszt deploys the tactile and visual
components, along with the aural element, associated with the cimbalom in
order to provide a fuller experience of the Gypsy cimbalom player for both the
performer and audience; and simultaneously he never fails to grasp the oppor-
tunity to integrate the elements intrinsic to the model instrument into his own
virtuosic keyboard idioms.

3. Cimbalom Flourishes and Their Distinctive Contours

The cimbalom player frequently displays a flurry of brilliant passagework with

rapidly running scales or colorful arpeggios. When the cimbalom flourishes
are transferred to the piano score, however, they are not clearly distinguish-
able from cadenza-like passages, which are prevalent in Liszt’s Rhapsodies
and also in his virtuosic piano compositions in general. Moreover, the first
violin of a Gypsy band plays such brilliant passagework just as often as the
cimbalom does. Thus a score reading of the virtuosic passagework at first
glance may indicate that nothing stands out as peculiarly characteristic of
the cimbalom player. The bravura filigree can be construed simply as Liszt’s
penchant for show. Even if we interpret it through the particular lens of
Hungarian Gypsy music, it could represent virtuosic playing by either the vio-
linist or the cimbalom player.
What, then, makes the seemingly conventional bravura passagework sound
particularly like cimbalom flourishes? One clue is in how a cimbalom player
would play it. In order to realize any fast passage, the cimbalom player must
rapidly alternate the two hands and hammers, often with repetitions of a cer-
tain pattern. As illustrated in example 5.10, Liszt’s version emulates a consistent
pattern of cimbalom playing in a rapid hand-over-hand motion of L–R–L–R or
R–L–R–L. The repeating pattern is further prescribed by the repetitive 4–3–
2–1 fingering.
Another way to understand the specifically cimbalom-like repeating pattern
is to draw on a stylistic marker in the tradition of the style hongrois. In Schubert’s
deployment of the cimbalom flurry in his Divertissement (ex. 5.6), it was the

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 130 ❧ chapter five

repeating pattern of the up-and-down melodic contour that made it specifi-

cally sound like a cimbalom player in the midst of free and rhapsodic passages.
Liszt would have sought to integrate not only the idiomatic figuration of
the cimbalom but also the cimbalom player’s repeating movement of his ham-
mers into the virtuosic keyboard idioms. The same physical pattern is repeated
in different places on the cimbalom. Liszt’s lightly touched, intricate pianistic
filigree is appropriately used to render the delicate movement and sound of
cimbalom playing. Liszt would have seen the potential similarity between the
virtuosic keyboard idiom and the virtuosic cimbalom idiom, assimilating the
two from disparate traditions into his own piano version. Through this integra-
tion Liszt achieves an extraordinary visual and aural impact on the audience:
not only the tactile quality of the cimbalom but also the acoustic aspect of the
instrument and the repetition of a physical gesture capture the eyes and ears
of the audience.

4. Cimbalom Repetition and Single-Note Hammering

In several instances in the Rhapsodies, it is striking that Liszt deploys an essen-

tially non-pianistic figuration, that is, the simple reiteration of a single note. Its
visual and aural impact is sensational, particularly when it appears amidst the
quintessentially “Lisztian” pianistic figurations that are prevalent. As illustrated
in example 5.11a, the pianistic flourishes lead to a distinctively non-pianistic
peroration with single-pitch repetition.
Behind the unidiomatic figuration for the piano lies a deliberate pur-
pose. As observed earlier in the excerpt of single-note tremolos from Allaga’s
method book (exx. 5.1b and 5.2), it approximates another important stylistic
trait of cimbalom playing, single-note hammering, which requires a natural
rebounding of one hammer. Note that single-note hammering is initiated with
a turning figuration marked crescendo. The melodic turn, as illustrated in the
examples from Pressel’s article and Allaga’s method book (exx. 5.4b and 5.5),
is essential to the cimbalom, because it is easy to leave one hammer playing on
a string while the other hammer changes strings.
The fermata suggests a rubato style of performance; but more importantly,
it makes the single-note hammering more poignant, conveying a melancholic
quality. In fact, such an emotional charge in a rubato style is often highlighted
in an actual performance of the single-note reiteration. Lisztian pianists from
the early to mid-twentieth century frequently rendered this single-pitch ham-
mering in a more emphatic and sophisticated manner than is notated in the
score.92 For instance, Georges Cziffra, a Hungarian Rom from a family of musi-
cians, extends the hammering and also articulates every nuance of each note.93
This kind of interpretation is even more convincing if we consider Liszt’s ossia

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 131

Example 5.10. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 12, cimbalom flourishes just before Vivace.

                       
              
             



   
      

 
 

   

  
    
                                      
        
     

     
 
   

     

    

   

       
   
   
 
 


cimbalom hammering in its extended version. The marking of ritardando con-

veys Liszt’s awareness that the cimbalom hammering and rebounds make the
single-note passage a natural ritardando.
The performance of the cimbalom hammering requires interpretation that
goes beyond its written context in the score, because it tends to entail a grad-
ual process of acceleration and deceleration in speed, increase and decrease in
intensity, and crescendo and decrescendo in dynamics. The way that modern pianists
have rendered the passage above provides only one possibility of interpretation.
Liszt’s response to the performance manner of the cimbalom hammering
was, first of all, to provide his detailed notational devices on a surface level.
The devices include not only the designations crescendo, decrescendo, ritardando,
and fermatas but also the visual image of the hammering isolated from the
major musical discourse in his score. All of them are used to convey a con-
vincing imitation of the cimbalom explicitly; in turn, they demand a particular
execution from the pianist.
The single-note hammering in examples 5.11a and 5.11b occurs over a
short span, yet its succinct appearance has maximum impact on the musical
discourse, particularly when it is juxtaposed with the extensive bravura pas-
sages. Liszt’s rendering ultimately emphasizes the “foreign” or “exotic” quality
of the Gypsy idiom in the midst of the typical virtuosic keyboard idioms.94 His
reworking thus suggests that the “foreign” and “exotic” is situated on an equal
footing with the Romantic keyboard tradition, elevating the former to the level
of the latter or even higher.

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 132 ❧ chapter five

Example 5.11a. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 2, mm. 22–24.

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G 1  
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   ( ± ‡
  ©  
0 q q

Example 5.11b. Liszt, Rhapsody, no. 2, ossia for m. 24.

8QSRFRPHQR$OOHJUR
              “©                  
,QSODFHRIEDU DFFHOHUDQGR
   ©  
    ©          


DD ©  3
      G ± DDDD   ‡
 (
q
>@
ULW
      3
  ©                  
   ©            ©       
(
    3
 ±
(

5. Cimbalom Repetition in Fast Sections and its Percussive Effect

It is customary for both the violinist and the cimbalom player to build up the
intensity in a fast section of a Gypsy-band performance. In his Des bohémiens,
Liszt enthused about the wild and ecstatic fast aspects of Gypsy-band playing,
which had a “fury of excitement” that ultimately reached a point “almost to
delirium”:

After that they [Gypsy players] started imitating castanets by cracking the
joints of their fingers, which are always long and charged with eccentricity.
Still uncertain, they began throwing their caps into the air, following this by
strutting about like peacocks. Then, they started examining the animals again;
when, suddenly, as if incited by a gratitude which they had all the while been
trying to express and the true manifestation of which had only just occurred to

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 133

them, they had recourse to a nobler medium. Flying to their violins and cym-
bals [cimbaloms], they began a real fury of excitement. The Frischka [friss] was
not long in rising to a frenzy or exaltation; and, then, almost to delirium. In its
final stage it could only be compared to that vertiginous and convulsive wheel-
ing motion which is the culmination point in the Dervish ecstasy.95

Amidst a frenetic development, example 5.12 calls attention to the capacity

of the cimbalom player. When considering the intense interaction between the
violinist and the cimbalom player, typical of playing the passage above could be
that the violinist plays the melody, and at the same time the cimbalom player
emphasizes the notes that comprise the melody. Yet the cimbalom player is
also capable of rendering both the melody and the rhythm. As demonstrated
earlier in the examples of single-note hammering (exx. 5.1b and 5.11a–11b),
the same trick is applicable here. The cimbalom player could use the natural,
immediate rebounding with one hammer. The note is hit, rebounds, and is
automatically hit again.
The imaginary cimbalom player strikes the strings swiftly in a moto-perpetuo
rhythm, exploiting the rebounding of a hammer and thus creating a percus-
sive effect. The immediacy and subtlety of rebounding requires the player’s
control of a delicate motion that can nevertheless be repeated rapidly. Liszt
captures the technical challenges through his non-pianistic repetition articu-
lated in a meticulous fingering. A similar situation continues in example 5.13.
In both examples 5.12 and 5.13, Liszt was fully aware of a particular cimbalom
technique that challenges the player to realize a consistent and sophisticated
rebound of one hammer. Both examples are aligned with the earlier examples of
single-note hammering, yet appear in a completely different character. Whereas
the previous hammering in a slow section conveys a melancholic sound via a
skillful blend of dynamics and ritardando, this hammering in a fast section is per-
cussive, full of excitement, and concentrated on a moto-perpetuo rhythm.

6. The Cimbalom Player and Interaction with the Violinist

The cimbalom frequently appears within the context of a duet with the violin-
ist. Example 5.14 provides a particularly distinctive texture for demonstrating
how Liszt superimposes the two disparate features that might evoke the violin-
ist and the cimbalom player, respectively.
Liszt maintains the division between the hands, distinguishing each through
a unique set of figurations, articulations, and performance directions. The left
hand insists on the broken-chord figuration that elicits a tremolo-like sound,
performed in a soft dynamic with the aid of both una corda and damper pedal.
The synthesis of these elements is reminiscent of the cimbalom shimmering of
examples 5.7 and 5.8. Yet if the tremolos of the previous examples have focused

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 134 ❧ chapter five

Example 5.12. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 13, cimbalom “hammering.”

8QSRFRPHQRYLYR

 G     G G   G       G   G G G

         
                
G
   
M OHJJLHURPDUFDWRODPHORGLD  
 ± G ± G ± G ± G G G
±  ±  ±  ( ±  ±   ± 
       ( ( (
   
G G G
    G            G     G
               
 >@

G 
       
     
 G G G G G
 ±   ±  ± G ±   ±  ±   ±  ±  ± G ± G
       

on the cimbalom virtuoso in a solo capacity, those in example 5.14 reveal how
the cimbalom tremolos can be used as a distinctive sound of an accompani-
ment when they are combined with other instruments: in this case, the violin.
The left and right hands of the passage might evoke the cimbalom player
and the violinist, respectively. Whereas the left hand provides the resonat-
ing sound of the cimbalom tremolos, the right hand exhibits a more articu-
lated staccato passage that evokes the spiccato melody of a Gypsy violinist. The
imaginary violinist’s virtuosic effusions appear further in the following “quazi
cadenza” passages that are interspersed or alternate with staccato passages
throughout (only one alternation is shown in ex. 5.14). The passage as shown
in example 5.14 lends the impression of the two players interacting with each
other and creating a peculiar coalescence of sounds.
If example 5.14 displays an “imaginary” interaction between the cimba-
lom player and the violinist, example 5.15 presents an actual interaction
between the two instruments in Liszt’s later orchestral composition, Ungarischer
Sturmmarsch (“Hungarian Attack March,” 1876). In this composition, as men-
tioned earlier, the composer incorporated a part for the actual cimbalom,
presumably Schunda’s modern chromatic one, into the standard European
orchestra for the first time.
We can see immediately the resemblances between the two examples in
tempo, dynamic, and, most of all, texture: the soft dynamic, the light tempo
(Allegretto in ex. 5.14 and Allegro in ex. 5.15), and the particular texture that
combines the two independent sets of articulation and figuration. All these
resemblances help to support the claim that Liszt would have envisioned the
interplay of the two instruments in such a light, delicate fashion earlier than
his composition of the passage for his Rhapsody no. 3 (ex. 5.14).

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 135

Example 5.13. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 2, cimbalom “hammering.”



   


          
          

       

  
      
 
        
   
          

            


7. Cimbalom Improvisation and Hallgató Style

Hallgató style denotes a distinctive type of rhapsodic playing of the Gypsy band
in a slow piece or section.96 As Bálint Sárosi describes it, hallgató melody is
abundant “with runs, languid pauses, sustained or snapped off notes, virtually
pull[ing] the original structure [of a tune] apart,” and the style is characterized
by widely arched and free melodies that evoke an “instrumental fantasy.”97 The
style is hardly reliant on rules, but instead occurs spontaneously.98 Examples
5.16a and 5.16b illustrate a popular song rendered in a slow tempo, as elabo-
rated by a Gypsy clarinetist, Sándor Burka, in a Budapest restaurant in 1979.99
For the sake of clarity, in example 5.16b the notes taken most directly from the
original song are shown with larger noteheads, the rapidly moving embellished
passages with smaller noteheads.
Although example 5.16b is a modern example associated with an urban
Gypsy style, it also reflects the style that was prevalent in the latter part of the
nineteenth century.100 It may well also be applicable to Liszt’s mid-century expe-
rience. Judit Frigyesi notes that the performance of slow pieces by the restaurant
Gypsy band had developed a particular performing practice that “relied heavily
on rubato, ornamentation, tempo changes, and display of virtuosity.”101 As in
example 5.16b, the overarching phrase in hallgató style is profusely ornamented
with melodic turns and runs, unfolding in a constant process of elaboration with-
out any formal restraint and proceeding at a leisurely tempo.
Ornamentation is a significant element that characterizes hallgató style. The
art of ornamentation is fundamental to both Western art music and Hungarian
Gypsy music, and by extension to all types of music. Yet at the same time instru-
mental ornamentation and embellishments played an indispensable and cru-
cial role in the creation of Hungarian Gypsy music.102 In his Des bohémiens,
Liszt regards the art of ornamentation as representative of Gypsy music, as he
describes that “the habit of ornamentation visibly stamps Bohemian art.”103 He
further provides some details of ornamental patterns such as tremolos, scales,
and arpeggios as means of elaborating a theme.104

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 136 ❧ chapter five

Example 5.14. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 3, Allegretto.

SRFRULW
$OOHJUHWWR>D @   

                               
  
  
>@
  

@ 
 @ 
‰
@ >@
 @              ± ± ± œ
       

 
XQDFRUGD
qTXDVLFDGHQ]D “




                3             
@
@           •
ˆ 3
@ ± ±
@ 
œ »

q q

What makes this style of ornamentation specific to Hungarian Gypsy music?

When we recall that Gypsy musicians had already absorbed and adapted the
structural and harmonic elements of the central Classical tradition in order
to develop their own music, as discussed earlier, it is highly likely that their
style of ornamentation has some overlap with the style they imported from the
Western art music tradition. Sámuel Brassai, a Hungarian linguist and writer,
claims that Gypsy musicians assimilated the style of ornamentation particularly
associated with the European virtuoso tradition into the development of their
instrumental music:

The entire instrumental music of Gypsy bands developed side by side with
the exaggerated style of ornamentation adopted by the European virtuosos
(instrumentalists and singers). . . . Their style of ornamentation is nothing
but the gleanings of European virtuosity; its irregularities, which you do glo-
rify, stem not from the independence of the idealized Gypsy character, but
from the imperfections of botched imitations, which we can observe in every
so-called “natural” musician, be he Gypsy or non-Gypsy.105

Yet at the same time a number of Hungarian music scholars have focused
on how the art of ornamentation in the Hungarian Gypsy–band tradition is
strikingly different from Western art music practice. To take one example,
Frigyesi argues that in the “exuberant performance” of Gypsy musicians, the
ornamentation eventually leads to the point where the existing tune becomes
hard to recognize.106 Bartók already made a similar description of a rubato style

Kim.indd 136 2/5/2019 4:10:31 PM

 Example 5.15. Liszt, Hungarian Attack March, 5 measures after reh. G.
8QSRFRPHQR$OOHJUR
G  G
    
   œ œ  œ œ
%VQ @    
M
   ǝ 
+Q)    œ œ  œ
M
$  PDUF

  G G  G
+Q)           
 
&\P  @                            K   


7UJO f  œ O œ O œ O œ O
M    
                        K   

9OQ, @ 
. JUD]LRVR VHPSUHVWDFF
DUFR

@
             K    
9OQ,,    
. JUD]LRVR G VHPSUHVWDFF

 ±            
9LROD !@  ±    ± ± 

PS   
!@      G
  
&HOOR  ( (
$ PDUF 
    
'% @  œ œ œ œ
M

Example 5.16a. The third and fourth phrase of the song “Kilencet ütött az óra.”

   
                 
  


     
        
       
  

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 138 ❧ chapter five

Example 5.16b. Instrumental embellishment of the corresponding tune.

     
                         
      

                       
 


            

                     
     
   
 
  



   
  


        
     
 

          

of Gypsy performance: “[The Gypsies] transformed [all the] melodies to some

parlando-rubato, their excessive rubato playing crowded with overflowing and
exuberant embellishments to the point where the songs became unrecogniz-
able.”107 Frigyesi further points out that the Gypsy musicians did not consider
their embellishment simply as “ornaments around a note but as a statement in
its own right.”108 She believes that this type of ornamentation in the Hungarian
Gypsy–band tradition makes it fundamentally different. Frigyesi argues that
this practice of ornamentation was probably well known throughout the nine-
teenth century; it was what the general public regarded as the most representa-
tive music of the Hungarians; and most of all, it became one of the inspirations
for Liszt’s Rhapsodies.109
To assess the descriptions above, hallgató style is inextricably bound to a rubato
style of Gypsy performance more than to any structural elements or compositional
style. The art of ornamentation plays a crucial role in the rubato style of Gypsy-band
performance, unfolding a constant and extensive process of elaborations, obscur-
ing the original structure, and claiming a self-contained entity of its own.
Throughout his Rhapsodies, Liszt deploys a plethora of ornaments and
embellishments. The richness, variety, and exuberance of those elaborations
range from short ornamental figures to cadenza-like passages and free writing in
a languid rubato style. The ornaments Liszt deployed are not unlike those found
in Romantic virtuosic compositions. Yet through his deep interest in Gypsy-
band styles, Liszt would have acknowledged and attempted to approximate

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 139

certain stylistic characteristics unique to the rubato style and ornamentation of

Gypsy performance.
To illuminate the process of the Gypsy rubato-style, it is useful to identify
the original tune to demonstrate how it unfolds in the style. Example 5.17a
is an excerpt from the first phrase of a popular Hungarian song from around
1840, Káka tövén költ a ruca (“In the rushes, that’s the duck’s home”), which
Sárosi identifies as the source tune for the opening of Liszt’s Eighth Rhapsody,
as shown in example 5.17b; the circled notes comprise the original tune
transposed.110 The way the existing tune is rendered in Liszt’s version has an
unmistakable parallel with what we already have observed in the excerpts from
Pressel’s article of 1852 (exx. 5.4a–b) and Allaga’s method book (ex. 5.5).
By juxtaposing Liszt’s rendering (ex. 5.17b) with exx. 5.4b and 5.5 several
similarities are immediately recognizable: the slow tempo, the profuse orna-
ments including the characteristic arpeggios, and the frequent use of fermatas,
conveying a sense of the rubato-style performance. Both Liszt’s version and the
excerpt from Allaga’s method book (ex. 5.5) share a general tendency of orna-
mental ascension, the initial broken arpeggios with an emphasis on forte, the
arpeggios developing into a melodic turn typical of a cimbalom gesture, and
the detailed dynamic markings that help emulate the increase and decrease in
volume and intensity customary of cimbalom playing.
One might argue that without knowledge of the cimbalom techniques
in particular and Hungarian Gypsy style in general, the beginning of Liszt’s
Rhapsody no. 8 immediately gives the impression of an improvisatory character
in a free rhythm and meter under the designation Lento a capriccio. In addition,
the excerpt from example 5.17b may also demonstrate Liszt’s own improvisa-
tory practice in his performance. In his Pest recitals during 1839–40 and 1846,
for instance, Liszt improvised on tunes from the popular Hungarian repertoire
favored by the audience.111 Extending his improvisation practice to the open-
ing of Rhapsody no. 8, the composer presumably selected a tune known to the
audience, displayed his improvisation prowess to elaborate the tune, and com-
municated with his audience through his rendering.112
Liszt’s improvisation is also inextricably bound up with his compositional
process. He often deployed some improvisatory modules and incorporated
them into his ongoing process of working out on the keyboard. The recitative-
like passage is also one of the ubiquitous devices in improvisation, providing a
lyrical moment before launching into another section without preparation.113
The recitative style can be also a harbinger of the “speaking style” in the key-
board fantasia tradition, particularly associated with the legacy of Carl Czerny
and Beethoven, both of whom had a profound impact on Liszt.114 Extrapolated
from these improvisatory modules, example 5.17b illustrates how the virtuoso
improviser-composer renders the passage in a recitative style, restating it to

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 140 ❧ chapter five

Example 5.17a. The first phrase of the song “Káka tövén költ a ruca.”

  
 
          

    
     

gain time, creating a balanced phrase structure, and ultimately expanding the
pianistic sonority to the realm of “speaking.”
The general characteristics associated with improvisatory practice, however,
become distinctive if we consider certain traits of the rubato style practiced by
Hungarian Gypsy musicians and Liszt’s response to them, including hallgató
style and ornamentation. The correspondences between Liszt’s rendering and
those from Pressel’s article and Allaga’s method book have already helped to
show his careful attention to the distinctive techniques of the imaginary cim-
balom player’s improvisation in a slow rhapsodic style. The imaginary player
improvises a tune in a virtuosic manner around the basic skeleton of the mel-
ody using the distinctive types of figurations idiomatic to the cimbalom, includ-
ing resonant arpeggiated chords, a turning melodic contour, fast runs up and
down the scale, delicate trills, and a number of mostly ascending ornaments.
More conspicuously, in his version of example 5.17b, Liszt carefully wrote
down the non-pianistic repetition on a single note in the midst of the fantasy-like
passage. This single-note reiteration, as discussed above, may be the recitative,
or “speaking,” style of writing integral to the piano improvisation that is in turn
written down in the score.115 Yet, through the lens of Hungarian Gypsy–music
idioms, it immediately reminds us of the single-note hammering of the cimba-
lom, as observed earlier in one of the examples of Allaga’s method books. As for
the repeated-note passage of example 5.17b, Sárosi suggests attributing it to the
violinist’s playing: in his interpretation, the entire passage begins with the sono-
rous arpeggios that evoke the cimbalom player, leading to the first violin and his
or her short runs.116 It is true to a certain degree that the passage could portray
the interaction between the cimbalom player and the violinist. Yet, as already
observed in the example of cimbalom repetition on a single note, Liszt’s deliber-
ate choice of non-pianistic repetition looks and sounds like the cimbalom ham-
mering. Just as he had done in his emulation of the cimbalom hammering, Liszt
meticulously inscribes single-note repetition and provides detailed crescendos and
fermatas, offering a nuanced articulation of cimbalom playing.
The marking Lento a capriccio in example 5.17b continues to show Liszt’s use
of the designation reserved for a specific passage throughout his Rhapsodies.
Recalling his marking a capriccio for the cimbalom tremolos (ex. 5.7 and 5.8),

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Kim.indd 141
Example 5.17b. Liszt, Rhapsody no. 8, opening.

3§
   /HQWRDFDSULFFLR
           K   • 3œ
       DD   
PHVWR D 
3  
C  3
     ±    ‡ 
 S
   

S FRQ
q
 3
 § K            @  K@   3 
 @      @  @  DDD @  • œ 
3
DD @ 

D
C
3 3  
  ±
@
K @  @ 

 K @  » @ • œ 
@ S @  @ 

S

2/5/2019 4:10:35 PM
 142 ❧ chapter five

in this example he would have also found the capriccio tradition associated with
fantasia and improvisation useful for approximating hallgató style effectively.
Liszt’s reworkings in this instance thus demonstrate how acutely he saw the
potential parallels between the two disparate traditions—the capriccio associa-
tions from Romantic virtuoso and keyboard practice on the one hand and the
hallgató style from distinctively Hungarian Gypsy–music practice on the other
hand—and how convincingly he assimilates the two different traditions into
his own piano version. The result of his integration is to offer both familiarity
and freshness by deploying the term accustomed to the performers and audi-
ences of his time and engaging with the long-standing virtuoso tradition, yet
turning it to his own purpose of faithfully capturing certain styles of Gypsy-
band music, particularly the cimbalom improvisation.
The issue of gauging the process of cimbalom improvisation is challeng-
ing, but improvisation theory can help us to understand Gypsy improvisa-
tion in a broader sense.117 Certain features tend to recur. According to Ali
Jihad Rach, for example, these features include “intuitiveness,” “creative-
ness,” “personalization (individualization),” “balance between the familiar
and the novel,” and “direct contact with the audience.”118 As for the field
of piano improvisation, in his discussion of Chopin’s improvisation, John
Rink has approached the subject analytically by using a Schenkerian graph-
ing of different structural levels of Chopin’s Polonaise-Fantaisie, op. 61,
setting out particular traits of the composer’s style that reflect the improvisa-
tion tradition.119 Improvisation theory can be applied to the improvisation
of Hungarian Gypsy players, but it is not central to how a composer–pianist
combines the imagined players of a Gypsy band onto one keyboard. Indeed,
it is important to note that what Liszt attempted was not to reproduce the
authentic nature of the practice but to approximate what he believed and
imagined to be real Gypsy improvisations in his own virtuosic pianistic terms.
In doing so, he also attempted to imbue the improvising Gypsy virtuosos with
full artistic value by conjuring up the nature and spirit of the practice in his
written compositions, ultimately elevating the status of the improvising Gypsy
virtuosi to the level of artists.120
Liszt’s rendering of a tune in the rubato style of Gypsy performance invites
consideration of the broader issue of his borrowing method in his Rhapsodies.
Sárosi has made a compelling argument that Liszt’s version of the instrumen-
tal fantasy has “no respect for its original character” but instead represents
his faithful attempts to imitate the performance of a Gypsy ensemble.121 This
suggests that the way Liszt arranged the tunes becomes less significant than
his attempts to capture the way Gypsy-band musicians arranged tunes in their
performances. In the critical comments of the Neue Liszt Ausgabe (1972–73),
Gárdonyi and Szelényi also note that the source tunes of Liszt’s Rhapsodies

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 interpretive fidelity to gypsy creativity ❧ 143

were not of his own invention; for this reason, these pieces are closer to his
“paraphrases” of operas and songs.
At the same time, Liszt was interested less in using his renowned tech-
nique of paraphrasing, which he cultivated in his opera fantasies, than in
rendering the existing tune in hallgató style to approximate a live perfor-
mance of the Gypsy band.122 Hooker also argues that what makes Liszt’s
“Hungarian-style pieces”—including his Rhapsodies—distinguishable from
his other works is neither the Hungarian origin of the tunes nor his use
of improvisation to develop them but “his modeling of his improvisation
at least in part on the style of other performers—the Gypsy virtuosi of
Hungary, the performers that brought Hungary’s national music to life.”123
Liszt’s rendering accomplished this task in an almost systematic process:
most parts of the melody are replaced by ornaments in a constant process
of improvisation, in which the recognition and identification of the origi-
nal tune becomes less important than the distinctive Hungarian Gypsy style
of the embellishments surrounding the melodic notes. Moreover, the struc-
tural significance of the melody becomes less highlighted than the highly
ornamented performance style of improvising Gypsy musicians. In short,
behind Liszt’s ostensibly free writing lies a conscientious approach to cap-
turing on the piano a particular type of cimbalom playing, and—by exten-
sion—the culture in which it thrives.

Conclusions

Common to Liszt’s reworkings of cimbalom playing is that his innovation

on the surface stems from his meticulous attention to the instrument being
modeled. In the broader context of the style hongrois tradition, Liszt’s rep-
resentation of cimbalom playing represents an engagement with the tra-
dition or with the “extensive stylistic exoticism” in Viennese adaptations
of Hungarian Gypsy–style music around 1800.124 According to Jonathan
Bellman’s view of the “lexicon” of the style hongrois, Liszt’s versions provide
“the best examples of stylized cimbaloms,” which encapsulated the three
aspects of “harmonic, declamatory, and virtuosic.”125 His depiction of Gypsy
musicians is also construed as one of the richest and most enduring facets
of Romantic exoticism and nationalism.126 Nonetheless, Liszt’s reworkings
of cimbalom playing, as analyzed above, are set apart from the conventions
of the “stylized” adaptations of Hungarian Gypsy–style music because of
his methods of appropriating particular techniques of the instrument in a
realistic, visible, and detailed manner. His accomplishments in capturing
this distinctive instrument contribute to reorienting our understanding of

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 144 ❧ chapter five

the composer’s use of Hungarian Gypsy–style elements in a general sense

towards his specific approach to the integrity of the instrument. His inno-
vative pianism in turn reinvigorates the instrument’s essence convincingly,
and opens a window into a world of improvisation, borrowing, and creativ-
ity that epitomizes Liszt the composer–pianist as a whole.

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 Conclusions
Recurring Techniques and Aesthetics

Liszt treated his models with the utmost care. His endeavors to capture
the essence of these models attest to his genuine admiration for them.
His conscientious and inventive approach to rendering them on the key-
board testifies to his integrity and his indisputable mastery of the piano.
By exploring every possible resource available on the piano, he minimized
the ostensible disadvantages of the piano, ensuring the most faithful ren-
dering of the model. His reworkings represent the blurring of boundar-
ies between reference and digression, composition and performance, and
faithful reproduction and creative artistry. His compositional focus on the
texture, sound, and timbre of instruments, in particular, illustrates his com-
bination of detailed attention to the model instruments and his imaginative
reconstruction of them.
For all Liszt’s orchestral arrangements and Rhapsodies, the musical analy-
ses have focused on his specific compositional techniques in his rendering of
instrumental music. His reworking process demonstrates how scrupulously
he approached the essence of the model, how effectively he provided solu-
tions to problems in rendering the sounds and effects of the modeled instru-
ments, and how individually he reinvigorated the borrowed material in his
own pianistic terms. Despite the completely different source materials for his
orchestral arrangements and the Rhapsodies, his reworking methods reveal
that certain types of compositional techniques and aesthetics underlying
them recur throughout. In what follows, we briefly reconsider the recurring
techniques and aesthetics that Liszt deployed that were discussed in chapters
2–5. My goal here is to show how the diverse strands of Liszt’s reworkings
considered in this study may be compared, contrasted, and linked, ultimately
propelling a new vision of the recurring theme that fidelity and creativity are
interdependent throughout.

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 146 ❧ conclusions

Orchestral Concept of Sound

Focus on Individual Instruments

Liszt’s reworking methods in his orchestral arrangements and Rhapsodies
reveal his deep interest in the distinctive sounds and effects of individual
instruments. The immediately recognizable element is his detailed cues for
instruments. The impulse behind these cues, in both the orchestral arrange-
ments and the Rhapsodies, is his faith that the piano is capable of producing
the sounds of the instruments. The carefully inscribed cues represent his scru-
pulousness toward detail as well as his aspiration for pianists to be aware of the
original instruments and render them in a nuanced manner with keyboard
touch and articulation.
Liszt approaches the individual instruments attentively and renders them
effectively in his pianistic terms. For instance, in rendering of the prominent
timpani rolls in his Rossini partition (ex. 3.5b), the chromatic scales he deploys
are a distinctively pianistic solution to the agitated effect of the timpani. At the
same time, his rendering reflects his detailed approach to the rise and fall of
the rolls in his crescendo and decrescendo markings. More importantly, he is faith-
ful to the harmonic content of the timpani rolls, preserving the implied bass
yet turning the rolls into effective pianistic figurations in the rumbling scales.
A similar treatment of the timpani roll is also found in his rendering of the
Romans theme in his two-piano arrangement of Hunnenschlacht (ex. 4.5b). He
uses the chromatic timpani roll to evoke the ghostly mood that threatens the
Romans, ultimately suggesting his rereading of his own symphonic poem.
In his Rhapsodies, Liszt’s renderings of cimbalom playing illustrate the pan-
oply of the instrument’s unique techniques and effects. For instance, the shim-
mering sound of the cimbalom unfolds through tremolos; and the distinctive
single-note hammering appears in a slow tempo, or for percussive effect in a
fast tempo. Just as he rendered the rolls of the timpani players in a rise-and-
fall pattern in his Rossini partition, he emulated the gradual acceleration and
deceleration, increase and decrease in intensity, and crescendo and decrescendo of
the cimbalom player.
Liszt continued to demonstrate such orchestral conceptions in some of
his later original piano compositions. For instance, the particular chromatic-
scale effect that had been already illustrated in the agitated timpani rolls of
his Rossini partition and the ominous runs of his Hunnenschlacht arrangement
have a remarkable parallel with the related effects that are found in the begin-
ning of Ballade no. 2 (1853) (ex. C.1) and at the climax of Funérailles (1849),
the seventh piece from Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (1827–52) (ex. C.2).
The memorable 16-measure chromatic bass runs that begin his Ballade no. 2
(ex. C.1) were not merely brilliant but played by the composer himself “very
broadly and thunderously with a lot of sound and pedal.”1 The rumbling roar

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Kim.indd 147
Example C.1. Liszt, Ballade no. 2, beginning.

$OOHJURPRGHUDWR
 
   ± ‡ ‡
M    
   
G  
K          K   K   K   K          K   K   K  
    
FRQ q

 PDUFDWR < <

  T< Ç Ç T<
 ÇÇ   ÇÇ   ÇÇ 
œ œ œ œ œ œ
     
 
  
K      K  K  K    K      K  K  K    K       K  K  K   

2/5/2019 4:10:38 PM
Kim.indd 148
Example C.2. Liszt, Funérailles, mm. 142–45.

$OOHJURHQHUJLFRDVVDL 
 G
@    ÇÇÇ Ç
 @  @  •   •    Ç œ ±     

 

  ÇÇ
 ±   
  
  
    
”
 @  @              K      K   @  K      K   @  K      K  @
@               K       K   @      K       K   @      K       K   @  
“   
q q

2/5/2019 4:10:38 PM
 conclusions ❧ 149

of the chromatic left-hand octaves of Funérailles (ex. C.2), which developed by

another impassioned ostinato figure (its octave developments appear in m.
142), surges back and forth in the bass relentlessly. These parallels suggest that
Liszt’s pianistic “orchestration” of formerly orchestral and Hungarian Gypsy
music would have informed his later piano works, those composed when he
was increasingly conscious of striving to become a serious orchestral composer.

Timbral Interplay on the Keyboard

In an oft-quoted letter to Adolphe Pictet in 1837, Liszt expressed his aspiration:

my firm wish is not to abandon study and development of the piano until
I have done everything possible, or at least everything that it is possible for
me to do today. . . . In the span of its seven octaves it embraces the range of
an orchestra; and the ten fingers of one man suffice to render the harmo-
nies produced by the concourse of more than a hundred instruments playing
together.2

This statement represents Liszt’s orchestral concept of sound in his creation

of a massive sound as the equivalent of orchestral tutti; compare the frequent
reports by witnesses that his playing gave the illusion of a hundred instru-
ments.3 Aside from the massive tutti effect, however, the statement also illus-
trates his aspiration to convey the timbral interplay of variegated instruments
with his ten fingers.
Many instances of Liszt’s renderings in his orchestral arrangements and
Rhapsodies demonstrate how he saw the potential of the pianist’s fingers as
analogous to the multiple instruments of the orchestra or different instru-
ments of the Gypsy band such as the violin and cimbalom. To take one example
from the Rhapsodies (ex. 5.14), Liszt provides a distinctive texture that super-
imposes two different layers of sounds and articulations, evoking the imagi-
nary violinist and cimbalom player. The two layers of sounds are contradictory
pianistically, but create a unique coalescence of the sounds of the Gypsy-band
instruments.
In his orchestral arrangements, we have seen instances that evoke three- or
four-hand texture and technique. Such instances illustrate that Liszt often used
three-stave notation effectively to stratify the disparate layers of the model’s
textures and multiply the different articulations of the instruments in the
utmost detail (exx. 2.4a and 2.5). He carefully delineates different layers of
instruments, each with its own detailed articulation and dynamic. All the fin-
gers are required to manage contrasting types of articulation, texture, and
figuration, producing a timbral interplay of different groups of instruments
simultaneously on the keyboard.

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 150 ❧ conclusions

Throughout his orchestral arrangements and Rhapsodies, Liszt’s orchestral

concept of sound is evident in his focus on the texture, sound, and timbre of
instruments, more than any structural elements such as melody and harmony.
He aspired to produce on the keyboard all the essentials of instruments, suc-
cessfully merging his pianistic prowess with his orchestral concept and setting
the piano on an equal footing with the orchestra, Gypsy ensemble, or other
individual instruments.
Even today we still esteem Liszt’s legacy in his imaginative renderings of the
orchestral timbres on the piano. In a 2018 review of a recording of Joachim
Raff’s Caprice on themes from his opera King Alfred (op. 65, no. 2), Stephen
Wright notes: “Franz Liszt arranged some of the same tunes (Naxos 572589),
and that puts Raff’s perfunctory arrangement to shame. Where Liszt employs
his superhuman technique and fervid imagination to suggest orchestral colors, Raff
dutifully assigns notes to fingers.”4

Reinvigoration of Virtuosic Keyboard Techniques

The examples excerpted from Liszt’s orchestral arrangements and Rhapsodies

expose the range of his virtuosic compositional and performance styles. As we
observed earlier in relation to the accounts of his performances, both his parti-
tions and Rhapsodies served as staples of his concerts, dazzling audiences of the
time. His two-piano arrangements also frequently appeared in concerts of his
associates. It is thus not surprising that Liszt often draws on his own “transcen-
dental” techniques throughout his reworkings.
The meaning of the virtuosic techniques becomes reinvigorated in his
reworkings. He uses them as convincing solutions to emulating orches-
tral effects or the distinctive style of cimbalom playing. In his orchestral
arrangements, he often transforms orchestral accompaniment patterns
into formidable novel pianistic figurations and techniques, including
cascades of octaves played by alternating hands, rapid playing of chords,
rapid alternation of the two hands, large skips across the keyboard, and
wide arpeggios that sweep the entire range of the keyboard.5 These devices
help sustain the tension and interest of the orchestral texture and rhythm,
heighten the building-up process, and intensify a dramatic accompaniment
intrinsic to the original. Moreover, Liszt often provides completely differ-
ent accompaniments while preserving the original pitch content in his own
virtuosic styles. For example, as already mentioned, in the Rossini partition,
the chromatic scales of the timpani rolls are centered on the implied bass
motion underlying the original rolls (ex. 3.5b). Liszt’s reworking of the
accompaniment into virtuosic figurations is thus deeply rooted in his full
knowledge of the original content.

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 conclusions ❧ 151

Liszt also deploys virtuosic figurations to heighten programmatic ideas inher-

ent in the original. In his two-piano arrangements, as illustrated in the brilliant
figurations that accompany the extended D-minor Mazeppa theme (ex. 4.3a), the
figurations can be virtuosic arpeggios that skip and sweep over a wide range of
the keyboard. Yet when we look in detail, the contour of the figurations con-
veys a sense of the vastness portrayed by the strings of the original. The bravura
figurations, which could have been a mere showcase, become distinctive within
Liszt’s faithful approach to the original and his creative solutions.
In the Rhapsodies, the frequent virtuosic flourishes convey a showcase on
the surface. Yet they could also be another rendering of cimbalom playing (ex.
5.10). Just as the cimbalom player alternates the hammers rapidly, relying on
a repeating pattern, Liszt carefully lends a consistent contour to his flourishes
and inscribes meticulous fingerings to articulate it. He creates a different type
of technical demand with his rapid fingering patterns on one note (exx. 5.12–
13), referring to the cimbalom player’s rhythmic striking with one hammer.
Liszt fully comprehends this cimbalom technique, which challenges the player
to realize an immediate rebound of the hammer to create a percussive effect.
Liszt uses the full resources of the keyboard—and convincingly goes beyond
the confinements of the keyboard—to select the virtuosic techniques appro-
priate to the model, conventional idioms for his own purposes. The brilliant
virtuosity stems from his deep sense of faithfulness to the original.

Visual Effects

Robert Schumann made the famous claim that Liszt “must be heard—and also
seen; for if Liszt played behind the scenes, a great deal of the poetry of his
playing would be lost.”6 The visual sensation emanating from Liszt’s perform-
ing style has received significant attention from critics of his time as well as
modern scholars.7 As illustrated in his rendering of the characteristic dotted
rhythms in a climax of the first movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony
(ex.1.1b), Liszt successfully expanded and contracted the keyboard register,
maintaining interest in the constant rhythm, sustaining the massive effect of
the tutti, and most of all, creating a powerfully visual effect and thus turning
the orchestral writing into his own spectacle.
In the different realm of his renderings of cimbalom playing, Liszt’s assidu-
ous reworkings often turn the pianist into a cimbalom player in a visual dimen-
sion. He deliberately divides the tremolos between the hands in alternation
(in the case of Rhapsody no. 10, ex. 5.7), as if portraying the movement of
the two hammer-wielding hands over the cimbalom through the movement
of the hands on the keyboard. He is also aware of the unique pitch layout
on the cimbalom and its impact on a peculiar physical movement involved

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 152 ❧ conclusions

in performance. Through this lens, his use of the extensive range of the key-
board, whether a series of widely spaced tremolos (Rhapsody no. 11) or rapid
skips in trills (Rhapsody no. 2, ex. 5.9b), suggests his focus on the distinctive
physical movement of the cimbalom player and its visual effect. In addition,
his deep understanding of the cimbalom reorients our conventional focus on
bravura flourishes toward a particular type of cimbalom playing reliant on the
contour of repeating patterns. Throughout his renderings of cimbalom play-
ing, one of the motivations for his notational and compositional peculiarities
is therefore his attempt to emulate the distinctive choreography of cimbalom
playing and its visual effect as a corollary.
The visual effects that emanate from his renderings represent how Liszt
often regarded the hands, fingers, and arms as integral to conveying the idi-
oms of the model instruments. The visual effect is also the result of his proj-
ect of transferring the model onto the sound and sight of his performance,
making his role as a creative composer-arranger-performer visible. Thus, the
“creative” changes he makes are ultimately more faithful to the original than a
note-for-note rendering would be.

Contrast and Juxtaposition

During his virtuoso years, Liszt’s exploitation of contrast served as one of his
essential performance strategies, capturing the eyes and ears of his contem-
porary audiences. For instance, the Musical Journal reported on 12 May 1840
about his concert at the Queen’s Concert Room in London:

His performance was perfectly astounding, incomprehensible! At one

moment in arpeggio, in octave, or in full chords, a hurricane of rich and
varied harmonies fell upon the ear with all the effect of a full orchestra, while
at the next the most delicious flow of pure, beautiful, and expressive melody
stole upon the senses, leaving the soul in a delirium of wonder and delight.8

Liszt’s exploitation of contrast—in dynamics, texture, figuration, and reg-

ister—serves as one of his significant reworking methods. In his orchestral
arrangements, he often pits the straightforward theme against a more virtuosic
transition or accompaniment. It is an effective means of maintaining the origi-
nal composer’s thematic ideas, while simultaneously demonstrating Liszt’s own
enhancement of pianistic sonority and effects around the theme. This com-
positional method fulfills the dual demands of Liszt as virtuoso pianist and as
virtuoso arranger and composer.
Contrast as an essential compositional feature, however, goes beyond
the relationship between theme and accompaniment or transition. Liszt’s

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 conclusions ❧ 153

exploitation of register serves as one of the effective contrasts in his rework-

ings. As evident in his arrangements of Beethoven’s Symphonies, his registral
contrasts help maintain the interest in the constant rhythm of the original (ex.
1.1b).9 Through registral changes and contrasts, Liszt convincingly compen-
sates for the confines of the piano, such as the restricted tone color and sus-
taining power. Moreover, the registral exploitation provides him an effective
means to offer a different approach to the performing style of the original
material, turning it into his own spectacle.
In his two-piano arrangements, Liszt’s distribution of material helps
heighten the contrasts of the model by using the resources available on the
two pianos. This is shown in his rendering of the Mazeppa theme (ex. 4.3a),
in which he makes a judicious division between theme and accompaniment,
forte and piano, straightforward simplicity and high virtuosity in figuration, and
two groups of instruments such as strings and woodwinds. Yet in these same
examples, his distribution extends beyond simple dichotomies. By alternating
the pianos and switching their roles, his distribution responds effectively to the
changes in key, texture, and orchestration of the original.
In the Rhapsodies, contrast is inherent in a structure typical of Hungarian
Gypsy–band music: the slow–fast (lassú–friss) scheme. In his renderings of
cimbalom playing, Liszt also responds to this structural contrast through the
contrasting techniques, effects, and characters of the instrument’s playing. He
imbues the introduction that often precedes a slow section with the promi-
nent shimmering sound of cimbalom tremolos or the distinctive rubato-style of
cimbalom improvisation. In between slow and fast sections, he carefully incor-
porates an extensive passage of cimbalom tremolos, deliberately suspending
the tempo in the moment and thus making the following fast section more
effective. In contrast, in a fast section, a rhythmic and percussive aspect of cim-
balom playing comes to the fore: the imaginary cimbalom player hammers
relentlessly on a single note, building up excitement, virtuosity, and spectacle.

Avoidance of Rigid Patterns

Piano arrangers must carefully select notes, adjust register, and delineate the
texture to make them fit into keyboard texture. Throughout his transferal and
reworking process, Liszt’s adherence to typical keyboard texture becomes less
significant for him than the attempt to render the original texture conscien-
tiously. In other words, whereas customary keyboard texture requires a skel-
eton of the melody in alignment with the harmonic accompaniment, Liszt’s
layout often violates this expectation.
Liszt’s two-piano arrangements have richer examples of his non-repetition
of any formulaic pattern in the distribution of material. On several occasions

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 154 ❧ conclusions

his distinctive types of distribution and layout provide a new way of thinking
in the transferal to two pianos. To take but one example, in his rendering of
the opening phrase of Les préludes (ex. 4.1a), his cutting across the phrase is
unique. The motivation for this peculiar action is his focus on a subtle differ-
ence of timbre in the orchestral version caused by a change from cellos and
basses to violas. His distribution also helps reinvigorate the original uniform
writing by creating a novel effect in both visual and aural dimensions over the
course of the movement from one piano to the other.
The diverse and distinctive types of Liszt’s distributions reveal his deep
understanding of changes in instrumental timbres in the original and his
shrewd sense of how to exploit the interactions between the pianos. Diverging
from any predetermined scheme, his own distributions offer convincing solu-
tions to the frequent lack of color in piano arrangements by others. These
distributions also help the audience and performer to experience a wider spec-
trum of sound and dynamics than that available on a single keyboard.
In the Rhapsodies, Liszt’s adherence to typical keyboard texture becomes less
significant for him than the effort to capture the model instrument more effec-
tively. In his rendering of cimbalom tremolos, he does not repeat what he did in
the pianistic adaptation of orchestral tremolos, but displays his unique approach
to figuration, layout, and texture in an attempt to capture the distinctive tech-
niques and sounds of cimbalom playing convincingly. The wide-ranging tremo-
los sound less pianistic than cimbalom-like. The layout of the divided hands for
the tremolos or trills is also untypical of pianistic idioms, evoking the movement
of hammers on the cimbalom. The texture is not framed in a conventional key-
board manner but concentrated on the shimmering sonority in free-style writing.
Aside from avoiding rigid repeating schemes, Liszt confounds any expecta-
tion of conventional keyboard idioms by deliberately using non-pianistic figu-
rations. In his Rhapsodies, on special occasions Liszt also completely refuses to
make the model material idiomatic to the piano. One representative example
is his use of single-pitch hammering (ex. 5.11a). This is strikingly non-pianistic,
yet through the lens of Hungarian Gypsy–style music, it refers to one of the
significant styles of cimbalom playing: reiteration of a single note. Although
it appears only briefly, its visual and aural impact on the audience is powerful:
first, because it is distinctively non-pianistic; and second, because Liszt contrasts
it with the preceding virtuosic flourishes and uses it effectively to conclude the
passage. The single-note hammering also appears in a completely different
character when Liszt emulates the percussive effect of cimbalom playing in a
fast section (exx. 5.12–13). In short, he carefully uses non-pianistic hammering
for two different aspects of cimbalom playing, in both cases making the idiom
of the cimbalom noticeable in the midst of keyboard idioms, thus highlighting
the unfamiliar over the familiar when it is necessary and effective.

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 conclusions ❧ 155

By avoiding repeating what had been done in existing piano arrangements

and adaptations, Liszt’s renderings elevate the prevailing practice into a profes-
sional, artistic pursuit. His notion of partition already distinguished his solo-
piano arrangements from the copious superficial ones of the time, advocating
scrupulousness and artistic interpretations from an arranger. Fink’s assessment
of Liszt’s partitions of Beethoven’s symphonies underscored the partitions as
meticulous, difficult, exclusive, and inaccessible for the general public, align-
ing them with the realm of a select few pianists and audiences. His two-piano
arrangements are also situated in a distinctive position in the development of
the medium, because they were faithful, virtuosic, and received well by profes-
sional pianists, elevating the status of the oeuvre.
The same divergence from convention for artistic pursuit applies to Liszt’s
Rhapsodies. The Rhapsodies departed from the prevailing tendency of the
contemporary compositions influenced by Hungarian Gypsy music that were
mostly entertaining and less artistic pieces.10 As illustrated earlier in his 1859
Des Bohémiens, Liszt’s Rhapsodies also emerged in part from his attempts to
“correct” his predecessors’ approaches to Viennese adaptations of Hungarian
Gypsy music, criticizing their “fleeting attention” to the source material and
misunderstandings of it and establishing himself as the authority on Hungarian
music. Nevertheless, the way Liszt appropriates the “sacred text” aspect of the
Beethoven partitions is completely different from the way he elevates the popu-
lar and “low” aspect of Hungarian Gypsy–style music, peripheral to the main-
stream of the European musical tradition, to his Romantic keyboard idioms.
Just as one of the motivations for his project of Beethoven partitions was to
“correct” the superficial versions of the time, the same line of reasoning can be
extended to the Rhapsodies, relating the two different groups of repertoire. As
for the renderings of cimbalom playing, whereas the previous practice was gen-
erally confined to color or a subsidiary role in minor sections, his borrowing of
cimbalom playing is extensive, assiduous, and novel. His deep approach to the
cimbalom and Gypsy-band idioms ultimately helped reconceive the idioms as
being worthy of the pursuit of artistic composition.
The recurring characteristics I have discussed above offer understanding
of Liszt’s reworkings across his orchestral arrangements and Rhapsodies. By
mediating the two different traditions of music, we have discovered that several
of Liszt’s reworking techniques and aesthetics provide an effective comparison
and contrast among the different groups of repertoire. In each realm of his
renderings, whether solo-piano arrangements, two-piano ones, and imitations
of cimbalom playing, the borrowed material is different; the medium to which
the existing material is adapted is also different; and the resultant sound and
effect of his rendering are completely different. Yet, such differences are pre-
cisely why the shared techniques and aesthetics across the repertoire become

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 156 ❧ conclusions

more significant for shedding light on the correspondence and distinction in

his reworkings between his orchestral arrangements and Rhapsodies.
It would be precarious to assert that any single concept of Liszt’s reworkings
governed the many different instances of the practice. However, the recurring
techniques and aesthetics reinforce the overarching theme that Liszt’s fidel-
ity and creativity are interdependent. His sensitive attention to the distinc-
tive sounds and effects of individual instruments motivates him to search for
appropriate solutions in his own pianistic terms. In taking a detailed look, we
discover that the seemingly pianistic writing is indebted to a particular articula-
tion, harmonic content, and performance gesture of the model instrument(s).
His meticulous approach to the intricate layers of timbres of the original leads
him to explore a unique hand-position, finger technique, or layout. The vir-
tuosic keyboard figurations exemplify Liszt’s creative prowess as a virtuoso
pianist-composer, but on a deeper level they emulate the texture, effect, or
performance technique of the model. The visual effect that his renderings
often creates provides his own spectacle, challenging the authorial presence
of the original, as if convincing us that his version surpasses the original. Yet
at the same time the effect demonstrates his solutions to the confinement of
the keyboard, and, more importantly, his faithful attention to the visual effect
inherent in the idioms of the model instrument. Liszt’s creativity also resides in
his unique layouts, figurations, and textures. The creativity in turn reflects his
search for better solutions to emulating the model faithfully.
Just as the field of musical borrowing has motivated us to deepen our knowl-
edge of the extent to which and manner in which Liszt used borrowed material
(as discussed in the introduction), methods employed in the field have helped
us to discover both the interrelationships and the uniqueness of types of bor-
rowing and strengthen our insight into the underlying aesthetics of these
borrowings without hasty conclusions or speculation. Although this study has
contributed to our understanding of only one facet of Liszt’s borrowing, it has
provided one significant constituent of his grand project of arranging orches-
tral music, simultaneously juxtaposing it with his reworkings of Hungarian
Gypsy–ensemble music by focusing on cimbalom playing. The closer inspec-
tion of musical analyses throughout has helped to deepen the understanding
of the relationships between Liszt’s models and his renderings, comprehend
his reworking methods thoroughly, and permit comparison between dispa-
rate realms of borrowing. This comparison, in particular, has helped us to dis-
cover each realm as unique and at the same time interrelated with each other
through recurring techniques, aesthetics, and themes, ultimately enlivening
the dynamic of these reworkings.
The many instances of Liszt’s interpretive fidelity considered in this study
embody his view about the model works as nothing more than a source that
he strove to improve, rival, and even surpass. Such an idea epitomizes Liszt’s

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 conclusions ❧ 157

critiques of the growing nineteenth-century concepts of the cult of the com-

poser, the ideal of autonomous artwork, and the performer as the vessel of
the composer as opposed to an interpreter. In his Des bohémiens, as discussed
in chapter 5, Liszt defended the performer’s creative interpretation, which
contributes to bringing life to the static status of a composer’s artwork. Liszt’s
notion of performer can aptly provide a counterargument to Wagner’s view of
the virtuoso, who should not draw any attention from the work but “suppress
any invention of his own.”11 As we have seen with various permutations of his
reworkings, Liszt’s interpretive fidelity is not tied to the text of the original but
imbues it with his imagination, just as Mary Hunter has made an influential
claim that the early Romantic performance discourse urges the performer “to
develop his own imagination,” ultimately collapsing the opposition between
composer and performer.12 This interpretation and creativity set Liszt apart
from the imposition of the musical work concept Werktreue on virtuosos in the
midst of anti-virtuoso polemics.
In the broader context of early nineteenth-century reproductive arts, Liszt’s
interpretive fidelity, as we have seen in chapter 1, shares the same concern as
the Parisian eminent engravers: regarding the original not as an objective form
but as a source to recreate with the principle of translation and ultimately offer
a better representation. Revisiting the case of Ingres, the painter himself gave
a concrete explanation in 1859 to critics who “observed. . . that I reproduce my
own compositions too often.”13 Ingres noted, “Here is my reason: most of these
works, which I love because of their subjects, seem to me worth the trouble to
make them better, in repeating or retouching them.”14 Liszt was also willing to
make a considerable commitment to extending certain originals, his own or
others’, over the course of his career. Liszt showed the same esteem as Ingres
for repetition as a means of recreating something new: an arrestingly distinct
interpretive type of work.

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Kim.indd 158 2/5/2019 4:10:46 PM
 Appendix
Liszt’s Preface to His Piano Arrangements
of Beethoven’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies
in the Breitkopf & Härtel Edition, 1840
Preface

The name of Beethoven is sacred in the arts. Today his symphonies are univer-
sally recognized as masterpieces. Anybody who has a serious desire to expand
his knowledge or even to create something new himself, can never analyze
and study these symphonies enough. Therefore, every mode of disseminating
and making them more widely accessible has a certain merit, and one cannot
deny that the many previous arrangements had a certain usefulness, although,
on closer evaluation, most prove to be of little value. The worst lithograph,
the most erroneous translation, still provides an image, if a vague one, of the
genius of a Michelangelo or a Shakespeare. Likewise, in the most inadequate
piano reduction, one recognizes now and again the traces, albeit half-smudged,
of the master’s inspiration. Meanwhile, thanks to the expansion that the piano
has achieved in recent times as a consequence of the advances in playing tech-
nique and mechanical improvements, it is now possible to accomplish more
and better things than had been accomplished before. By means of the vast
development of its harmonic intensity, the pianoforte can now, more and
more, claim for its own use any and all compositions written for the orchestra.
In the scope of its seven octaves, [the pianoforte] is able, with few exceptions,
to reproduce all features, all combinations, all figures of the most thorough
and most profound composition, all of which leaves to the orchestra with no
other advantages than the differences of timbres and massive effects—advan-
tages that certainly are enormous. With this intention I undertook the work
that I now hand over to the world. I must admit that I would see it as a rather
pointless expense of my time if I had done nothing more than add to the many
previous published arrangements of the symphonies a new one done in the
usual manner. Yet I hold my time well spent if I have succeeded in transferring

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 160 ❧ appendix

to the piano not only the large outlines of Beethoven’s composition but also all
of its subtleties and smaller features, which so meaningfully contribute to the
perfection of the whole. My goal has been achieved when I have done the same
as the knowledgeable engraver and the conscientious translator, who can grasp
the spirit of a work and thus contribute to the recognition of the great masters
and to developing a sense for beauty.1

Vorwort

Der Name Beethoven ist heilig in der Kunst. Seine Symphonien werden heu-
tzutage allgemein als Meisterwerke anerkannt; wer irgend den ernsten
Wunsch hegt, sein Wissen zu erweitern oder selbst Neues zu schaffen, der
kann diese Symphonien nie genug durchdenken und studieren. Deshalb
hat jede Art und Weise, sie zu verbreiten und allgemeiner zugänglich zu
machen, ein gewisses Verdienst, und den bisherigen, ziemlich zahlreichen
Bearbeitungen ist ein verhältnismässiger Nutzen durchaus nicht abzuspre-
chen, obwohl sie bei tieferem Eindringen meistens nur von geringem Wert
erscheinen. Der schlechteste Steindruck, die fehlerhafteste Übersetzung gibt
doch immer noch ein, wenn auch unbestimmtes Bild von dem Genie eines
Michelangelo, eines Shakespeare; in dem unvollständigsten Klavierauszuge
erkennt man dennoch hin und wieder die, wenn auch halb verwischten
Spuren von der Begeisterung des Meisters. Indessen, durch die Ausdehnung,
welche das Pianoforte in der neuesten Zeit zufolge der Fortschritte in der
technischen Fertigkeit und in der mechanischen Verbesserung gewonnen
hat, wird es jetzt möglich, mehr und Besseres zu leisten, als bisher geleistet
worden ist. Durch die unermeßliche Entwickelung seiner harmonischen
Gewalt sucht das Pianoforte sich immer mehr alle Orchesterkompositionen
anzueignen. In dem Umfange seiner sieben Oktaven vermag es, mit weni-
gen Ausnahmen, alle Züge, alle Kombinationen, alle Gestaltungen der
gründlichsten und tiefsten Tonschöpfung wiederzugeben, und läßt dem
Orchester keine anderen Vorzüge, als die Verschiedenheit der Klangfarben
und die massenhaften Effekte—Vorzüge freilich, die ungeheuer sind. In sol-
cher Absicht habe ich die Arbeit, die ich der Welt jetzt übergebe, unternom-
men. Ich gestehe, daß ich es für eine ziemlich unnütze Verwendung meiner
Zeit ansehen müßte, wenn ich weiter nichts getan hätte, als die vielen bisheri-
gen Ausgaben der Symphonien mit einer neuen, in gewohnter Weise bear-
beiteten vermehren; aber ich halte meine Zeit für gut angewendet, wenn
es mir gelungen ist, nicht bloß die großen Umrisse der Beethovenschen
Komposition, sondern auch alle jenen Feinheiten und kleineren Züge auf
das Pianoforte zu übertragen, welche so bedeutend zur Vollendung des
Ganzen mitwirken. Mein Ziel ist erreicht, wenn ich es dem verständigen

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 appendix ❧ 161

Kupferstecher, dem gewissenhaften Übersetzer gleichgetan habe, welche den

Geist eines Werkes auffassen und so zur Erkenntnis der großen Meister und
zur Bildung des Sinnes für das Schöne beitragen.
Rom, 1865
F. Liszt

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Kim.indd 162 2/5/2019 4:10:47 PM
 Notes
Introduction
Epigraph: Charles Blanc, Grammaire des arts du dessin: Architecture, sculpture, pein-
ture, 672, 674. “Le style, en gravure, c’est la prééminence du dessin sur la cou-
leur et de la beauté sur la richesse. Je dis la couleur, puisque le graveur, bien
que réduit à l’effet monochrome du blanc et du noir, a cependant sa manière
à lui d’ètre coloriste.” All translations are mine, unless indicated otherwise.
1. Blanc, Grammaire, 667: “S’agit-il d’une peinture, le graveur n’ayant à sa dispo-
sition, en ce qui touche la couleur, que du noir et du blanc, cesse d’être un
copiste pour devenir un traducteur.”
2. Blanc, Grammaire, 672; this is part of his remarks on Marcantonio’s engrav-
ings after Raphael: “Il la conçoit comme une traduction concise qui met en
lumière l’essentiel, qui sait pourtant tout indiquer, tout dire.”
3. Cited in Stephen Bann, Parallel Lines, 150; quoted verbatim in Perrot, Nouveau
manuel, 9: “La gravure . . . n’est point une copie de la peinture, elle en est une
traduction; ce qui est différent.”
4. Hoffmann, E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Music Writings, 251; the original review was pub-
lished in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 12, no. 4 (4 July 1810): 630–42 and no.
41 (11 July 1810): 652–59.
5. “This studio [The studio of Calamatta], silent for the most part, was visited by
artists and well-known people. You could see there one after the other Paul
Delaroche, Ary Scheffer, M. Ingres, Thévenin père, [. . . and] one of the three
foremost engravers of the century, Henriquel-Dupont; and Franz Liszt and the
pale Chopin, who came in like a cold and polite ghost . . . and a woman then
shining in all her youthful glory, George Sand.” Cited in Bann, Parallel Lines, 1;
original publication in Gazette des beaux-arts 1 (January–March, 1859), 163–67.
6. For the documented portraits, see Burger, Franz Liszt, particularly at 93, 112. A
dazzling array of Liszt’s portraits through the media of engraving, lithography,
and photography throughout his life attests to the fast-moving development of
the reproductive arts during the nineteenth century, as well as Liszt’s lifelong
fascination with all these media. For further useful portraits of Liszt, particu-
larly in his late years, see Burger, Franz Liszt in der Photographie.
7. For Liszt’s encounter with Ingres, see Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 113.
8. Cited in Cohn, “Introduction,”14.

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 164 ❧ notes to pp. 2–7

9. For useful discussions of nineteenth-century anxieties about originality and

reproduction as well as both the battle and interplay between traditional burin
engraving and photography in the later part of the century, see Bann, Parallel
Lines, particularly chapters 1 and 2, in which the author resurrects carefully
produced artworks of the earlier engravers in relation to and as opposed to
“mechanical” reproductions addressed by Walter Benjamin in his critical essay
of 1936, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Selected
Writings, 101–33.
10. Liszt, Thematisches Verzeichniss der Werke, 57–64. The editions of partitions
used for this study are taken from Franz Liszt, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke
(henceforth referred to as Neue Liszt Ausgabe, abbreviated as NLA): Ser. II. Freie
Bearbeitungen und Transkriptionen für Klavier zu zwei Händen [Books 1–24], ed.
Imre Mező et al. (Budapest: Editio Musica, 1970–).
11. Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber.
12. Stephen Bann’s comprehensive studies are presented in his two consecutive
books, Parallel Lines (2001) and Distinguished Images; see also Griffiths, Prints
and Printmaking; Griffiths, The Print before Photography; Fawcett, “Graphic versus
Photographic,” 185–212; and Lambert, The Image Multiplied.
13. Bann, Parallel Lines; Distinguished Images.
14. Bann, Distinguished Images, 6.
15. Blanc, Grammaire, on etching,” 663–707; on lithography 708–12.
16. Burty, “La gravure et la lithographie,” 147–60; Delaborde, “Beaux-Arts:
L’hémicycle, 590–607; Sand, Oeuvres autobiographiques; Anderson-Riedel,
Creativity and Reproduction.
17. Cited in Bann, Parallel Lines, 7.
18. Bann, Parallel Lines, 13.
19. Christensen, “Four-Hand Piano Transcription,” 255–98.
20. Mayor, Prints and People; Marzio, The Democratic Art.
21. Cory, “Franz Liszt’s Symphonies de Beethoven”; Hughes, “Liszt’s Solo Piano
Transcriptions”; Domokos, “‘Orchestrationen des Pianoforte,’” 249–341;
Schröter, “Der Name Beethoven,” particularly 116–42; Van Dine, “Musical
Arrangements and Questions of Genre”; Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 112–48.
22. Cory, “Franz Liszt’s Symphonies de Beethoven”; Hughes, “Liszt’s Solo Piano
Transcriptions.”
Cory (1981) and Hughes (1992) both designate chapters and organize
examples under “literal transcription” and “non-literal transcription.”
23. Liszt’s arrangements of Beethoven symphonies have received the most sig-
nificant amount of attention from scholars. See the studies cited in note 21.
Zsuzsanna Domokos expands such comparative studies, embracing examples
of both Liszt’s early and late arrangements and also distinguishing Liszt’s
two versions of 1837 and 1865 from others by Czerny, Watts, and Hummel.
In his investigations of Liszt’s arrangements of Beethoven’s symphonies from
the 1830s, Alex Schröter provides several consistent features of Liszt’s trans-
feral methods, including avoidance of ready-made patterns, preference for
strings, emulations of various orchestral sounds, and virtuosic figurations that
exceed normal feasibility, such as chords that span a tenth. Despite the ample

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 notes to pp. 7–9 ❧ 165

evidence they consider, the studies cited here focus primarily on Liszt’s early
arrangements of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Symphonies (1837–41).
24. For further discussion of Liszt’s use of a variety of terms for piano transcrip-
tions and arrangements, see Liszt, Thematisches Verzeichniss der Werke; Boyd,
“Arrangement”; Ellingson, “Transcription”; Dömling, Franz Liszt und seine
Zeit, 163; Wilde, “Transcriptions for Piano,” in Franz Liszt: The Man and His
Music, ed. Walker, 168–202; Huschke, “Zum kultur historischen Stellenwert
von Bearbeitungen um 1840,” in Liszt Studien 4, ed. Scholz, 95–99; Batta, “Die
Gattung Paraphrase im Schaffen von Franz Liszt: Gattung Paraphrase—die
musikalische Hassliebe Liszts,” in Liszt-Studien 4, 135–42; Kregor, Liszt as a
Transcriber, 101–3; and Clark, “Franz Liszt’s Pianistic Approach,” 17.
25. Boyd, “Arrangement,” describes “arrangement” as “the reworking of a musical
composition, usually for a different medium from that of the original.”
26. Hamilton, The Cambridge Companion to Liszt, 57–85, at 60.
27. Besides Liszt’s activities in the realm of arranging orchestral music during his
virtuoso years and Weimar years, the majority of which are considered in this
study, in his later period from 1856 to 1881, Liszt explored orchestral music
by diverse composers, including the German Wagner, the Italian Verdi, the
Russians César Cui and Tchaikovsky, and the French Saint-Saëns, yet reorient-
ing his earlier reworking methods in the field of orchestral arrangements to
underscore his late compositional styles in a simplified, concentrated, yet still
innovative manner. For the discussion of late arrangements, see Kregor, Liszt
as Transcriber, 186–219.
28. Shay Loya, Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism, 101. Liszt’s arranging of Hungarian
Gypsy–band style pieces began at his age seventeen in Paris when he wrote
Zwei ungarische Werbungstänze von László Fáy und János Bihari (1828), consid-
ered his first piece of Hungarian Gypsy–band music, as Loya claims in Liszt’s
Transcultural Modernism, 81–82. The development of his arrangements, how-
ever, truly began with the 1840 tour of Hungary and his deep study of Gypsy-
band performance practice. He published several series of Magyar Dallok
(Hungarian Melodies, 1840, 1843–44), which are almost literal transcrip-
tions, and then he began transcribing and publishing a new series of Magyar
Rhapsodiák (1846–47). Then he substantially revised and rewrote the 22 Magyar
Dallok and Rhapsodiák, and together with two newly composed rhapsodies,
published a new cycle of 15 Rhapsodies hongroises in 1851. See Loya, Liszt’s
Transcultural Modernism, 97–105, particularly at 101–2.
29. See Burkholder’s essays, “The Uses of Existing Music,” 851–70; “Borrowing”;
and “Musical Borrowing.” Burkholder uses the umbrella term “musical bor-
rowing” to encompass all uses of existing music, including the reworkings and
arrangements under examination here.
30. See Bellman, The Style hongrois, particularly at 175–84; Locke, Musical Exoticism,
particularly 135–49; also see Csilla Pethő, “Style hongrois, 199–284; and
Catherine Mayes, “Reconsidering an Early Exoticism,” 161–81.
31. See Loya, Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism; Hooker, Redefining Hungarian Music.
32. Gustav Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” NZM 36: no. 17: 189–92; no. 18, 201–
2; no. 19: 213–17; no. 20: 225–27; no. 19: 215–16, in particular, includes two

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 166 ❧ notes to pp. 10–11

specific examples of cimbalom technique in a slow section. See also Allaga,

Cimbalom iskola.
33. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 78–101.
34. Shay Loya has already brought this pressing issue into serious consideration
in his comprehensive, compelling book Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism, particu-
larly in his introduction, p. 2.
35. For the issue of the written versus aural or oral sources in Hungarian Gypsy
music, the discussion of the musical illiteracy and the lack of formal musical
training of Gypsy musicians in general, as well as the repertoire influenced
by Western European classicism, see Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 66–119; Hooker,
Redefining Hungarian Music, 35–39; Bellman, The Style hongrois, 109. Gypsy
improvisation was often alleged to stem from Gypsies’ lack of proper learn-
ing, wandering lifestyle, and less sophisticated culture. See Goehr, The Quest for
Voice, 151. For a discussion of Gypsy improvisation and exoticism, see Malvinni,
The Gypsy Caravan, 43–62; Piotrowska, “Expressing the Inexpressible,” 325–41.
36. Major, “Liszt Ferenc rapszódiai,” 47–54. Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 115, provides a
source tune for the opening of Rhapsody no. 8. It is significant that the sources
are not “composed” on paper as we understand the process in Western art
music, but part of an aural tradition. As described in Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 150,
a Hungarian patron would usually provide a tune to a “whistling composer,”
then the members of the Gypsy band would apply their skills in fleshing it out
in performance. Personal communication with Lynn Hooker.
37. Bellman, Style hongrois, 175–84; Hooker, Redefining Hungarian Music, 76–93.
38. Sárosi, Gypsy Music, particularly three chapters: “The First Famous Gypsy
Bands: Panna Czinka, János Bihari,” “The Verbunkos,” and “Gypsy Musicians
in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century,” 66–84, 85–119, and 120–140,
respectively. For further anecdotes of Hungarian Gypsies in London and Paris
in the 1840s and 1850s, see Csaba Szíjjártó, A cigány útra ment [The Gypsy went
on the road], 287–480.
39. Papp, “Die Quellen der ‘Verbunkos-Musik’” Studia musicologica Academiae
Hungaricae 21, nos. 2–4: 151–217; 24, nos. 1–2: 35–97; 26, nos. 1–4: 59–132; 32,
nos. 1–4: 55–224.
40. Bellman, “Toward a Lexicon,” 227–29; Grimes, “Evolution of the Concert
Cimbalom”; and Astaire, “Searching for the Hungarian Cimbalom.”
41. For a discussion of the complexities associated with these various terms, see
Hooker, Redefining Hungarian Music, 35–45. For a discussion of the term verbun-
kos, see Loya, Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism, xii, 60–66; Mayes, “Reconsidering
an Early Exoticism,” 165; and Szabolcsi, Concise History of Hungarian Music,
24–33. For the term style hongrois, see Bellman, Style hongrois, 11. For criticism
of Bellman’s terms of “lexicon” and “style hongrois,” see Pethő, “Style hongrois,”
199, 252–53, and Mayes, “Reconsidering,” 162–63n7, respectively. A straight-
forward, uncritical use of the term style hongrois continues in subsequent stud-
ies, including Winkler, “Der ‘Style hongrois,’” and Balacon, “Style hongrois
Features.” For proposals of terms to replace verbunkos and style hongrois, see
Mayes, “Reconsidering,” 162n4, and Locke, Musical Exoticism, 137.

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 notes to pp. 12–16 ❧ 167

The term “Gypsy” is nowadays often considered pejorative, so official terms

such as “Roma” or “Romani” are employed instead. But, as Hooker (Redefining
Hungarian Music, 15n31) points out, Gypsies in Hungary still generally refer
to themselves as “Gypsy,” even today. This study is concerned with Liszt’s
imaginary representation of Gypsy playing, not about the music of the actual
Romani musicians. As Locke (Musical Exoticism, xvii–xviii) has already helped
to clarify, the musical style played by the Romani musicians (and others—some
prominent musicians were ethnic Germans, Slavs, or Jews) was not their own
but primarily derived from Hungarian dance genres such as verbunkos and
csárdás. The term “Hungarian Gypsy” is also broadly recognized by readers and
scholars. For all these reasons, this study will maintain such an awareness and
cautiously use the word “Gypsy” throughout.
42. Blanc, Grammaire, 667.

Chapter One
1. Cited and translated in Bann, Distinguished Images, 37; Vittorio Corbucci, Luigi
Calamatta incisore, 74–75.
2. At the same time, burin engraving was challenged by the English mezzotint,
which employs a special spiked tool (“rocker”) to roughen a copper plate,
resulting in a dark and velvety texture in the print, and also by etching, which
achieves its incisions through the use of acid. For more on these techniques,
see Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking, 56–70, 83–88.
3. Beraldi, Les graveurs du XIXe siècle, 4:49. Cited and translated in Bann, Parallel
Lines, 141.
4. Beraldi, Les graveurs du XIXe siècle, 4:53. Cited in Bann, “Ingres in
Reproduction,” 714.
5. Quoted in J. W. Mackail, The Life of William Morris, 1:71.
6. Liszt, An Artist’s Journey, 45; Gazette musicale, 11 February 1838, 57–62.
7. Bann, Distinguished Images, 24; for a further discussion of the portrait of 1836,
see Jack, George Sand, 246–67.
8. Quoted in Bann, Distinguished Images, 198.
9. Blanc, Grammaire, 674: “Rien n’empêchait maintenant que l’estampe ne fût
l’équivalent du tableau.”
10. Blanc, Grammaire, 668: “et nous ne saurions en parler ici sans nous souvenir
avec reconnaissance des maîtres éminents, Calamatta et Mercuri, qui nous ont
appris les lois et les secrets de leur art.”
11. Bann, “Ingres in Reproduction,” 708.
12. Anderson-Riedel, Creativity and Reproduction, 29; Paul Duro, “‘Un livre ouvert à
l’instruction,’ 55.
13. Besides Bann’s seminal studies on the issue of reproduction in his books
Parallel Lines and Distinguished Images, the issues of repetition and copy versus
original in the nineteenth century have received constant and significant schol-
arly attention. See Duro, “The Copy in French Nineteenth Century Painting”;

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 168 ❧ notes to pp. 17–21

Shiff, “Representation, Copying, and the Technique of Originality” and “The

Original, the Imitation, the Copy,” 27–54; Kahng, The Repeating Image, 11–26;
and Bann, “Reassessing Repetition, 27–51.
14. Le Men, “Printmaking as Metaphor,” 93.
15. Blanc, Grammaire, 672: “Marc-Antoine conçoit la gravure comme il la faut con-
cevoir quand on est aux prises avec les grands maîtres. Il la conçoit comme une
traduction concise qui met en lumière l’essentiel, qui sait pourtant tout indi-
quer, tout dire, et qui, privèe du langage des couleurs, insiste sur la suprême
beauté des contours.”
16. Blanc, Grammaire, 668: “Le graveur doit se préoccuper avant tout de rendre,
par un dessin juste et expressif, le caractère du modèle qu’il veut graver.”
17. Translated in Bann, Parallel Lines, 131–32.
18. Blanc, Grammaire, 667; “La première qualité du graveur est la fidélité, en ce
sens qu’il doit non-seulement rendre l’original trait pour trait, en redire les
contours et les reliefs, mais encore, et surtout, conserver l’esprit et l’aspect de
l’ouvrage reproduit, en faire valoir les qualités, en avouer même les défauts,
enfin en révéler franchement le caractère.”
19. The preface was first printed in French and German with the date “Rome
1839” in Breitkopf & Härtel’s edition of the piano arrangement of the Fifth
and Sixth Symphonies in 1840; the original language was French: NLA 18:
xviii. Liszt’s preface probably originated in 1838: Walker, Franz Liszt 2:370n16.
See the entire preface in appendix 1 of this book. My translation is based on
the German version.
20. George D. McKee, “The Musée Français and the Musée Royale, 8.
21. Fawcett, “Graphic versus Photographic,” 192.
22. Le Men, “Printmaking as Metaphor,” 93; Delaborde, “La photographie et la
gravure,” 617–38.
23. Quoted in Bann, Parallel Lines, 137; see the engraving of L’artiste in Beraldi, Les
graveurs du XIXe siècle 10:32, which discusses Lady Jane Grey.
24. Bergeon, “Le temps ciselé,” 1:73, translated in Bann, Parallel Lines, 136.
25. Bann, Parallel Lines, 136.
26. Quoted in Fawcett, “Graphic versus Photographic,” 196. Original in Ruskin,
Giotto and His Works in Padua, 44–45.
27. For Liszt’s reference to and knowledge of Paul Delaroche, see Liszt, An Artist’s
Journey, 34–35.
28. Bann, Parallel Lines, 202; Blanc, “Publications d’estampes,” 188.
29. For the importance of Delaroches’s oeuvre with respect to its display of the
“parallelism” and the confluence of three arts—printmaking, painting, and
photography—see Bann, Parallel Lines, 198–211; for the critical responses of
Blanc and Beraldi, see Bann, Parallel Lines, 201–2.
30. Blanc, “L’hémicycle de Paul Delaroche, 360, quoted and translated in Bann,
Parallel Lines, 202.
31. Quoted verbatim in Perrot, Nouveau manuel, 9, cited in Bann, Parallel Lines,
150.
32. Blanc, Grammaire, 672: “privée du langage des couleurs, insiste sur la suprême
beauté des contours.”

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 notes to pp. 21–25 ❧ 169

33. Blanc, Grammaire, 601. “De même que le sentiment est multiple quand la rai-
son est une, de même la couleur est un élément mobile, vague, insaisissable,
quand la forme est au contraire précise, limitée, palpable et constante.”
34. Hazlitt, Complete Works, 10:8, quoted in Fawcett, “Graphic versus Photographic,”
185.
35. Burnet, Practical Essays, 133–34.
36. As the term mezzotint stems from the Italian mezzo (“half”) and tinta (“tone”),
the technique makes the surface of copper or steel plate partially roughened,
for shading, and partially scraped smooth, giving light areas. Griffiths, Prints
and Printmaking, 83; Carol Wax discusses the status of mezzotint in England in
The Mezzotint, 51–62.
37. “[The engraving] cannot produce the velvety softness, intense depth, and har-
monious mingling of light and shade, which is given by mezzotint.” Fielding,
Art of Engraving, 29, quoted in Fawcett, “Graphic Versus Photographic,” 187.
38. In Grammaire, “gardens” are positioned as an annex to “architecture” in the
first part in the same way that “glyptics” are to “sculpture” in the second part.
39. Blanc, Grammaire, 667: “Il traduit vraiment en clair-obscur le coloris du tableau
et, faisant abstraction des teintes, il n’en donne que la valeur.”
40. Blanc, Grammaire, 674: “Raphaël avait inauguré le style dans la gravure;
Rubens y introduisit la couleur. Il enseigna aux deux Bolswert, à Wostermann,
à Pontius, ses graveurs, qu’ils ne devaient pas négliger la valeur des teintes
locales, lesquelles ne sont, après tout, que des notes dans la musique du
clair-obscur.”
41. Blanc, Grammaire, 674: “les élèves de Rubens allaient montrer de quelle façon
peut être reproduit l’effet d’une peinture, c’est-à-dire sa coloration par la
lumière.”
42. Blanc, Grammaire, 246.
43. Blanc, Grammaire, 249. The technique of hatching uses closely drawn parallel
lines to create a shading effect.
44. Letter from Ingres to Calamatta, dated Rome, 28 September 1837, quoted in
Bann, “Ingres in Reproduction,” 714–15.
45. Blanc, Les artistes de mon temps, 111–12, translated in Bann, Parallel Lines, 150–51.
46. Bann, Parallel Lines, 151.
47. Blanc, Grammaire, 667; “Les couleurs étant considérées par lui comme des
taches plus ou moins lumineuses, plus ou moins sombres, il grave une drap-
erie jaune, par exemple, avec des tailles plus légères et plus espacées qu’une
draperie bleue, de manière que la seconde de ses draperies forme dans la gra-
vure une masse plus foncée que la première.”
48. Burger, Franz Liszt: A Chronicle of His Life, 112.
49. Liszt, An Artist’s Journey, 187–88;
50. Bolster, Marie d’Agoult, 165–66; Suttoni’s note in Liszt, An Artist’s Journey, 187n7,
identifies the music as Beethoven’s Violin Sonata, op. 47.
51. Liszt, An Artist’s Journey, 187.
52. Liszt, An Artist’s Journey, 187n6, points out that Ingres’s violin proficiency was
professional, given that he had served as a player in theater orchestras during
his student days.

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 170 ❧ notes to pp. 25–29

53. Liszt, An Artist’s Journey, 187n7.

54. Bolster, Marie d’Agoult, 173.
55. Shelton, Ingres and His Critics, 112–14.
56. Liszt, The Liszt–d’Agoult Correspondence, particularly letters 107, 114, and 115,
pp. 75, 81, and 161, respectively; the mention of “our artist friend” is found in
letter 114; also for Liszt’s knowledge and mention of Calamatta, among many
other instances, see Liszt’s letter of September 1837 to Adolphe Pictet in Liszt,
An Artist’s Journey, 44.
57. Bann, Distinguished Images, 35–36. Calamatta operated in the domain of
Ingres’s circle; it was Ingres who helped Calamatta obtain access to the original
Mona Lisa for his engraving. For further discussion of Calamatta’s relationship
with Ingres, see Bann, “Ingres et les graveurs,” 349–59.
58. Bann, “Ingres in Reproduction,” 712.
59. Bann, “Ingres in Reproduction,” 711–12; also see Bann, Parallel Lines, 153.
60. Bann, “Ingres in Reproduction,” 711. For a pencil drawing of Paganini by
Ingres, see Burger, Franz Liszt, 65.
61. Bann, Parallel Lines, 153–34; Griffiths, “Crayon-manner and Stipple: The Dot
Processes,” in Prints and Printmaking, 77–82.
62. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 84.
63. McKee, “The Musée français,” particularly at pp. 69 and 72.
64. McKee, “The Musée français,” 1. The publications comprise six designated vol-
umes printed on broad sheets, over 500 plates with letterpress commentaries
and introductory essays.
65. McKee, “The Musée français,” 83.
66. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 79.
67. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 79. Cahier 9, p. 123, reproduced and transcribed in
Georges Vigne, Ingres (Paris: Citadelles, 1995), 325.
68. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 92. Ingres’s shadows were further illuminated
under many different light conditions.
69. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 92. For an insightful study of eighteenth-century
shadow representations, which pave the way for understanding Ingres’s projec-
tion of shadows, see Baxandall, Shadows and Enlightenment, 60.
70. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 92.
71. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 90.
72. For a scrupulous analysis of Ingres’s drawings after antique sculptors, see
Hattis, Ingres’ Sculptural Style, particularly at pp. 11–14. For another probing
discussion of the series of figures for academic studies by Ingres, see Vigne,
“Les premières oeuvres d’Ingres,” 21–42, particularly at pp. 23, 33–35.
73. Anderson-Riedel, Creativity and Reproduction, 26–64.
74. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 88.
75. Winckelmann, The History of the Art of Antiquity, 86.
76. Jason Gaiger, introduction to Sculpture: Some Observations by Johann Gottfried
Herder, 1–28; Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 88.
77. Anderson-Riedel, Creativity and Reproduction, 44.
78. Anderson-Riedel, Creativity and Reproduction, 50.

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 notes to pp. 29–39 ❧ 171

79. See Robillard-Péronville, Le Musée français, vol. 4, Musée Napoléon, text by Ennio
Quirino Visconti accompanying Bervic’s engraving, “Laocoon, Groupe,”;
Anderson-Riedel, Creativity and Reproduction, 51.
80. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 88.
81. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 80, 96.
82. Betzer, “Ingres’s Shadows,” 94.
83. It has been recognized, particularly by Berlioz and Wagner, that the rhythmic
character associated with dance in Beethoven’s Seventh suggests a suite of
dances: Intrada with March and Gigue; March with two Trios; fast and slow
contredanses in triple meter; and a Contredanse “Angloise” in duple meter.
Brown, Symphonic Repertoire, 2:505.
84. Charles Rosen makes the compelling argument that Liszt’s compositional pro-
cess is reliant largely on “different ways of playing the same theme,” which
ultimately changes the “performance style.” Rosen, The Romantic Generation,
48. Further interpreting Rosen’s argument, Susan Bernstein claims that such
a compositional process “shifts the emphasis of composition from formal
features to means of producing sound.” Bernstein, Virtuosity of the Nineteenth
Century, 111.

Chapter Two
1. The letter to Adolphe Pictet was first printed in the 11 February 1838 issue of
the Revue et gazette musicale; the English translation above follows Suttoni’s in
Liszt, An Artist’s Journey, 46.
2. Liszt, An Artist’s Journey, 46.
3. The later edition of Liszt’s Beethoven set in 1865 bears the same preface as the
earlier edition of 1840. NLA, 18:xviii.
4. See appendix 1.
5. NLA, 18: xxiv; Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 131–32; Domokos, “‘Orchestrationen
des Pianoforte,’” 250–51; Cory, “Franz Liszt’s Symphonies de Beethoven,” 5–6;
Hughes, “Liszt’s Solo Transcriptions,” 8–9.
6. Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 135, argues that although Liszt did not name spe-
cific arrangers explicitly in his preface, he assessed the arrangements by his
contemporary virtuosos brutally; he once described Kalkbrenner’s as “pitiful,”
whereas he considered his own arrangements as “different” from the contem-
porary ones. For the former, see his letter to Massart of February 1838 in Liszt,
L’artiste–Le clerc, 41; and for the latter, see his letter of April 5, 1838 in Liszt,
Briefe, 1:17–18.
7. Domokos, “‘Orchestrationen des Pianoforte’”; Cory, “Franz Liszt’s Symphonies
de Beethoven.”
8. Liszt’s favorite Erard piano, for example, bears testimony to the technical
advances in range, from five or five-and-a-half octaves to seven octaves; the
advanced action and escapement; the more resilient tension in the strings; and
the reinforcement of the case to accommodate the more voluminous sound.

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 172 ❧ notes to pp. 39–41

For an overview of technical improvements in the instrument, see Rowland,

Cambridge Companion to the Piano, 22–39 and 40–56; for Liszt’s pianos, see
Hamilton, Cambridge Companion to Liszt, 175–77; for Liszt’s continuous interest
in the instrument’s developments and its impact on the market, see Reginald
Gerig, “On Liszt’s Piano Technique,” in Saffle and Deaville, New Light on Liszt
and His Music, 253–70, at 260–61.
9. Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 120–31.
10. Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 132.
11. NLA 16:xiii; 17:xiv.
12. Hinson, preface to The Pianist’s Guide to Transcriptions, x.
13. “Clavier-Partituren (Partitions de piano) von Symphonien, Overturen etc,”
in Liszt, Thematisches Verzeichniss der Werke, 57–64. The dates of composition
in Table 2.1 are taken from NLA, series 2, vols 1–24: Freie Bearbeitungen und
Transkriptionen für Klavier zu zwei Händen. Besides the arrangements included
in Table 2.1, there are more in the group of partitions of Liszt’s catalogue;
however, they are not considered in this study. The two arrangements of
large-scale chamber ensemble compositions, the Grand Septuor de Beethoven
(1841) and Hummel’s grosses Septett (1848), are not included among the
orchestral arrangements. There are also four more arrangements of orches-
tral compositions, three of music by Berlioz, and one by Wagner: for the
former, Marche des pèlerins from Harold en Italie (1837), Danse des sylphes de
la Damnation de Faust (1860), and Marche au supplice de la Symphonie fantas-
tique (1865); for the latter, Overtüre zu Tannhäuser (1848). Marche des pèlerins
is a free arrangement that includes Liszt’s own extensive fantasy in measures
248–330, and may thus be distinguished from his faithful partitions covered
in this study. Danse des sylphes and Marche au supplice are the partitions writ-
ten in Liszt’s Weimar years, and thus not considered in chapters 2 and 3 of
this study, which focuses on Liszt’s partitions during his virtuoso years of the
1830s and 1840s. Marche au supplice is a reworking of his earlier partition of
the fourth movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with an additional
introduction, and thus NLA (16:xii) regards Liszt’s version as a paraphrase.
The overture to Tannhäuser is also one of Liszt’s Weimar arrangements and
designated as a “concert paraphrase” in the first editions. The arrangement
of Berlioz’s Le roi Lear Overture is not included in the partitions of Liszt’s
catalogue, yet it is aligned with his previous partitions of Berlioz’s Symphonie
fantastique and Les francs-juges, and thus is considered in this study.
14. Although I have proposed the term partition as referring to a solo-piano score
of orchestral music, in chapter 4, I will expand the term to refer to Liszt’s two-
piano arrangements of his own orchestral music.
15. Knyt, “Ferruccio Busoni and Ontology,” 35–69.
16. Knyt, “Ferruccio Busoni and Ontology,” 137–52.
17. Knyt, “Ferruccio Busoni and Ontology,” 138–39.
18. See Ferruccio Busoni, The Essence of Music, 87–88; see also Busoni, Sketch,
84–85. Knyt, “Ferruccio Busoni and Ontology,” 110, discusses this issue based
on Busoni’s Sketch.

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 notes to pp. 41–46 ❧ 173

19. Busoni, Sketch, 85, describes the performer’s role thus: to “resolve the rigidity
of the signs into the primitive emotion . . . it is the part of interpretation to
raise it and reendow it with its primordial essence.”
20. Stephen Davies, “Transcription, Authenticity and Performance,” 224.
21. Davies, “Transcription, Authenticity and Performance,” 222.
22. Davies, “Transcription, Authenticity and Performance,” 222, 224.
23. Davies, “Transcription, Authenticity and Performance,” 222.
24. Hunter, “‘To Play as if from the Soul,” 363.
25. Hunter, “‘To Play as if from the Soul,” 363.
26. Liszt, The Gypsy in Music, 266–67; Des bohémiens, 281–83.
27. Hughes, “Liszt’s Solo Piano Transcriptions.”
28. NLA 16:xiii–xv.
29. For further reworking techniques of Liszt’s arrangements of Weber’s orches-
tral music, see Kim, “Dynamics of Fidelity and Creativity,” 218–60.
30. See Liszt, Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 2:47, the letter dated Rome, 28 August [18]63;
the original French version is cited in Domokos, “‘Orchestrationen des
Pianoforte,’” 285; an English translation in Liszt, Letters of Franz Liszt, 57–58,
as well as in NLA, series 2, 11: xviii–xviiii. The translation here combines the
two sources: the first five lines up to the phrase “restricted possibilities of the
piano” come from NAL, xi; the remainder follows Liszt, Letters of Franz Liszt,
57–58.
31. Domokos, “‘Orchestrationen des Pianoforte,’” 285; Hughes, “Liszt’s Solo
Piano Transcriptions,” 58.
32. Schumann, “A Symphony by Berlioz,” 220–48, at 233.
33. Schumann, On Music and Musicians, 44.
34. G. W. Fink, “Pianoforte-Werke von Franz Liszt, 305–308, at 308: “Endlich sind
durch das ganze Werk die Orchesterinstrumente mit grosser Genauigkeit
angegeben, ein Vorzug, ja eine Pflichtleistung, die in keiner Übertragung
irgend eines Orchesterwerkes für das Pianoforte fehlen sollte.”
35. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 34, no. 2 (11 January 1832), 32, cited in
Christensen, “Four-Hand Transcription,” 264n31. In fact, Christensen claims
that in the repertoire of four-hand piano arrangements after mid-century,
there is an increasing tendency for arrangers to use instrumental cues for
prominent parts in their arrangements.
36. Ignaz Moscheles, Piano Concerto no. 3 in G Minor, op. 58, arranged for two
pianos by Ernst Rudorff (Leipzig: Steingräber, n.d.).
37. Along the same line, Liszt asserts that “the piano is continuing to expand its
assimilative capability. We play arpeggios like a harp, sustained notes like the
wind instruments, and staccatos and a thousand other passages that one time
seemed to be the special province of one instrument or another. The improve-
ments forecast in piano marking will undoubtedly provide us before long with
the variety of sonority we still lack.” Liszt, An Artist’s Journey, 46.
38. See Mach, “Liszt Pédagogue,” xiii.
39. Göllerich, Piano Master Classes.
40. See Göllerich, Piano Master Classes, 72, regarding a lesson on 27 June 1885, a
performance of Schubert–Liszt, Hungarian March (from Mélodies hongroises).

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 174 ❧ notes to pp. 47–55

41. Göllerich, Piano Master Classes, 83–84.

42. NLA 18:xix, investigates the autography instructions, which include examples
of Liszt’s emphasis on the “double markings” in the right and left hands that
are “not superfluous and must be precisely put,” as well as his instruction of
the “stems up[-] and downward, upper and lower staves,” which “must be
retained exactly as it is given in the manuscript.”
43. Rowland, “Piano Notation in Chopin and Liszt’s Paris,” in Sala, “‘Grandeur et
finesse,’” 111–24.
44. Rowland, “Piano Notation,” 113.
45. Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 64.
46. Seeger, “Prescriptive and Descriptive Music-Writing,” 184–95. Although
prescriptive and descriptive notation are two contrasting uses of music writ-
ing, Seeger, 187, points out that the two are not necessarily incompatible.
Part of Rowland’s discussion in his “Piano Notation” also draws on Seeger’s
distinction.
47. Rowland, “Piano Notation,” 123, uses an example of Chopin’s pedal markings
in his Variations, op. 2, “Alla Polacca,” m. 31.
48. Hamilton, “Performing Liszt’s Piano Music,” 172; Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber,
64.
49. Hamilton, “Performing Liszt’s Piano Music,” 180–81; Göllerich, Piano Master
Classes, 140.
50. Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 64.
51. Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 64.
52. Liszt, Letters, 2:94.
53. It also should be noted that although two additional staves in small notes are
assigned to the chorus throughout the Finale arrangement, Liszt also uses the
three-staved notation when the vocal recitative first enters in the Presto section
of the Finale, placing it in the middle stave. Whereas the two additional staves
are not meant to be performed, the recitative in three-staved notation is so
intended.
54. Cory, “Franz Liszt’s Symphonies de Beethoven,” 29.
55. Examples in the set of Beethoven’s symphonies are found in no. 1, mvt. 2,
mm. 54–64 (its repetition from m. 153); mvt. 3, 48–52 (its repetition from 66);
mvt. 4, the passage from m. 133; no. 2, mvt. 4, mm. 252–56; no. 3, mvt. 1, mm.
226–68, 308–16, the passage from m. 320 on; mvt. 4, mm. 422–32; no. 8, mvt. 1,
the passages from mm. 55 and 250; mvt. 4, the passage from m. 120; no. 9, mvt.
1, the passage from mm. 120, 147–48, 387–98, 469–76; mvt. 4, mm. 31–36.
56. Examples in Bélance-Zank, “The Three-hand Texture,” 99–121.
57. Schumann, Music and Musicians, 391.
58. Liszt carefully deploys the three-staved notation in a few selected instances
from his Beethoven partitions, mostly in his later set. Examples include the pas-
sages from the earlier partitions of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 1, mvt. 3, mm.
79–96, the beginning of Trio; no. 3, mvt. 2, mm. 154–62; and from the later
partitions of no. 4, mvt. 1, the passage from m. 252 and its repetitions; no. 8,
mvt. 1, mm. 191–96; no. 9, mvt. 1, from m. 531; mvt. 2, from m. 291; and mvt.
3, from m. 99, and mm. 124–130, 151–54.

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 notes to pp. 57–58 ❧ 175

Chapter Three
1. Dalhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music (henceforth, NCM), 8–9.
2. Dahlhaus would claim that his major inspiration was the Austrian historian
Raphael Georg Kiesewetter, author of Geschichte der europäisch-abendländischen
oder unsrer heutigen Musik (Leipzig, 1834), who designated the period from
1800 to 1832 as “Die Epoche Beethoven und Rossini” (The age of Beethoven
and Rossini”) for the title of the final chapter of his book. For further discus-
sions of the formulations of Kiesewetter’s concept and Dahlhaus’s, see Webster,
“Beethoven, Rossini—and Others,” 49–65.
3. The much-cited translation as the “twin styles,” instead of “dualism of styles,”
stems from Robinson, not Dahlhaus, in whose original work the dichotomous
styles were not twinned. For the correction of the translation, see Hepokoski,
“Dahlhaus’s Beethoven–Rossini Stildualismus,” 40n8. “Beethoven’s sympho-
nies represent inviolable musical ‘texts’ whose meaning is to be deciphered
with ‘exegetical’ interpretations; a Rossini score, on the other hand, is a mere
recipe for a performance. . . . Rossini’s musical thought hinged on the per-
formance as an event, not on the work as a text passed down and from time
to time given acoustical ‘explications’; and a score could be adapted to the
changing conditions governing various theaters without violating its meaning.”
Dahlhaus, NCM, 8–9.
4. See Mathew and Walton, Invention of Beethoven and Rossini, particularly their
“Introduction: Pleasure in History,” 3; Roger Parker, “Two Styles in 1830s
London,” 125.
5. Expanding on Dahlhaus’s template, Richard Taruskin, in the first chapter of
his Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 3: Music in the Nineteenth Century, pro-
posed the concept of “the dialectical antithesis” while adjusting previous
Germanocentric perceptions. See also Bernd Sponheuer’s Musik als Kunst
und Nicht-Kunst, 9–35. Among Dahlhaus’s sharpest critics, the Italian opera
expert Philip Gossett, who contributed to establishing a “score-based” body of
Rossini’s “works,” wrote: “[Dahlhaus] mistakes Rossini’s flexible approach to
operatic performance as proof of the non-existence of ‘authentic’ texts, fail-
ing to appreciate the limits within which Rossini normally allowed variations.”
Gossett, “Carl Dahlhaus and the Ideal Type,” 49–56, particularly at 55–56.
For further critiques along the same lines, see the same author’s review of
NCM: “Up from Beethoven”; Hepokoski, “The Dahlhaus Project and its Extra-
Musicological Sources,” 221–46, particularly at 222; Kramer, Classical Music and
Postmodern Knowledge, 46–48; Pederson, “Enlightened and Romantic German
Music Criticism,” 111; Mathew and Walton, Invention of Beethoven and Rossini,
13–95.
6. Mathew and Walton, Invention of Beethoven and Rossini, 13–95.
7. For a discussion of the Beethoven memorial festival of 1845, see Rehding,
Music and Monumentality, 47–72, at 70–71; Ryan Minor, “Prophet and Populace,
113–66, at 118. At the festivals, reviewers such as Berlioz praised Liszt’s faith-
ful interpretation of Beethoven’s music. For discussions of Viennese critics’
praise for Liszt’s Beethoven interpretation, see Schröter, “Der Name Beethoven,”

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 176 ❧ notes to pp. 58–59

1:142–46; Gibbs, Franz Liszt and His World, 207. For Liszt’s programs, see the
table in Geraldine Keeling’s study of Liszt’s public performances of his key-
board works in “Concert Announcement,” 400–401; see also Keeling, “Liszt’s
Appearances in Parisian Concerts,” part 1, 22–34; and part 2, 8–21. It is worth
noting that in the Leipzig concerts in 1840, for instance, Liszt’s radical trans-
formation of Beethoven’s music received a cold reception. See Saffle, Liszt in
Germany, 96–97; Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 158–59.
8. Liszt arranged the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Symphonies of Beethoven in
1837–38 and the “Marcia Funebre” movement from the Third in 1841. Then,
almost two decades later, in 1863, he embarked on arranging the remaining
symphonies. He finally published the arrangements along with revisions of
those done earlier under the title Symphonies de Beethoven: Partitions de piano in
1865. During the long span between the two sets, Liszt completed his arrange-
ment of the Ninth not for solo piano but for two pianos in 1851, thus continu-
ing his Beethoven project.
9. Liszt was probably a regular guest at Rossini’s soirées during his sojourn in Italy
in the 1830s while Rossini was in Italy. Liszt’s letter from Milan in 1838 records:
“Rossini, now that he has become rich, idle and illustrious, has opened his
house to his countrymen, and all winter long his rooms have been filled
with people eager to come and pay homage to one of Italy’s greatest glories.
Surrounded by a swarm of young dilettantes, the maestro has delighted in
making them study his most beautiful compositions; amateurs and artists alike
have considered it an honor to be admitted to his concerts.” Liszt, An Artist’s
Journey, 84–85. Rossini was also a highly enthusiastic audience member for
Liszt’s concerts. See Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 99: in the audience was Rossini,
who “paid tribute to the celebrated pianist with the liveliest applause,” accord-
ing to La moda (report of 12 March) about Liszt’s concert on the morning
of 18 February 1838 in La Scala’s Sala del Ridotto; for Rossini’s participation
again in Liszt’s concert in 1839, see Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 109.
10. Liszt’s compositions “after” Rossini include Impromptu brilliant sur des thèmes de
Rossini et Spontini (1824) based on the operas Armida (1817) and La donna del
lago (1819); Sept variations brillantes sur un theme de G. Rossini (1824) based on
La donna del lago; La serenata e L’orgia; Grande fantaisie sur des motifs des Soirées
musicales; La pastorella dell’Alpi e Li marinari; 2me Fantaisie sur des motifs des Soirées
musicales; Soirées musicales; and all three fantasies written in 1835 and based on
Rossini’s Les soirées musicales. Jonathan Kregor asserts that Liszt and Rossini had
become friends during the former’s travels through Italy and also that Liszt’s
compositions “after” Rossini, including the Soirées musicales de Rossini, consti-
tute an expression of his gratitude to Rossini. Kregor, “Franz Liszt and the
Vocabularies of Transcription,” 242n34. Charles Suttoni (in Liszt, An Artist’s
Journey, 83–84n24) points out that Liszt’s Guillaume Tell Overture is part of his
project in tribute to Rossini. Liszt also conducted the Guillaume Tell Overture
at a concert at the City Theater in Pest on 26 January 1840. Williams, Portrait of
Liszt, 120.
11. For the public performances of the Liszt–Berlioz Symphonie fantastique,
see Walker, Franz Liszt, 1:292–95; Keeling, “Liszt’s Appearances in Parisian

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 notes to p. 59 ❧ 177

Concerts,” part 2 at 9, 12, and 21; Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 60, delineates
the dates, locations, movements performed, and brief notes in a table. For the
performances of the Liszt–Beethoven symphonies, see those cited in note 166
below. Although the partitions of Weber’s overtures were written toward the end
of his virtuoso years, they also continued to be performed. Walker, Franz Liszt,
1:445–48; Legány, Franz Liszt: Unbekannte Presse, 102, 106; Tusa, “Exploring the
Master’s Influence, 4; Tusa, “In Defense of Weber,” 144–77, at 149.
12. The record of almost forty performances is based on Saffle, Liszt in Germany,
1840–1845, 187. Liszt’s arrangements of the second and fourth movements of
Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique as well as the “Storm” movement of Beethoven’s
Sixth Symphony were highly acclaimed by the critics and audiences of the
time.
13. The premiere of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell took place in front of a vast audience
and received ecstatic responses by the press. See Benjamin Walton, Rossini
in Restoration Paris, 257; for a more detailed chronology, see also “Notizie
storiche,” in Gioachino Rossini, Guillaume Tell, 1:xxi–liv. After the premiere,
the opera had to suffer drastic cuts and finally appeared to the public in the
form of act 2 alone. Despite that, the opera had received 648 performances by
the end of 1880. For the general information of the popularity of the opera,
also see Cormac Newark, “Guillaume Tell,” in Senici, Cambridge Companion to
Rossini, 175–88, at 175.
14. Williams, Portrait, 110; Kenneth Hamilton discusses the concert of 1839, called
“musical soliloquies,” which comprise entirely Liszt’s own compositions and
arrangements. The musical soliloquies pave the way to the virtuoso’s first
“recital” on 9 June 1840 in the Hanover Square Rooms in London. Hamilton,
After the Golden Age, 41–42.
15. Charles Hallé observed: “He was fond at that time of playing in public his
arrangement for piano of the ‘Scherzo,’ ‘The Storm,’ and the finale from
Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony.” Hallé, Autobiography, 58. For Liszt’s
playing of the last three movements from his Sixth Symphony, see discus-
sions of the concert in Vienna, 19 November 1839, in Keeling, “Concert
Announcement,” 401; and in Schröter, “Der Name Beethoven,” 1:146; and in
Legány, Presse und Briefe, 60. For the concerts in Bonn, 12 August 1840 and
Hamburg, October 1840, see Saffle, Liszt in Germany, 104–5 and 106, respec-
tively. For the Salle du Conservatoire benefit concert, 23 June 1844, see
Keeling, “Liszt’s Appearances,” part 2, 21. For Liszt’s playing of the last two
movements, the Scherzo and Finale, from the Sixth, see the concerts at Salon
Erard, 13 April 1841, in Keeling, “Liszt’s Appearances,” part 2, 19; in London
at the Hanover Square Rooms, 1840, Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 132; in Leipzig,
1840, Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 158. For Liszt’s playing of other movements
from his Beethoven partitions and the “Marche funèbre” from Beethoven’s
“Eroica” Symphony in Hamburg, October 1840, see Saffle, Liszt in Germany,
188. Regarding Clara Wieck’s playing of Liszt’s arrangement of the C-minor
Symphony, see Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 139.
16. Revue et gazette musicale 6, no. 67 (12 December 1839), 531, cited in Gooley, The
Virtuoso Liszt, 36.

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 178 ❧ notes to pp. 59–60

17. Many of Adami’s reviews are published in Legány, Presse und Briefe. In his gen-
eral assessment of these concerts, Adami draws his attention to Liszt’s ability to
convey orchestral sound on the keyboard: “Many passages from his composi-
tions suggest that one of his primary goals is to orchestrate the piano as much
as possible.” Legány, Presse und Briefe, 40.
18. Keeling, “Concert Announcement,” 401, proposes that this Viennese concert
is probably the first known public performance. Yet Hallé had already heard
portions of the Liszt–Beethoven “Pastoral” symphony earlier in 1836: Hallé,
Autobiography, 58.
19. Legány, Presse und Briefe, 60. “Die Übertagung dieser großartigen und compl-
icierten Composition für das Pianoforte war eine eben so gewagte, als schwi-
erige Aufgabe, wenn es damit nicht etwa blos auf ein brillantes Concertstück,
sondern vielmehr darauf abgesehen war, ein solches Werk ohne willkührliche
Zusätze oder Hinweglassungen seinem Geiste und seiner innersten Wesenheit
nach, mit künstlerischer Treue und Gewissenhaftigkeit wiederzugeben, und
eben nur ein Künstler, wie Liszt, der nebst einer unbegrenzten Verehrung für
Beethoven auch die seltene Gabe besitzt, den großen deutschen Meister zu
verstehen, eben nur ein solcher Künstler konnte und durfte sich an ein so
gefährliches Unternehmen wagen.”
20. Fink, “Pianoforte-Werke von Franz Liszt,” 308. He comments on the Sixth that
“Liszt has undertaken and executed his work with deference to the great mas-
ter of the composition.” (Liszt mit Hochachtung gegen den grossen Meister
des Werkes seine Arbeit unternommen und ausgeführt hat.)
21. Fink, “Pianoforte-Werke von Franz Liszt,” 307. “Wir sind überzeugt, dass die-
ses Werk mit Ehrfurcht vor dem Gebilde des grossen Todten, mit gewissen-
hafter Sorgfalt und in der Absicht verfasst worden ist, alles dem Pianoforte nur
Mögliche aus der Gesammtmasse der Instrumente getreu wiederzugeben, was
das Orchesterwerk uns am Lebhaftesten, nur von einer Person dargestellt, vor
die Sinne zu führen vermag.”
22. Fink, “Pianoforte-Werke von Franz Liszt,” 307. The following phrases con-
tinue: “. . . . even for those players who not only mastered their fingerings
according to efficient rules and patterns but also mastered them following
their own reason and the unique, organic condition of their hands and fin-
gers, and are at peace with themselves, if only for the sake of comparison.” The
entire paragraph in the original reads: “An nicht wenigen geeigneten Stellen
hat Liszt die Applikatur angegeben, über, bald unter und neben den Griffen
stehend, wie es des deutlichen Lesens wegen an jeder Stelle am passendsten
ist. Diese Angaben eines solchen gefeierten Pianisten müssen nun jedenfalls
auch solchen Spielern, die ihre Fingersetzung nach tüchtigen Regeln und
Mustern nicht nur, sondern zugleich nach eigenem Verstande und besonderer
organischen Hand- und Fingerbeschaffenheit erlernten und mit sich selbst
hierin im Reinen sind, wäre es auch nur um des Vergleichens willen, höchst
erwünscht sein.” Fink concludes his comments on Liszt’s specific fingering
as “beneficial for those admirers of the pianoforte who have mastered it by
means of their own diligence.”

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 notes to pp. 60–62 ❧ 179

23. “All of the previously mentioned careful considerations are found again to
the same degree in the transcription of the Pastoral Symphony. However, it
[the Pastoral Symphony] is made more full-fisted and more difficult than
the previous symphony. Now, most certainly, there are many among our pia-
nists for whom exactly this difficulty in the execution has particular appeal,
but there are also others upon whom one would not with so many passages
in which high technical challenges need to be vanquished”; “Alle die letzt-
genannten sorgfältigen Berücksichtigungen finden sich in demselben Grade
in der Bearbeitung der Pastoralsinfonie wieder. Allein sie ist noch viel vollg-
riffiger und schwieriger gesetzt, als die vorige Sinfonie. Gibt es nun auch ganz
gewiss Viele unter unsern Pianisten, denen gerade diese Schwierigkeit in der
Ausführung etwas sehr Anziehendes ist, so wird es doch auch wohl Andere
geben, denen so viele Besiegungen technischer Bravouren nicht erwünscht
sein können.” Fink, “Pianoforte-Werke von Franz Liszt,” 308. It is significant
that Fink’s assessment helps place Liszt’s arrangements in the realm of a few
professional pianists and a cultivated audience. In his comments on the Fifth,
Fink suggests that Liszt’s rendering is suitable for competent pianists, who are
distinguishable from others who prefer another type of arrangement “for the
sake of an easier feasibility.” Fink, “Pianoforte-Werke von Franz Liszt,” 307.
24. Fink continues to stress the “difficulties” inherent in Liszt’s partition by relating
the issue to the reception of the general audience: “Our insignificant opinion
would therefore go as follows: let this arrangement initially be used for over-
coming significant difficulties with a new and exceedingly full-handed mode
of playing. And once this has been mastered, let the work be performed for
connoisseurs or in small groups, instead of a mixed audience who cannot com-
pensate for the lack of tone colors and who cannot appreciate the [technical]
difficulties”; “Unsere unmaassgebliche Meinung würde deshalb dahin gehen:
Man verwende diese Bearbeitung zunächst für Ueberwindung bedeutender
Schwierigkeiten eines überaus vollgriffigen Spieles neuer Art, und hat man sie
besiegt, trage man das Werk mehr vor Kennern oder in kleinen Kreisen, als
vor einem gemischten Publikum vor, das den garnicht zu ersetzenden Mangel
der Tonfarben sich nicht hinzudenken, noch die Schwierigkeiten zu schätzen
vermag.” Fink, “Pianoforte-Werke von Franz Liszt,” 308.
25. Der Humorist 2, no. 85 (28 May 1838); cited in Gibbs, “Liszt’s 1838 Vienna
Concerts,” 201.
26. Williams, Portrait of Liszt, provides ample anecdotes of the reception in this city
(pp. 138, 141, 152–53, 155, 158, 161) as well as of concerts in other cities in
1841–45 (pp. 189, 207, 211).
27. “The Overture to Guillaume Tell was rapturously encored; upon which M. Liszt
substituted some splendid variations upon the National Anthem. The com-
pany were electrified with their majestic grandeur.” Williams, Portrait of Liszt,
160–61. The concert was held on 30 January 1841.
28. Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 135.
29. Translated in Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 145; the original from Reinecke,
“Erinnerungen an Franz Liszt,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 78 (1911): 570.

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 180 ❧ notes to pp. 62–67

Reinecke was a young pianist and later became a composer, teacher, writer,
and conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus concerts.
30. Furthermore, the cues completely disappear in the arrangements of Weber’s
overtures (1846)—although these are categorized under “partition” like the
previous ones in Liszt’s 1877 catalogue. For a further discussion of the nota-
tional issues in the Liszt-Weber partitions, see Kim, “Dynamics of Fidelity and
Creativity,” 248–56.
31. Rossini’s mastery of orchestration in the overture and throughout the opera
Guillaume Tell is associated with a distinctive use of the solo instruments, includ-
ing divisi cellos, an extensive English horn solo, rapid trombone passages,
and demanding horn parts. For a detailed discussion of Rossini’s individual
instruments throughout the opera, see Runyan, “Orchestration in Five French
Grand Operas,” 87. In the final galop of Liszt’s version, the designations of
both the horn and the trombone also appear when they enter as a thematic
group against the contrasting material in the first episode of the rondo at m.
275.
32. Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture consists of four sections: (1) The Prelude,
Andante, E major; (2) The Storm, Allegro, E minor; (3) The “Ranz des
vaches,” the melancholy call of the Swiss cowherd, Andante, G major; and (4)
The Finale, Allegro, E major.
33. The English horn’s distinctive passage appears only once in its entirety in the
overture. The virtuosic nature of the flute is confined to the overture, showing
Rossini’s creative writing but at the same time his conservative attitude toward
the instrument. Runyan, “Orchestration,” 86–87, 90. For the triangle tone, it
can evoke another image of the pastoral such as the “bells of the mountain
sheep.” Osborn, Rossini, 317.
34. NLA, 18:xviii.
35. In Liszt’s version, the enriched melody in double octaves is surrounded by
independent staccato articulation of the flute and the pizzicato string chords in
the basses. Liszt’s reworking not only lends a deeper and richer sound to the
original but also evokes the image of three hands moving simultaneously, con-
tributing to both the acoustic and visual expansion. Liszt’s rendering brings
up the question of how the pianist can actually perform the passage, including
which hand plays what and how to play a staccato G on the top of a sustained G.
One possibility is that the left hand arpeggiates the lower staccato notes, then
jumps to the flute part until the middle tune is in the bottom staff. Another
possibility is that the left hand takes over the sustained notes for the right
hand.
36. Note that when the figures reiterate in a higher register in measure 222, the
range is expanded further to a higher register of the keyboard.
37. Trippett, “Après une Lecture de Liszt,” 52–93. Trippett’s study of Liszt’s composi-
tional process of his Dante sonata elucidates the claim that Liszt’s improvisa-
tory practice and compositional practice are not separable but interact with
each other.
38. The reading of the melody as lowered by an octave assumes that a woman orig-
inally sang it. Liszt’s version puts it in the right range for a man to sing.

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 notes to pp. 67–78 ❧ 181

39. According to Saffle, the three song arrangements and Rossini partition all
belong to the seventeen pieces that were most frequently performed in
Liszt’s concerts in Germany, 1840–45. During those years, Liszt performed
the “Erlkönig” arrangement more than sixty-five times, the “Ständchen”
more than thirty times, the “Ave Maria” almost thirty times, and the partition
of Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture, almost forty times. Saffle, Table 2: Liszt’s
Primary German Repertory, in Liszt in Germany, 187. The partition was also one
of the stock pieces in Liszt’s London concert season during the early 1840s;
Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 135, 142, 152, 153, and 161.
40. Kregor, Liszt as Transcriber, 75–111, provides many useful instances of Liszt’s
rereading of the original songs.
41. The timpani also play an important role as a structural element in Rossini’s
score. Prior to the timpani’s appearance, the expressive melody unfolds in
a four-measure antecedent phrase (mm. 17–20), followed by what we would
expect to be a four-measure consequent phrase; the latter, however, thwarts
our expectation by ceasing after two measures with a questioning gesture. Liszt
takes the salient feature of the timpani’s role, yet at the same time dramatizes
it for his own purpose—to interrupt/disrupt the regular phrase structurally
and also acoustically.
42. When the timpani’s rolls return in measures 39–41, intruding on and merging
into the oboe’s trills, Liszt’s emphasis on the main thematic line leads him to
continue the oboe’s trills while eliminating the timpani roll at measure 39 but
bringing it back in the typical tremolando bass at measure 40.
43. The instances include the first movement of the Symphonie fantastique, mea-
sures 61–62 in place of string tremolos; and the fifth movement, the ossia of
measures 429–33, which has a brilliant series of sixths designated as “glissando.”
In the Liszt–Weber Freischütz, the ossia passages of measures 30–33 and 257–60
are improvisatory-sounding, as are the extended scale measure 112 (but only a
one-octave expansion) and the ossia of measure 163 in the Liszt–Weber Oberon.

Chapter Four
1. The partitions are reduced to three: based on Liszt’s catalogue of 1877, the
overture to Tannhäuser (1848), Danse des sylphes de la Damnation de Faust (1860),
and Marche au supplice de la Symphonie fantastique (1865). Marche au supplice is,
nevertheless, a reworking of his previous partition with his own addition of an
introduction and modifications of the earlier structure in several places, and
thus is considered a paraphrase. Danse des sylphes also features his own introduc-
tory material based on the main motives of the original, while the remaining
parts preserve the structure of the model with a focus on the strings. The well-
known arrangement of Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture follows the structure of
the original faithfully, with minor textural changes, yet it was designated as a
“concert paraphrase” in the first editions (NLA 23:xv). This decrease in the
solo-piano arrangements is not confined to the oeuvre of faithful orchestral

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 182 ❧ notes to pp. 78–80

arrangements, but also applies to the freer ones of the opera fantasies and
paraphrases as well.
2. Liszt rendered his self-image, as David Trippett aptly describes it, as a “meta-
morphosis from virtuoso-as-caterpillar to composer-as-butterfly” by proclaim-
ing publicly his resignation as a professional virtuoso performer. Trippett,
“Après une Lecture de Liszt,” 87. A decisive shift of focus in Liszt’s activities to
composer, conductor, and interpreter in Weimar in the latter part of the 1840s
has led scholars to view him as abandoning his earlier bravura pieces in order
to focus on a new horizon of his artistic development in his symphonic poems.
See, among others, Walker, Franz Liszt, vol. 2; and Altenburg, “Franz Liszt and
the Legacy,” 46–48.
3. For the letters of 1856 to Louis Köhler, see Franz Liszt, Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 1:122
and 224–25, translated in Liszt, Letters of Franz Liszt, 1:270 and 273, respectively.
4. Friedrich Hofmeister, Handbuch der musikalischen Literatur (1817–27).
Supplements to the Handbuch were published annually as Hofmeister’s
Musikalisch-literarischer Monatsbericht beginning in 1829 (Leipzig: Friedrich
Hofmeister, 1829–1943). The Handbuch includes not only arrangements
for solo piano, two pianos, and four-hands but also those for six and eight
hands. In his introduction to the Handbuch, iii–iv, Neil Ratliff points out that
although the Whistling–Hofmeister inventory is “international in scope,”
it relies heavily on the editions of German and Austrian publishers. In addi-
tion, some of the entries contain errors, omissions, and inconsistency in
multiple listings that make it difficult to assess the number of editions pre-
cisely. Hofmeister, Handbuch, iv–v. Nevertheless, the inventory provides a
useful starting point for the discussion of nineteenth-century piano arrange-
ments in order to quantify the published editions for solo, two pianos, and
four hands. Ratliff, in Handbuch, vi, stresses that the Handbuch is valuable for
verifying and establishing publications, particularly because of the dating of
the editions. Hofmeister’s inventories have provided a foundation for studies
of nineteenth-century piano transcriptions, including those of Christensen,
“Four-Hand Piano Transcription.” For other useful sources of the database of
piano arrangements, see Prosnitz, Handbuch der Klavier-Literatur, 15; Altmann,
Verzeichnis von Werken für Klavier, excerpted from the Hofmeister Handbuch
through 1942; for Liszt, see also Searle’s catalogue in Oxford Music Online, s.v.
“Franz Liszt” by Searle, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com. The third edition
of the Handbuch from 1844 to 1847, in particular, lists a startling amount of
four-hand piano music—almost nine thousand publications—that appeared in
Germany and its “neighboring lands.” Hofmeister, Handbuch, 3rd ed., 2:71–
120; Christensen, “Four-Hand Piano Transcription,” 257. It is noteworthy,
considering that the concerto arrangements occupy a large proportion of the
two-piano arrangements, that the portion of the repertoire of other orchestral
and chamber arrangements for two pianos is much smaller than that for four-
hand arrangements.
5. Searle, catalogue, Oxford Music Online; Watson, Liszt, 193–94.
6. For general approaches to piano duets, which embrace four-hand and two-
piano settings in a type of arrangement or as an independent composition, see

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 notes to p. 80 ❧ 183

Dawes, “Piano Duet”; see also Loos, Zur Klavierübertragung von Werken, particu-
larly at p. 29; Ferguson, Keyboard Duets; and Lubin, The Piano Duet.
7. Liszt’s two-piano arrangements are indeed almost absent from the scholarly
literature. For discussion of the few attempts, see Bertagnolli, “Transcribing
Prometheus,” 134–55, and Klefstad, “Style and Technique,” 37–66.
8. Altman, Verzeichnis, 84–107.
9. Altman, Verzeichnis, 92–107, distinguishes the group of the two-piano arrange-
ments from independent two-piano compositions, which appear under the
title “original works” in Altman, Verzeichnis, 84–91, including sonatas, fantasies,
variations, small character pieces, rondos, and scherzos.
10. Altman, Verzeichnis, 92–107, includes about 740 two-piano arrangements
published from the 1850s through the early 1940s; pp. 92–94 list about 150
publications of two-piano arrangements of orchestral music. The two-piano
publications of piano concertos occupy roughly half the production.
11. Altman, Verzeichnis, 84–107, particularly at 92–94. It is also true that the num-
ber of four-hand arrangements increased toward the end of the century.
Handbuch (1844), 2:71–120.
12. Altman, Verzeichnis, 84–107, particularly 92–94.
13. All of the arrangements were published by Breitkopf & Härtel, except for
the Faust arrangement, which was published by J. Schuberth. There is one
more arrangement of symphonic compositions in Liszt’s oeuvre in the list of
Altmann, Verzeichnis, 93: 2 Episoden aus Lenaus Faust: 1. Der nächtliche Zug, 2. Der
Tanz in der Dorfschenke (Mephisto-Walzer), published in 1885 by J. Schuberth.
14. Klefstad, “Style and Technique,” 2.
15. Liszt’s arrangements stood in the forefront of the orchestral arrangements for
two pianos even before the genre embarked on its development in the 1860s.
Prior to Liszt’s orchestral arrangements, only a few editions for two pianos had
appeared. Altmann, Verzeichnis, 92, lists Beethoven’s symphonies nos. 5 and 6
arranged by Ernst Naumann and published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1846 and
1847, respectively. This situation was extended to the period when Liszt under-
took his own arrangements in the 1850s and 1860s as well as in the 1870s, until
the repertoire began to blossom in the 1880s.
16. During Liszt’s time, for instance, Carl Czerny’s two-piano versions of
Beethoven’s symphonies were regarded as strictly literal and faithful and thus
“authentic” renderings, yet they were not as scrupulous as Liszt’s. Saint-Saëns
remarked on Czerny’s renditions that they were intended for amateurs to
become acquainted with the classical composers. The lesser degree of detail
of Czerny’s version is probably related to his purpose. Saint-Saëns initially used
his notion of Czerny’s renditions for his emphasis on the educational purpose
of piano arrangements. Saint-Saëns, Musical Memories, 193. Klefstad, “Style
and Technique,” discusses the gradual increase in fidelity in arrangements of
symphonic compositions, focusing on those during the early twentieth cen-
tury, which culminated in Karl Grunsky’s arrangements of Bruckner’s sympho-
nies published in 1927. Even in Grunsky’s “faithful” rendering of Bruckner’s
symphony, his fidelity frequently involves separating and sharing orchestral
parts between the two pianos in order to enable a difficult orchestral part to

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 184 ❧ notes to p. 81

be executed comfortably. Grunsky’s faithfulness for the sake of practicality is,

however, to some degree different from Liszt’s uncompromising attention to
meticulous detail, which often demands a great deal of the performer.
17. Liszt, Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 1: 222–23. “Ich versuchte zuerst ein 4 händiges
Arrangement davon, was für den Verschleiss weit praktischer wäre; gab aber
diese Verstümmelung bald auf, indem ich einsah, dass bei dem 4 händigen
Satz das Ineinandergreifen der Hände meinem Tongebilde zu sehr im Wege
steht. Das 2 clavierige Arrangement, wenn ich nicht irre, klingt passabel.
Bülow, Bronsart, Pruckner etc. haben es mehrmals gespielt, und sicher finden
Sie in Königsberg einen Partner oder eine Partnerin, die Sie dazu verleiten.”
Louis Köhler was a piano pedagogue and critic with whom Liszt continued to
correspond during the 1850s.
18. Liszt, Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 1:267–68. “En sus vous n’ignorez pas que les arrange-
ments pour deux Pianos—les seuls propres à rendre le dessin et le groupement
des idées de certains ouvrages—sont peu en faveur auprès des marchands de
Musique et d’un débit rare, la grande masse des Pianistes étant à peine capable
de jouer sur le Piano, et se souciant fort peu (si ce n’est parfois pour la forme
et par respect humain) de l’intérêt d’intelligence et de sentiment qui pourrait
se rattacher aux promenades de leurs doigts.” Wladimir Stasoff was a Russian
writer, a music and art critic, then director of the Imperial Public Library at St.
Petersburg.
19. In another letter to Köhler, dated 9 July 1856, Liszt expands the hierarchy
between the two types of arrangements to three by including the solo-piano
arrangement, the most representative type of his arrangements: “Such an
adaptation [for two pianos] is certainly not as useable as a four-hand one.
However, after I had tried to squeeze the score of the Tasso simply into one
pianoforte, I soon gave up this plan for the other ones, on account of the
unavoidable mutilation and adjustment through the intertwining playing of
the four-hand composition. And I brought myself to do without sound and
color and orchestra light, but at least I could determine an overall reduction of
the musical content that was clear to the ear through the two-piano arrange-
ment (which I could arrange quite freely).” Liszt, Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 1:224–25.
“Ein derartiges Arrangement ist allerdings nicht so verwendbar als ein 4hän-
diges. Jedoch nachdem ich versucht hatte, die Partitur des Tasso schlechtweg
in ein Pianoforte hineinzuzwacken, gab ich bald dies Vorhaben für die übri-
gen auf, ob der unvermeidlichen Verstümmelungen und Eintstellungen durch
das In- und Durcheinandergreifen des 4 händigen Satzes, und bequemte mich
dazu, zwar Klang und Farbe und Orchester-Licht zu entbehren, aber wenigstens
eine übersichtliche und dem Ohr deutliche Wiedergebung des musikalischen
Inhalts durch das clavierige Arrangement (welches ich ziemlich frei bearbe-
iten konnte) zu fixiren.” For renderings of his own symphonic poems, Liszt
once again found two pianos, with their wider scope of register and timbres,
more effective than one. Despite his earlier accomplishments in solo-piano
arrangements, it is notable that for his symphonic poems, Liszt found such
a setting inappropriate to encompass the score of the original (“squeeze the
score of the Tasso poorly into one pianoforte”) and to approximate “orchestral

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 notes to p. 82 ❧ 185

light.” Here Liszt particularly points out the limited range and color of a single
piano as shortcomings in transferral. In fact, one of the common themes in
the reception of Liszt’s symphonic poems was to remark on his advanced use
of distinctive instrumental effects and an extensive range of orchestral texture.
The two-piano arrangement would provided more scope for representing
intricate orchestral textures and colors, ultimately leading Liszt to believe in
“the two-piano arrangements (which I could arrange quite freely).”
20. According to Searle’s catalogue, the orchestral and two-piano scores of Tasso,
Les préludes, Orpheus, Prometheus, Mazeppa, and Festklänge appeared simultane-
ously in 1856; both versions of Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne in 1857; Die Ideale
in 1858; and Hamlet and Hunnenschlacht in 1861. In the case of Héroïde funèbre
(1857), the two-piano version was issued before the orchestral score in 1856.
Only the two-piano arrangement of Hungaria (1861) had to be postponed
until after the orchestral score (1857); also noted in Bertagnolli, “Transcribing
Prometheus,” 135. This was not untypical of the nineteenth-century “transcrip-
tion trade,” in which publishers, composers, and arrangers all collaborated
to make it possible to release both orchestral and piano scores at the same
time to facilitate the dissemination and promotion of the latest music. Yet in
the case of Liszt, it was a two-piano arrangement that consistently preceded
its four-hand counterparts in both composition and publication, with a cou-
ple of exceptions, such as Prometheus. Four-hand arrangements were mostly
published much later than orchestral scores. See Bertagnolli, “Transcribing
Prometheus,” 145; Raabe, Franz Liszt, 2: 289; also Liszt, Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 1:
222. For the record, although the earliest four-hand editions of the three sym-
phonic poems Tasso, Les préludes, and Orpheus appeared in 1859, three years
after their orchestral and two-piano scores, the remaining nine editions,
according to Searle’s catalogue, were published sporadically in the span from
1861 to 1880: Festklänge (1861), Prometheus (1862), Hamlet (1874), Mazeppa
(1875), Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne (1875), Hungaria (1875), Hunnenschlacht
and Héroïde funèbre (1878), and Die Ideale (1880).
21. Bertagnolli, “Transcribing Prometheus,” 153 nn. 3 and 4, points out that
Liszt originally planned to leave the task of three of the four-hand arrange-
ments to his associates; he asked Hans von Bülow to arrange Héroïde funèbre
and Hunnenschlacht, although Bülow declined to do the task, just as Giovanni
Sgambati declined to transcribe Die Ideale. Eventually, Liszt arranged the for-
mer two himself. See Liszt, Briefwechsel zwischen Franz Liszt und Hans von Bülow,
389–93. Liszt’s complete control over the set of his two-piano versions in the
first stage, therefore, is distinguishable from his relatively loose attitude toward
the four-hand versions. Liszt’s control, nevertheless, extends to the four-hand
arrangements by others before they appeared, as he was willing to correct the
four-hand arrangement of Die Ideale by Sgambati; see Liszt, letter to Sgambati
of November 24, 1872, in Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 2: 212. Also, it should be noted
that although Liszt arranged his own symphonic poems, other contemporary
pianist-arranger-composers also engaged with his symphonic poems by arrang-
ing them for two pianos. For instance, Carl Tausig rendered Liszt’s Prometheus
symphony in a two-piano version; see Walker, Franz Liszt, 2:181.

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 186 ❧ notes to pp. 82–83

22. For example, duplicated octave passages are replaced by simply alternating
broken octaves; wider-range accompaniment patterns are reduced to a nar-
rower range of contour; and rapid scales or repeated chords become simpli-
fied and less demanding.
23. Liszt, letter to Frau von Kaulbach, dated May 1, 1857, in Franz Liszt’s Briefe
1:338.
24. Letter to Eduard Liszt, dated May 22, 1863, in Liszt, Letters of Franz Liszt, 2:48.
According to Liszt’s description, “Princess Cz.,” a pupil of Chopin’s, was an
“enthusiastic worshipper of Mozart, Beethoven, and Chopin” and “the illumi-
nating faith of the Catholic Church reflected in Polish blood.”
25. He is indeed known to have performed his two-piano music with almost every
significant pianist of his time. See Hinson, The Pianist’s Guide, 78.
26. Saint-Saëns in fact played a crucial role in transforming the reception of Liszt’s
symphonic poems in Paris from controversial to more favorable. See Johnson,
“Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns,” 195. Saint-Saëns joined with Planté in
a two-piano concert of Liszt’s symphonic poems Tasso and Héroïde funèbre at
the Érards in the beginning of June 1867; in response to this concert, Liszt
wrote a thank-you letter to each of the two pianists on 5 July 1867. For the
account of the concert, see Liszt, Correspondence: Lettres choisies, 45, cited in
Johnson, “Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns,” 74. For Liszt’s thank-you let-
ter, see Liszt,: Selected Letters, 984. Planté recalled further in a letter to Georges
Servières: “Remaining very loyal to our friendship from childhood, we [Saint-
Saëns and himself] got together often to play two-piano versions of Liszt’s so
beautiful [symphonic] poems, whether at la Muette, at Madame Érard’s, [or]
at the large and beautiful studio of Gustave Doré,” quoted and translated in
Johnson, “Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns,” 199.
27. Richard Pohl—a noted critic, supporter of the New German School, and
probably an observer of the performances of Liszt’s two-piano arrangements
when he stayed in Weimar from 1854 to 1864—recalled one of the concerts
he attended: “A further dimension was added to our enjoyment when Dionys
Pruckner, one of Liszt’s best pupils, took his place at a second grand piano
standing next to the giant [Liszt] . . . in a performance of one of Liszt’s sym-
phonic poems (Orpheus) in the Master’s own arrangement [S638] Seek where
you will to hear such a performance elsewhere!” Pohl, Franz Liszt, 64; quoted
in Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 313.
28. Liszt, Correspondance: Lettres choisis, 468; quoted and translated in Johnson,
“Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns,” 72.
29. Although his symphonic poems were performed frequently by his own court
orchestra and others, it was still rare to have such an orchestral composition
repeated on the stage even in large cities of the time. For the performance
records, see Johns, Symphonic Poems of Franz Liszt, 83–138; for early perfor-
mances from 1849 to 1861, see table 5 on pp. 84–86 of that volume.
30. “In Károly Thern’s home: apart from his friendly relations with the family, that
is quite likely the reason Liszt was present there then to hear his rarely played
Hamlet Symphonic Poem for two pianos and Károly Thern’s transcription for
two pianos of his great ‘Fantasy and Fugue on B–A–C–H,’ very well played by

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 notes to pp. 83–84 ❧ 187

the Thern sons. These friendly gatherings in this kind of mutual music-making
were in fact a form of lessons given by Liszt in the highest possible sense, for
what was performed before him there could safely be played in public later.”
Legány, Ferenc Liszt and His Country, 222. Legány does not provide a specific
year and date for the concert, but probably it was held in 1872–73, judging
by the author’s chronological accounts. It was not unusual in salons of the
mid-nineteenth century for the latest orchestral compositions to be heard in
four-hand versions before a concert performance (Christensen, “Four-Hand
Piano Transcription,” 263); the practice, moreover, continued well into the
early twentieth century, as illustrated in the musical activity of Schoenberg’s
circle, the Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen (Society for private
musical performances). See Smith, Schoenberg and His Circle, 84–85. See also
Antokoletz, “A Survivor of the Vienna Schoenberg Circle,” 16. Discerning
audiences appreciated Liszt’s progressive compositions and exchanged their
views on them, and professional pianists were eager to learn and engage with
Liszt’s original orchestral compositions through his own pianistic renderings.
31. Allis, “Promoting the Cause,”1–38; Allis, “‘Remarkable Force, 195–96. For
other public performances, according to Fromme’s musikalische Welt, an annual
periodical of musical concerts and events in Vienna, Liszt’s two-piano arrange-
ments of all but one of his twelve symphonic poems as well as of his two sym-
phonies, the Dante and Faust, were performed in a series of three concerts
by August Göllerich and August Stradal during winter 1886–87. Fromme,
Fromme’s musikalische Welt, 124; for other anecdotes that include Liszt’s two-
piano settings, see the issues (1878), 66, 98–99; (1879), 93; Goertzen, “Piano
Transcriptions of Brahms,” 12–14.
32. See Allis, “Promoting the Cause,” 7; for specific programming and anecdotes,
see Allis’s article throughout; and Bache, Brother Musicians, particularly at
188, 190. For the concerto as a whole, see Allis, “Remarkable Force, Finish,”
197. Allis points out that Bache was not the only pianist in Britain to pro-
gram Liszt’s piano works, as many of Liszt’s pupils included selections from
his music in their recitals. But the variety of Liszt’s works for solo piano, two
pianos, and piano and orchestra, as well as the scope of the repertoire, are sig-
nificant in Bache’s concerts. Allis (“Promoting the Cause,” 11) also points out
that Bache’s concerts in turn helped the London audience to familiarize itself
with these pieces, which had been rarely heard in the city, and thus advertise
the composer’s orchestral compositions. Although Liszt had connections with
London audiences from 1840 to 1867 through his performances, his music
appears scarcely to have been heard by audiences there. Liszt’s performances
include his playing of a “Hungarian March” as part of a Philharmonic Society
concert in 1840 and La campanella in 1867. Scholes, The Mirror of Music, 1:426;
Johns, Symphonic Poems, 87.
33. Allis, “Promoting the Cause,” 11.
34. “To amateurs who may wish for a further acquaintance with the work, I would
venture to recommend this arrangement in preference to the one (also tran-
scribed by Liszt himself) for a single pianoforte à quatre mains. This latter ver-
sion contains several material rhythmical changes which I cannot consider as

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 188 ❧ notes to pp. 84–89

improvements on the original edition, as performed to-night.” Walter Bache,

cited in Allis, “Promoting the Cause,” 11; original source not provided.
35. In the second half of the phrase, the bottom octave disappears in the orches-
tral version as the basses drop out, but Liszt maintains it in the piano version.
36. Despite the subtle shift of instrumentation, Liszt’s incorporation of the cue
“Quartetti” remains consistent throughout the opening phrase. The first
cue for the second piano at the outset seems to refer to the string family in a
generic sense, while the second may be needed for the first piano to notice the
previous string quartet. In the original symphonic poem, the two initial unison
pizzicati in the strings lead to an important germinal motive that comprises the
three notes in measure 3, representing what Johns (Symphonic Poems, 54–55)
calls “awakening of consciousness.” The motive initiates an opening phrase,
characterized by a slow tempo, soft dynamic, irregular phrasing structure,
unstable key, and unison writing in the strings, while the rest of the orches-
tral parts remain silent (hence only the string parts are shown in ex. 4.1b).
The salient feature of the opening motive throughout the introduction is its
unfolding in a constant state of instability in phrasing, structure, and key. In
this regard, Liszt’s division makes the intrinsically incomplete phrase seem
even more fragmented.
37. In the scope of Liszt’s two-piano arrangements, it is noteworthy that the tech-
nique above—the division of an individual voice into two keyboards by crossing
the mid-phrase of the voice—is in fact unusual. Moreover, when it appeared
in a number of two-piano arrangements from the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, the majority by Liszt’s students or successors, including
Hermann Behn and Karl Grunsky, this particular technique of distribution was
used primarily for technical feasibility. In other words, the arranger usually
deployed this technique at a place where he encountered a technically diffi-
cult part of the original; by sharing the part between two pianos, the arranger
could transfer it more easily and make it more playable. For such arrangers,
therefore, the properties of the two keyboards sometimes existed for practical-
ity and convenience. In the case of Liszt, however, his deliberate cutting across
an individual instrumental part stems neither from his pursuit of a practical
purpose nor from any compromise of technical demands. Rather, it discloses
his microscopic attention to a subtle change of instrumental timbre, his acute
sense of exploiting sources available on the two keyboards, and his novel way
of thinking about distribution.
38. In the orchestral score shown in example 4.3b, Liszt introduces one of the
structurally important themes associated with Mazeppa’s suffering and its
effect. Johns, Symphonic Poems of Liszt, 65, names it the “Mazeppa motive.”
The accompaniment in the strings, in contrast, displays different characteris-
tics by means of pizzicato, col legno, and undulating rhythmic patterns. It is set
apart from the theme in contrasting texture, figuration, and instrumentation.
In his two-piano arrangement, Liszt’s layout heightens the contrast between
theme and accompaniment in an immediately recognizable way, as manifested
between forte and piano on the dynamic level and between straightforward sim-
plicity and high virtuosity in the character of the figuration. Through Liszt’s

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 notes to pp. 89–93 ❧ 189

own layout using the two pianos, the reader would have been capable of grasp-
ing the distinction between theme and accompaniment clearly without know-
ing the original orchestral score ahead of the two-piano version. Even when a
player renders the ossia for piano 2 instead of the straightforward theme under-
neath, it still reveals more focus on the theme of the strings, because the softer
oscillating patterns in conjunction with the theme are still direct and thus help
maintain a clear distinction between the theme and the accompaniment.
39. Two measures before rehearsal F and sixteen measures before rehearsal G.
What follows from measure 212 is a passage from rehearsal H (mm. 212–25),
in which Liszt deployed the same manner of distribution, but the roles of the
pianos are reversed: piano 2 now in virtuosic figurations and piano 1 in the-
matic fragments. The exchange of role between the pianos does not occur at
random but stems from Liszt’s attention to treating each piano as independent
and highlighting each of the virtuosic performers in alternation. Rehearsal
numbers are from the following edition: Liszt, Symphonische Dichtungen für
grosses Orchester.
40. In addition, the bravura figurations reflect another aspect of Liszt’s prac-
tices—paying greater attention to the strings than to the winds and brasses
even when the strings do not have a leading role in the thematic material. It
is also worth noting that the Mazeppa example is essentially a double transcrip-
tion—originally a piano etude (Transcendental études no. 4, 1852) with its own
compositional history, then an orchestral composition (Symphonic Poem no.
6, 1851–54), and then the two-piano score (1855). It is relevant to ask whether
the original solo piano piece is a factor in the virtuosity of the two-piano tran-
scription and whether any of the figurations in the solo version are adapted in
the two-piano version, bypassing the orchestral version. In the case of example
4.3a, the virtuosic figuration Liszt newly added to his two-piano version is simi-
lar to that in the corresponding passage of his solo-piano version from mea-
sure 62 in NLA, series 1, 1:23, in its wide skips and sweeps.
41. “One gets the impression of an immensity without boundaries; horse and rider
flee into the unlimited steppes, and the man’s sight becomes disoriented, as
the thousand details of the expanse are more than he can take in. There is at
that point a marvelous orchestral effect. The strings, divided to the utmost,
make heard from the height and depth of their range a mass of little sounds of
all types.” Phémius [Camille Saint-Saëns], “Musique,” 286; quoted and trans-
lated in Johnson, “Franz Liszt and Camille Saint-Saëns,” 20.
42. Liszt stated that the painting was a source in several of his letters: see his let-
ter of 1855 to Agnes Street-Klindworth in Pocknel, Franz Liszt and Agnes Street-
Klindworth, letter 26. Another letter of the same year was written to Princess
Carolyne in Franz Liszt: Selected Letters, ed. Williams, 382–83. Liszt met Kaulbach
(1804–1874) in Munich in 1843 and knew the painting before he conducted
the premiere of his symphonic poem at the Court Theater in Weimar in 1857.
Steinbeck, “Musik nach Bildern, 26.
43. The painting, housed in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich, is a part of a cycle
of thirty-nine large oil murals depicting the stages of development in cultural
history. The battle in 451 AD is considered one of the bloodiest in history. See

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 190 ❧ notes to p. 93

Lewis, History of Germany, 39–43; Fallon-Ludwig, “Religious, Philosophical, and

Social Significance, 145–146.
44. Liszt, Franz Liszt’s Briefe 1: 281. English translation in Liszt, Letters of Franz List,
2: 352. Also see part of Liszt’s letter to Frau von Kaulbach, dated May 1, 1857,
Letters of Franz Liszt, 1:338–89, as mentioned above.
45. Although the object is found only in the top left-hand corner of the painting,
Liszt brings it to the center of his composition to symbolize Christianity and by
extension, humanitarian love. Fallon-Ludwig, “Religious, Philosophical, and
Social Significance,” 150. A number of Liszt scholars agree that Liszt did not
attempt to provide a mere description of the painting through his music, but
transformed the ideas of the source into his own narrative structure by com-
menting on what he believed about the cross and Christianity. Gut, Liszt, 371;
Johns, Symphonic Poems of Liszt, 56–57; Fallon-Ludwig, “Religious, Philosophical,
and Social Significance,” 148, 150.
46. Liszt appended both versions of the program to the preface of his two-piano
arrangement of Hunnenschlacht published by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1861. Johns
(Symphonic Poems, 56) points out that the French and German programs do not
complement each other perfectly: the German delineates musical organiza-
tion more clearly than the flowery style of the French. Despite the disparity
between the two programs, Johns admonishes us to preserve and refer to both
in order to follow the musical narrative of the symphonic poem. In his French
program, Liszt focuses on his use of the two musical motives to represent the
contrasting forces of the disruptive Huns and the moral Romans in line with
Christianity. Liszt notes that the Huns are characterized as ferocious, uncivi-
lized, and corruptive, whereas the Romans represent “serene powers” and
“virtues radiating from the idea of Christianity.” In his German program Liszt
continues to portray the ensuing battles and Christianity’s victory.
47. Fallon-Ludwig defines the two themes as theme 1 and 2 and the Crux fidelis as
theme 3, whereas Johns reads the former two as motives 2 and 3 and the intro-
ductory motive as motive 1.
48. Liszt concentrates on a group of strings by assigning the “Huns theme” to the
first violin and contrasting rhythms to the remaining parts.
49. This characteristic feature becomes particularly clear in measure 31 in the dia-
logue between violin 1 and viola.
50. Johns (Symphonic Poems, 36) categorizes this passage as one of the examples of
Sturm-und-Drang in Liszt’s symphonic poems. Johns (Symphonic Poems, 58–59)
further discusses this passage of the Huns’ theme in relation to “sequential
writing,” a harmonic device often encountered in the symphonic poems, used
to juxtapose chromatically related key centers within sequence structures. The
programmatic content employs larger sequences as major structural under-
pinning to help maintain narrative tension. The marking of “violente” also
aptly captured this programmatic representation of the ferocious opponent.
The marking does not exist in the score published by Breitkopf & Härtel,
n.d. [1885], but was in Liszt’s draft. The character of the theme is explicitly
described on the top of the score as Più mosso, with the instruction: “From
here onwards the beat is Alla breve!”; on the theme in the strings: “The

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 notes to pp. 94–96 ❧ 191

triplet-figures must be played with great verve and bravura and the quavers
marked > be played very pointed.” Franz Liszt: Musikalische Werke, Serie I,
Band 6 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1910). Moreover, Liszt moves towards
dissonant tension by using a clash between the theme and other parts. The
accented dissonances in the two-eighth-note figure in the first violin become
more poignant when combined with the rigid triplets in the other parts. The
tritone relationship between B and F in the bass, which alternates the root and
second inversion of the diminished-seventh chord of B minor, is also used to
heighten the dissonant conflict. Fallon-Ludwig, “Religious, Philosophical, and
Social Significance,” 158.
51. Liszt’s manuscript indeed reveals his meticulous accent markings on this two-
eighth-note figure in blue pencil, suggesting his care about the articulation of
the motive.
52. The inscription is not present in the manuscript and reflects either the editor’s
response to the composer’s intention or the composer’s later insertion to rein-
force the articulation.
53. The technique of doubling is frequently found in a transferral process as an
attempt to thicken texture or increase volume. In this case, however, the dou-
bling is more likely intended to emphasize the sharply etched figure in disso-
nance, which helps to embody the fierce Huns.
54. When the theme returns at rehearsal D, however, Liszt renders it in a more lit-
eral manner by assigning it solely to one hand of piano 2. After the audience had
become acquainted with the Huns’ theme in example 4.4b, the reappearance of
the theme would have been more recognizable in the midst of the extensive
tremolo passage. When Liszt wishes to convey his theme clearly, his approach
is less literal but more creative, as observed in example 4.4b. His attempts to
intensify the original character of the theme paradoxically led him to move
away from a literal transferral to a reinvigoration of the theme, making it stand
out by means of his individual approach to layout and performance spectacle.
When the theme returns, however, Liszt would have felt secure about his literal
approach to it. A discerning audience would have recognized the theme more
easily the second time; but more importantly, it was Liszt who made the theme
audible in the first place with his individual approach, which safely led him to
attempt fidelity to the original in the second place.
55. It also unfolds in a broken minor triad, proceeding in a stately manner in a
militaristic rhythm and in the low register of bassoon and cello.
56. Although additions are not unusual in Liszt’s arrangements in general, espe-
cially in his more virtuosic figurations, it is nevertheless worth noting that
they are more copious, conspicuous, and characteristic in his arrangement
of Hunnenschlacht than in his other two-piano arrangements. Many of the
additions in this arrangement involve distinctively characteristic figurations
that are entirely absent in the corresponding orchestral score. For instance,
six measures before rehearsal D (from m. 129), a “wild” effect is achieved by
adding a new figuration in the right hand of piano 1; other instances include
seven measures after rehearsal B, eight measures before rehearsal; eight mea-
sures before rehearsal F; and towards the end of rehearsal P.

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 192 ❧ notes to pp. 96–102

57. The inscription does not appear in Liszt’s manuscript of Hunnenschlacht for
two pianos; for the instruction, see Walker, Franz Liszt, 2:311.
58. The representation of the timpani rolls has a precedent in his partition of
Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture (mm. 17–23, 163–71), aligning his render-
ing here with his earlier one in his reworking of orchestral compositions. See
chapter 3.
59. In addition, the orchestral tremolos as background for the Romans’ theme
do not convey a forbidding and unstable character at all, as represented in
tremolos associated with a supernatural and evil force in Weber’s Der Freischütz
Overture, but simply dwell on a single pitch C to sustain the main key. Liszt
arranged Weber’s Der Freischütz Overture for a solo piano (early 1840s) as part
of his earlier partitions. See my “Dynamics of Fidelity and Creativity,” 233–34.
60. Fallon-Ludwig, “Religious, Philosophical, and Social Significance,” 160. The
orchestration of the theme also differs from that of the previous themes. The
chant appears in the organ, trumpets, and trombones; in example 4.6a, it is
present only in the tenor trombones. The trombone’s association with the
church immediately lends a religious character. Most organs are onstage, but
for this symphonic poem Liszt specifies an organ behind the stage, which can
be associated with the music existing beyond the earthly realm.
61. The contrasting motive comprises a series of staccato rhythmic patterns marked
crescendo with a chromatic motion, concluding with a quintuplet flourish. The
constant reiteration of this motive moves the music forward. Amidst this driv-
ing rhythmic force, Liszt makes the Crux fidelis enter abruptly, immediately cre-
ating a stark contrast between the two.
62. Fallon-Ludwig, “Religious, Philosophical, and Social Significance,” 161–62.

Chapter Five
1. Regarding Liszt’s innovations, see Liszt, Ungarische Rhapsodien, viii. In his analy-
sis of Liszt’s Rhapsody no. 10, referring to the passage in measures 89–91 of
the Vivace, Charles Rosen argues that “the real invention concerns texture,
density, tone, color, and intensity—the various noises that can be made with
a piano—and it is startling original.” Rosen, The Romantic Generation, 492. In
their critical notes, Gárdonyi and Szelényi point out the prevailingly inaccurate
reception of the Rhapsodies in performance as “trivial products of keyboard
literature” and the tendency of the virtuoso pianist-composer to “indulge in
vivid though rough showmanship,” warning us that “despite all the virtuos-
ity they demand, mere technical bravura should never predominate.” Liszt,
Ungarische Rhapsodien, xiii.
2. On the subject of anti-virtuosity polemics, see Žarko Cvejić, The Virtuoso
as Subject, particularly 93–148; Gooley, “The Battle against Instrumental
Virtuosity,” 75–112; and Deaville, “The Making of a Myth,” 181–95, particularly
at 186–89.

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 notes to pp. 102–103 ❧ 193

3. One of the famous anecdotes about Liszt’s transformation of the original in his
playing is a critique about his performance of his transcription of Beethoven’s
Sixth Symphony in a Leipzig concert of 1840, which described Liszt’s playing
as dissolving the original and making the tempos fluctuate. Gooley, The Virtuoso
Liszt, 159–60. Nevertheless, it should be also noted that a number of contem-
poraneous reviewers praised Liszt’s faithful interpretation of Beethoven’s
music, particularly in the memorial festival surrounding the erection of the
Beethoven monument at Bonn in 1845; among them, Berlioz remarked that
Liszt’s performance was delivered in a “grandiose, fine, poetic and yet always
faithful manner.” See Bowen, “‘Even His Critics Must Concede,’” 470n15 and
n21; [Hector Berlioz], “Fêtes musicales de Bonn,” Journal des débats (22 August
1845 and 3 September 1845. For studies of the visual, aural, physical effect of
Liszt’s virtuosity, see Mäkelä, Virtuosität und Werkcharakter; Leppert, The Sight
of Sound, 252–81, particularly 255nn51–54; 258n58; Metzner, Crescendo of the
Virtuoso; Bernstein, Virtuosity of the Nineteenth Century, chapters 3 and 4; Gramit,
Cultivating Music, 139–43; Kramer, “Franz Liszt and the Virtuoso Public
Sphere,” 68–99; Samson, Virtuosity (2003); Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, chapters
1, 2, and 5, particularly pp. 18–77, 47, 78, 106–7, 159–60, 203–6; Gooley, “The
Battle against Instrumental Virtuosity,” 104; Gooley, “Liszt and His Audiences,”
16, 56, 58, 300, 319; Deaville, “Liszt’s Virtuosity and His Audience,” 281–300;
Deaville, “Liszt and the Twentieth Century,” 47; Deaville, “The Making of a
Myth,” 188–89.
4. Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 210. For the words “superficial,” “trivial,” “empty,”
see Deaville, “The Making of a Myth,” 188–89; for the phrase “bad taste,” see
Taruskin, “Liszt and Bad Taste,” 87–104; see also Hooker, Redefining Hungarian
Music, 71.
5. Translated in Liszt, The Gypsy in Music, 266–67.
6. Translated in Liszt, The Gypsy in Music, 13, 302–3, 306–8. Liszt himself called
Hungarian Gypsy music “exotic” (Gypsy in Music, 364). For the discussion of
Liszt’s interest in Gypsy music in the broader context of Romantic exoticism,
see Locke, Musical Exoticism, particularly pp. 135–49.
7. See Bellman, The Style hongrois, 175–84; Hooker, Redefining Hungarian Music,
76–93. Max Peter Baumann describes Liszt’s creation of a “musical idealization
and harmonization on the basis of a falsely interpreted reality.” See Baumann,
“The Reflection of the Roma in European Art Music,” 112. Bálint Sárosi (Gypsy
Music, 115) notes that in their harmonic boldness Liszt’s Rhapsodies “idealize
rather than imitate the one-time clumsiness of Gypsy harmonization.” Bartók’s
article “Liszt’s Music and Today’s Public” also interprets Liszt’s Rhapsodies as
the composer’s own creation. Béla Bartók, Béla Bartók Essays, 91.
8. From Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 114–16; Liszt, Ungarische Rhapsodien, x.
9. Bellman, Style hongrois; Bellman, “Toward a Lexicon,” 214–37; Pethő, “Style
hongrois”; Loya, Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism; Hooker, Redefining Hungarian
Music. For more specifics, see Loya’s theorization of the “verbunkos modality,”
in her Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism, 39–56.

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 194 ❧ notes to pp. 103–107

10. For harmonic elements in detail, see Loya, Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism,
26–57. For rhythmic elements in detail, see Hooker, Redefining Hungarian
Music, particularly 154–229.
11. See Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” 19:215–16, for two specific examples
of cimbalom technique in a slow section. There are also many examples in
Allaga, Cimbalom iskola.
12. The cimbalom is descended from a traditional Persian instrument, the
santür, and is also closely related to the dulcimer as found in England and
the Hackbrett in Germany. For the literature on the dulcimer and cimbalom,
see Kettlewell, “Dulcimer”; Gifford, Hammered Dulcimer; Kaptain, “Hungarian
Cimbalom,” 8; Leach, “Cimbalom,” 134–36; Astaire, “Searching for the
Hungarian Cimbalom”; Manga, “The Cimbalom and Gypsy Music,” 54–58;
Mandel, “Hammered Dulcimer,” 48–55. For the distinction between the doul-
cemèr in France and the Hackbrett in Germany, see Gifford, Hammered Dulcimer,
26–27.
13. The term hammered dulcimer has been used to avoid confusion with two other
instruments—the psaltery, a plucked instrument with a similar form, and the
Appalachian dulcimer, a strummed instrument with a similar name. Many
scholars nevertheless use the plain term dulcimer for an instrument played with
hammers.
14. Gifford, Hammered Dulcimer, 108.
15. For the phrase “basically European,” see Sárosi, “Gypsy Musicians,” 23. As the
cimbalom was imported into Hungary in the mid-seventeenth century, musi-
cians incorporated it into the basso continuo in the standard Baroque trio-
sonata texture of two violins and a bass line; see Gifford, Hammered Dulcimer,
106–8.
16. Sárosi, “Gypsy Musicians,” 11; Gypsy Music, 66, 71.
17. Gifford, Hammered Dulcimer, 112–3, provides one of the sources of evidence—a
Hungarian painting, ca. 1760, that depicts “Hungarian dancing to two ensem-
bles, one a Jewish group with two violins and cimbalom, the other a Gypsy trio
with two violins and cello.
18. Leach, “Cimbalom,” 139.
19. Manga, “Cimbalom and Gypsy Music,” 56.
20. Manga, “Cimbalom and Gypsy Music,” 56.
21. Gelbart, Invention of “Folk Music,” chapters 1–3, especially p. 9.
22. See Gelbart, Invention of “Folk Music,” chapter 1, and the discussion of
“national” versus “cultivated” as categories, 98–102.
23. Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 111; also quoted and discussed in Hooker, Redefining
Hungarian Music, 38. Bihari’s performance made an indelible impression on
the eleven-year old Liszt, as evident in his praise for the outstanding Gypsy
musician’s prowess in a letter from the 1840s as quoted in Walker, Franz Liszt,
1:63.
24. For more on Pantaleon, see Härtwif and Ahrens, “Hebenstreit, Pantaleon”;
Riemann, Hugo Riemann Musik Lexikon, 1338; Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,”
215–27; and Ahrens, “Pantalon Hebenstreit,” 37–48.

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 notes to p. 108 ❧ 195

25. Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 220–22; Härtwig and Ahrens, “Hebenstreit,

Pantaleon”; Gifford, Hammered Dulcimer, 165–67. The Court of Louis XIV was
impressed enough at Hebenstreit’s performance in 1705 to name the instru-
ment the “pantaleon” after the inventor. Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 217;
Gifford, Hammered Dulcimer, 166; Leach, “The Dulcimer,” Consort 25 (1968–69):
390.
26. Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 218; Astaire, “Searching for the Hungarian
Cimbalom,” 26.
27. Hebenstreit had worked in the court of Eisenach from 1706 on. Telemann,
as Kapellmeister, in 1709 praised his mastery of not only the pantalon but
also the violin. He established his reputation particularly in Dresden as court
chamber musician and pantalonist in 1714, with an income higher than that
of Sebastian Bach in Leipzig. Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’s acquaintance with
Hebenstreit occurred in Dresden, where he held a position as an organist
from 1733 to 1747. Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 217–18. For further related
reports and anecdotes, see the same article throughout.
28. “Finally Mons. Pantalon made his leaps, and after he had exhibited his musi-
cal treasury of preludes, fantasies, fugues, and all sorts of caprices with the bare
sticks, he then bound the sticks with cotton and played a partie. Thereupon
the Count was utterly beside himself; he led me out of his room toward the
hall, listened from a distance, and said: “Why, how can that be? I have been
to Italy [and renowned musical centers], have heard what beauty there is
in music, but the likes of this my ears have never heard.” Quoted in Hanks,
“Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 216. The original source is Johann Mattheson, Critica
musica (Hamburg: author, 1725), 2:236.
Hebenstreit’s mastery of the technical difficulties involved in pantalon play-
ing is also evident in another report from Kuhnau in his letter of 1717: “The
pantaloons [sic] requires a tremendous amount of practice; only a few students
[of Hebenstreit] will take up playing it and many of those will soon abandon it,
finding unsurpassable difficulties.” Mattheson, Critica musica, 2:236; quoted in
Leach, “Dulcimer,” 390–91.
29. Kaptain, “Hungarian Cimbalom,” 9.
30. Grimes, “Evolution of the Concert Cimbalom,” 27; Leach, “Cimbalom,” 138.
31. Grimes, “Evolution of the Concert Cimbalom,” 27; Leach, “Cimbalom,” 138.
32. Mandel, Hungarian Folk Instruments, 50, claims that Hebenstreit was the first to
wrap the ends of the hammers with soft material such as fabric or leather.
33. It is difficult to provide an accurate description of Hebenstreit’s pantalon,
partly because of the varying reports by contemporary commentators. John
George Keysler, 1730, described the delicate and colorful timbres elicited from
the instrument: “The strings on one side of the instrument are of cat-gut, and
on the other of [metal] wire.” Quoted in Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 220.
Sarah E. Hanks provides a further description of the strings of the pantalon: it
contains “two soundboards lying back to back, the one strung with gut strings
for the piano sound and the other strung with [metal] strings for the forte
sound.” Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 218; also see a similar description of
Johan Adam Hiller (1770) quoted in Ahrens, “Pantalon Hebenstreit,” 41.

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 196 ❧ notes to pp. 108–111

34. The capriccio in the context of nineteenth-century keyboard literature denoted

a bravura piece made by interweaving preexisting thematic material as in a pot-
pourri, or a witty character piece in a short repetitive rhythmic pattern; it con-
tinued the historical meaning of a free, improvisatory fantasia. See Saari, “The
Capriccio in Keyboard Music,” 306–11; Jensen, “The Piano Capriccio,” 4–13.
35. Härtwig and Ahrens, “Hebenstreit”; Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 224.
36. Ahrens, “Pantalon Hebenstreit.”
37. Rowland, Cambridge Companion to the Piano, 10.
38. Ahrens, “Pantalon Hebenstreit”; Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 225.
39. Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,” 225.
40. Rowland, Cambridge Companion to the Piano, 10; Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,”
226.
41. Rowland, Cambridge Companion to the Piano, 10; Hanks, “Pantaleon’s Pantalon,”
226.
42. For the mention of the use of coat sleeves, see Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 46.
43. Rowland, Cambridge Companion to the Piano, 7–39.
44. For Liszt’s pianos, including the Erard, see Rowland, Cambridge Companion
to the Piano, 45; for Liszt’s Erard piano, see Kanwischer, “Beethoven’s Erard
Piani,” 39.
45. Kroó, Aladár Rácz, 170, as mentioned in Astaire, “Searching for the Hungarian
Cimbalom,” 65. Astaire provides an incorrect translation in saying “by the
1830s,” when the date is in fact 1865. My thanks to Lynn Hooker for the
correction.
46. Kettlewell, “The Dulcimer,”; Gifford, The Hammered Dulcimer, 115; Sárosi,
“Gypsy Musicians,” 23–24; Hooker, Redefining Hungarian Music, 160n12.
Bellman, “Lexicon,” 227, points out that the pedal fitted to the cimbalom by
the mid- to late nineteenth century was, nevertheless, a “crude device.” The
range of the concert cimbalom is conceived of as D–e″, but Grimes, “Evolution
of the Concert Cimbalom,” 4–5, corrects the statement: in practice the range
“can span from A2–F6 through C2–A6, with the latter being the most common
range found for the instrument.”
47. Leach, “Cimbalom,” 134, 137. The older, portable instrument had a wood-
braced frame, was not chromatic, and was limited to a range of between two-
and-a-half and three octaves with no bass strings.
48. Gifford, Hammered Dulcimer, 393–408, provides various types of tuning systems
and pitch layouts.
49. Leach, “Cimbalom,” 137. Leach also points out that the tuning of the cimba-
lom is highly challenging. The primary reason is that the scale is set on the
courses that produce two notes from one course of strings across the bridge.
Following the system of Figure 5.4, the tuning begins with a1 on course 17.
The same course yields d1, a fifth lower, across the bridge. Next we tune a
on the lower octave on course 14, checking it with the previous notes a1 and
d1. Then we tune e1 on course 15, which sounds up a fifth. The same course,
on the left side of bridge, gives b1; then we tune the note an octave lower on
course 10. The tuning continues to operate in a similar sequence of f#1/c#2
on course 11, c#1 on course 8, g#1/d2 on course 9, g on course 18, c1/g1 on

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 notes to pp. 113–115 ❧ 197

course 19, f1/c2 on course 13, b♭ on course 12, b♭1/e2 on course 7, e♭1 on
course 6, and a♭ on course 16. Once all the notes in the middle register have
been tuned, the notes of the upper register operate in octave-tuning, checking
them against notes an octave below in the middle register.
50. Liszt, Des bohémiens, 368–69; translated in The Gypsy in Music, 312–13.
51. Manga, “Cimbalom and Gypsy Music,” 56. Liszt, Des bohémiens, 368; The Gypsy in
Music, 312.
52. Liszt, Des bohémiens, 368; The Gypsy in Music, 312.
53. Liszt, Des bohémiens, 368–69; The Gypsy in Music, 312.
54. Liszt, Des bohémiens, 369–70; The Gypsy in Music, 313.
55. Liszt, Des bohémiens, 369–70; The Gypsy in Music, 313.
56. See Liszt’s letters of 12 May and 3 June 1853 to Hans von Bülow, Briefwechsel
zwischen Franz Liszt und Hans von Bülow; also, his letter to Louis Köhler of 16
April 1852, Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 1:104; Liszt, Ungarische Rhapsodien, x.
57. Hall-Swadley, Collected Writings, 2:6.
58. For example, Liszt enthused about Gypsy families playing and dancing for him
on his visit to Hungary in a letter from 1883. See Lina Ramann, ed., Franz
Liszts Gesammelte Schriften (1883), 6:137; quoted in Walker, Franz Liszt, 1:335
and 1:335n37. Liszt also wrote to Edmund Singer that “this sort of music is,
for me, a kind of opium, of which sometimes I am in great need.” Liszt, Franz
Liszts Briefe an Seine Mutter, 1:205. To Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein,
he said, “You know what a special attraction this music exerts over me.” Liszt,
Franz Liszt’s Briefe, 4:316.
59. Ramann, ed., Gesammelte Schriften, 6:6, 345–46; quoted in Walker, Franz Liszt,
1:63. Bihari’s performance was also heard by Beethoven, who “listened to [his]
playing often . . . with great pleasure.” Cited in Mayes, “Reconsidering an Early
Exoticism,” 165 and 165n17. For another anecdote of Liszt’s praise for Bihari’s
performance, see Baumann, “The Reflection of the Roma,” 110–11 (original
in Liszt, Die Zigeuner und ihre Musik in Ungarn, 1861).
60. Gábor Mátray wrote in 1854: “It is a rare community in our country that does
not have its own Gypsy musicians,” quoted in Sárosi, “Gypsy Musicians,” 15.
61. In addition to Patikárus, Sárosi (Gypsy Music, 120–27) mentions a few other
outstanding Gypsy musicians: József Pityó (1790–1888), a horn player in the
military orchestra, and the leader in the orchestra of a recruiting unit in the
county of Liptó; Jancsi Sági Balog (1803–1876), who had played in Bihari’s
group and who visited Vienna several times with his own orchestra; Károly Boka
(1808–1860), whose violin playing was praised, as in the anecdote included in
Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 124.
62. Quoted in Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 127.
63. Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 127–28.
64. Legány, “Liszt in Hungary,” 204–5, 257.
65. Legány, “Liszt in Hungary,” 205, 257; at 153, Legány also cites an occasion
when Liszt hired Gypsy musicians to play for a dinner he hosted in Budapest in
1872.
66. Legány, “Liszt in Hungary,” 205.
67. Cited in Grimes, “Evolution of the Concert Cimbalom,” 29.

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 198 ❧ notes to pp. 115–124

68. Grimes, “Evolution of the Concert Cimbalom,” 29.

69. Grimes, “Evolution of the Concert Cimbalom,” 29, 34–35.
70. Allaga, Cimbalom iskola. “Special Benefit Concert,” Music at Michigan 9, no. 8
(1976): 1, puts forward that Cimbalom iskola was actually the volume that Allaga
dedicated to Liszt.
71. Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” NZM 36. no. 19, 215–16.
72. The general tendency in twentieth-century method books for the cimbalom
is to rely almost exclusively on Allaga’s approach. For an example, see Tarjáni
Tóth Ida and Falka József, Cimbalomiskola: Cymbolschule, 2 vols. (Budapest:
Editio Musica, 1957).
73. Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” NZM 36. no. 19, 215–16.
74. Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” NZM 36. no. 19, 215.
75. Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” NZM 36. no. 19, 215.
76. Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” NZM 36. no. 19, 216.
77. Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” NZM 36. no. 19, 216.
78. Pressel, “Die Musik der Ungarn,” NZM 36. no. 19, 216.
79. Frigyesi, Béla Bartók and Turn-of-the Century Budapest, 246.
80. Among the earliest use of a dulcimer in written European art music are the
parts for the instrument in the compositions of Baroque and Classical compos-
ers, including Vivaldi and Leopold Mozart; see, for example, the part for the
“salterio oder Hackbrett” in Vivaldi’s “Ho nel petto un cor si forte” (mm. 1–15)
from his 1724 opera Il giustino. See Astaire, “Searching for the Hungarian
Cimbalom,” 31–32.
81. Loya, Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism, 100, focuses on the march movement of
Liszt’s Mélodies hongroises d’après Schubert, interpreting Liszt’s heroic rendition
as a patriotic response to the aesthetic of the Viennese style hongrois and thus
demonstrating Liszt’s mastery of the Hungarian heroic march style already in
1840 before his Rhapsodies.
82. Liszt, Des bohémiens, 331–32; cited and translated in Mayes, “Reconsidering an
Early Exoticism,” 177, 180.
83. Despite the justification, as Mayes, “Reconsidering an Early Exoticism,” 180,
points out, Liszt’s assessment of the approach of many of his predecessors has
merit, “for extensive stylistic exoticism in Viennese adaptations of Hungarian
Gypsy music around 1800 was the exception rather than the rule.”
84. Noticed in Astaire, “Searching for the Hungarian Cimbalom,” 75. One
reviewer suggests that the florid solo material following the legitimately cim-
balom-like tremolandi is more indicative of the tárogató, a traditional Hungarian
shawm-like instrument that followed a trajectory of cultivation much like that
of the cimbalom in the nineteenth century.
85. For an example of the latter, see Papp, “Die Quellen der ‘Verbunkos-Musik,’”
100, item 49, no. 3; also see Schubert, Divertissement á la hongroise, Allegretto,
measures 324–33 and his Fantasie, measures 1–9.
86. The examples from Rhapsodies nos. 10 and 11 are frequently invoked in
Hungarian music scholarship, including Bellman, “Lexicon,” 227–29 for no.
11. The designation is also present in the first editions of nos. 10 and 11, pub-
lished by B. Schott’s Söhne in Mainz in 1853 and Schlesinger in Berlin in 1853,

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 notes to pp. 124–135 ❧ 199

respectively, suggesting that it was the composer’s own. The editions are avail-
able from the Ruth Dana Collection of Liszt Editions, vol. 6 in the Juilliard
School Library, New York.
87. The fingering appears in the first edition of 1853 from the Ruth Dana
Collection of Liszt Editions, vol. 6.
88. In example 5.8, it is intriguing to see the alternation between right and left
hands playing the same notes—the tremolo in beat 1 of measure 1 is followed
by the same notes arpeggiated in the left hand on the second beat. This pat-
tern is repeated twice, then the order of the hands is reversed in measures
2–3. Liszt presents literally the same notes in the left hand as those in the
right hand, bringing up the question of the advantage of playing them on the
piano. This rendering could also be an emulation of the movement of the cim-
balom player’s two hands, probably one hand now with two hammers playing
the tremolos followed by the other hand playing the arpeggiated chord.
89. Liszt, Ungarische Rhapsodien, viii.
90. The implied A-minor harmony does not establish itself until measure 9, with
a light touch on the dominant seventh and tonic of A major, before and after
which it wanders from one area to another in a succession of different har-
monic colors.
91. Hanslick, Vienna’s Golden Years of Music, 113–14; quoted in Leach, “Cimbalom,”
139.
92. This performance practice is noted in Astaire, “Searching for the Hungarian
Cimbalom,” 80.
93. For the recording, see Georges Cziffra, Liszt, 10 Hungarian Rhapsodies (EMI
Classics, 2001).
94. Liszt himself referred to Hungarian Gypsy music as “exotic” in his Gypsy in
Music, 364, as mentioned in the introduction. The term foreign is borrowed
from the Romantic theory of language, particularly as promoted by Novalis
and Friedrich Schlegel; see Berman, Experience of the Foreign, 98, which quotes
one of Novalis’s statements: “The spirit strives to absorb the stimulus. The for-
eign attracts it. Metamorphosis of what is foreign into what is one’s own; thus
appropriation is the incessant activity of the spirit.” Novalis uses this statement
as part of his description of Romantic fragments, but this can be extrapolated
into the arranger’s act of appropriating the distant and foreign to the familiar,
or the consumer’s interest in learning the foreign.
95. Liszt, The Gypsy in Music, 138.
96. The style—the name means “to be listened to” in Hungarian—originally refers
to a melody that has become independent of its original text. Sárosi, Gypsy
Music 245; Bellman, “Toward a Lexicon,” 220–21.
97. Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 245.
98. For a discussion of spontaneous expression as the true Hungarian style, see
Schneider, Bartók, Hungary, and the Renewal, 33–80, at 53–55.
99. Sárosi, Folk Music, 56–57.
100. Sárosi, Folk Music, 57.
101. Frigyesi, Béla Bartók, 245.
102. Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 106–8.

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 200 ❧ notes to pp. 135–139

103. Liszt, The Gypsy in Music, 302; in this statement, Liszt underscores the role of
the first violin in improvisation as supported by the orchestra.
104. “The Gypsy artist is one who takes the theme of a song or dance just like the
text of a discussion, as a poetic memorial, and who moves and flutters around
this notion, of which he never loses sight, in the course of his improvisation.
Most admired of all is one who lavishly enriches his own subject with runs,
appoggiaturas, leaps, tremolos, chord stopping, diatonic and chromatic scales,
and groups of notes in such a way that on account of this abundance of orna-
mentation the original idea is scarcely more apparent than the broadcloth
in the sleeve of a brown cloak through the artistically worked out lacing and
braiding which covers it with a dense and multicolored network.” Liszt, Des
bohémiens, 69; The Gypsy in Music, 307–8.
105. Quoted in Manga, Hungarian Folk Songs, 57. See also Brassai, Magyar-vagy czigány-
zene? Elmefuttatáts Liszt Ferencz “Czigányokról” irt könyve felett (Hungarian or Gypsy
music? A short essay about Ferencz Liszt’s book “On the Gypsies”), 48: the title
translation comes from Hooker, Redefining Hungarian Music, 87. Hooker trans-
lates the statement in part, 87n148: “All the instrumental music of the Gypsy
bands proceeded in parallel with the more strongly exaggerated fiorituras of the
European virtuosos (instrument and vocal).” Brassai originally used this statement
as a response to Liszt’s mistaken claim that the rhapsodic style of performance by
Gypsy musicians stems from their “ancient musical heritage” in his discussion of
rhapsody and epic. Hence Brassai’s criticism is more likely inclined to emphasize
Liszt’s “Romanticized” or idealized manner of rendering Gypsy ornamentation.
106. Frigyesi, Béla Bartók, 245.
107. Quoted in Frigyesi, Béla Bartók, 245. Frigyesi originally used this statement to
signal Bartók’s rejection of the generally conceived rhapsodic style of Gypsy
musicians. See also Frigyesi’s “Belá Bartók and the Concept of Nation,” 255–87.
108. Frigyesi, Béla Bartók, 246: at 245–48, she discusses the examples (exx. 13a and
13b) cited above; also see Frigyesi, “Between Rubato and Rigid Rhythm,” 327–
37, particularly at 328.
109. Frigyesi, Béla Bartók, 245.
110. Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 114–15, identifies not only the source tune for the opening
of Rhapsody no. 8 but also two more source tunes from popular Hungarian
songs that were used in the same piece. For further information on source
tunes for Liszt’s Rhapsodies, see Major, “Liszt Ferenc rapszódiai” (Ferenc
Liszt’s rhapsodies).
111. Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt, 138–39, accounts for the process of choosing tunes
for improvisation in Liszt’s final concert of the 1839–40 season as well as
the reception of the selected tunes in relation to the conflict between civic
Hungarian and Magyar national conceptions prevalent in Pest at the time.
112. For the interaction between improvisation and audience in nineteenth-cen-
tury concerts, see Janet Ritterman, “Piano Music and the Public Concert,”
11–31, at 25–26; Goldberg, Music in Chopin’s Warsaw, 197, 200; Goldberg, Age
of Chopin, 54–92, at 63–74. In the case of Liszt, see Gooley, The Virtuoso Liszt,
138–39; Hamilton, After the Golden Age, 44–45.
113. Trippett, “Après une lecture de Liszt,” 78.

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 notes to pp. 139–149 ❧ 201

114. Czerny as both the student of Beethoven and the teacher of Liszt stands
between these two composers in relation to keyboard improvisation practice.
For Czerny, the concept of fantasy is inextricably linked to Beethoven’s prac-
tice, which had continued the earlier meaning of fantasia as being improvised,
and having formal freedom, free modulations, and varied affects, as illustrated
in his Fantasy, op. 77, or even the fantasy-related sonatas such as opus. 27 no.
2 in E-flat major, the Sonata “quasi una fantasia.” Czerny’s method for piano
improvisation employs the word “fantasieren” in the title of his Systematische
Anleitung zum Fantasieren. For discussion of the fantasy as delineated by Koch
and C. P. E. Bach and its relation to Beethoven’s E-flat Major Sonata, see Jones,
Beethoven: The “Moonlight,” 58; also for Beethoven’s legato pianism and speak-
ing style, see Barth, Pianist as Orator, 38–131, at 38–47.
115. One of the representative examples is the extensive recitative passage from the
third movement of Beethoven’s Ab-Major Sonata, op. 110.
116. Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 115.
117. Improvisation theory is approached from a variety of directions, including aes-
thetics and critical theory, the psychological aspect, and ethnomusicological
approaches. See studies including Nettl, In the Course of Performance and Lewis,
“Critical Responses,” 1–6. For Gypsy-band improvisation in a Romanticized
version, see Beckerman, “Music: Pushing Gypsiness,” which proposes the for-
mula, I + V = E (I stands for improvisation, V for virtuosity, and E for emo-
tions or expressiveness); Malvinni, The Gypsy Caravan, 43–62; and Piotrowska,
“Expressing the Inexpressible.”
118. Rach, “The Many Faces of Improvisation,” 304–7.
119. Rink, “Chopin and Schenker,” 219. At the same time, Rink has to recognize
that it is challenging to estimate accurately the influence improvisation had on
Chopin’s music at a structural level.
120. For the meaning of Liszt’s search for Gypsy improvisation, see Gooley’s dis-
cussion of the polarized sides of the evaluation of the virtuosity, improvisa-
tion, and Gypsy improvisation in “The Battle Against Virtuosity,” in Gibbs and
Gooley, Franz Liszt and His World, 89. For further discussions, see Deaville, “The
Making of a Myth,” 188–89.
121. Sárosi, Gypsy Music, 115.
122. Liszt, Ungarische Rhapsodien, x.
123. Hooker, Redefining Hungarian Music, 81–82.
124. Bellman, Style hongrois; Pethő, “Style hongrois: Hungarian Elements”; Mayes,
“Reconsidering an Early Exoticism.”
125. Bellman, Style hongrois, 108, 110.
126. Locke, Musical Exoticism; Mayes, “Reconsidering an Early Exoticism.”

Conclusions
1. Göllerich, The Piano Master Classes, 39–40.
2. Revue et gazette musicale, 11 February 1838 (the letter was written in 1837), cited
in Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 92–93.

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 202 ❧ notes to pp. 149–160

3. Liszt’s views of the piano as equivalent to the orchestra are also well docu-
mented through anecdotes of his reputation as a sight-reader, his teaching,
and most of all, his virtuosic performing styles. For Liszt’s sight-reading skills,
see Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 292, 425, 454–55, 485; and Watson, Liszt, 139.
For his teaching, see Mach, Liszt Studies, ix–xxvi, particularly the episode of his
soirée on 19 January 1832 (xiii). About his performances, there are countless
anecdotes, from which Gooley provided ample evidence in his Virtuoso Liszt,
especially 35–37.
4. Wright, “Raff,” 132. The review is of the recording by Tra Nguyen on Grand
Piano 771. The italicized words are my emphasis.
5. For the musical examples, see Kim, “Dynamics of Fidelity and Creativity,” chap-
ters 2, 3, and 5.
6. Schumann, Robert Schumann on Music and Musicians, 150.
7. For the contemporary accounts, see Schumann’s remarks of 1840, cited above;
Wagner, Richard’s Wagner’s Prose Works, 53–54; and Boissier in Mach, Liszt
Studies, lessons 15, 16, 21, and 24, on 14 February 1832.
8. Quoted in Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 130. For other anecdotes that record
the contrasting sides of Liszt’s performance, see Boissier, Liszt pédagogue, 86;
Williams, Portrait of Liszt, 133.
9. Besides this example, Liszt’s use of keyboard register appears in his partitions of
Berlioz’s orchestral music more prominently than in any other partitions. See
Kim, “Dynamics of Fidelity and Creativity,” 150–58.
10. Loya, Liszt’s Transcultural Modernism, 65.
11. In her discussion of Liszt’s virtuosity, Hooker (Redefining Hungarian Music,
70–71, 76) juxtaposed Liszt’s notion of the performer and Wagner’s. Wagner’s
essay originally appeared in the Revue et gazette (October 18, 1840, 495–98),
entitled “Du Métier de virtuoso et d’indépendance des compositeurs: Fantaisie
esthétique d’un musician”; for an English translation, see Wagner, “The
Virtuoso and the Artist,” 53–63. Cvejić (The Virtuoso as Subject, 109) points out
that the original title of the essay captures the hierarchy Wagner made between
“the independent composer and the comparatively demeaning métier—trade,
craft—of the virtuoso.” For the quoted phrase, see Wagner, “The Virtuoso and
the Artist,” 53; also discussed in Cvejić, The Virtuoso as Subject, 110.
12. Hunter, “‘To Play as if from the Soul of the Composer,’” 37.
13. Cohn, “Introduction,” 11n17.
14. Cohn, “Introduction,” 11n18.

Appendix
1. The preface was first printed in French and German with the date “Rome
1839” in Breitkopf & Härtel’s edition of the piano arrangement of the Fifth
and Sixth Symphonies in 1840. See NLA, 18:xviii. My translation is based on
the German version.

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 Index of Liszt’s
Works by Genre
Page numbers in italics indicate musical examples. A “t ” after a page number
indicates a table.
Arrangements: four-hand, 185nn20–21;
free, 39–40; of Hungarian Gypsy
music, 165n28; individuality of, 6–7;
later period, 165n27; private pur-
poses of, 26, 186–87n30; of Schubert
Hungarian melodies, 198n81; of
Schubert songs, 58, 65, 67, 71–72,
72, 181n39; ten-finger approach
to, 9–10, 149. See also Hungarian
Rhapsodies; paraphrases, fantaisies,
reminiscences, variations; partitions
de piano
Hungarian Rhapsodies, 7, 8, 102–4,
110–11, 123–43; arpeggios and flour-
ishes in, 129–30, 131, 139, 151, 152;
avoidance of rigid patterns in, 154;
capriccio designation in, 109, 126,
140, 142; contrast and juxtapositions
in, 153; differentiated from other
composers’ approaches to Hungar-
ian Gypsy music, 155; dynamic and
expressive markings in, 126, 130,
139; improvisation and hallgató style
in, 138–40, 141, 142–43; instru-
mental cues in, 146; as paraphrases
of source tunes, 142–43, 200n110;
pedal markings in, 124, 126, 133;
percussive repetition in fast sec-
tions, 132–33, 134, 135, 153; period
of composition, 3; renderings of
Kim.indd 221
cimbalom playing, 3, 11, 102–3,
110, 111, 113, 123–43, 146, 153,
154, 155; reworking methods in,
10–11, 145, 155; rubato and tempo
fluctuations in, 130–31, 138–40,
146, 153; single-note hammering,
130–31, 132, 140, 146, 151–52, 153,
154; trills, two-hand, 127–28, 154;
violin–cimbalom duets evoked in,
133–34, 149
Rhapsody no. 2, 127–29, 128, 132,
152
Rhapsody no. 3, 134, 136, 149
Rhapsody no. 8, 139–40, 141,
166n36, 200n110
Rhapsody no. 10, 124, 125, 126, 151,
192n1, 198n86
Rhapsody no. 11, 124, 125, 126–27,
152, 198n86
Rhapsody no. 12, 129, 131
Rhapsody no. 13, 133, 134
Original compositions for orchestra
Dante Symphony, 79t, 86, 88
Faust Symphony, 79t
Mazeppa, 89, 91–92, 188–89n38
préludes, Les, 84, 85
symphonic poems, 79t, 82, 185n21,
186n26
Ungarischer Sturmmarsch, 111, 134,
137
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 222 ❧ index of liszt’s works by genre
Original compositions for piano: three-
stave notation in, 53, 55, 149
Apparitions, 48
Ballade no. 2, 146, 147
La campanella, 187n32
Funérailles, 146, 148, 149
Grandes études, 48
Harmonies poétiques et religieuses,
48
Hunnenschlacht, 93, 95, 96, 97, 98,
98, 100
Transcendental études, 189n40
Paraphrases, fantaisies, reminiscences,
variations, 39; Hungarian Rhapso-
dies viewed as, 142–43; reworking
methods in, 10–11, 145
Berlioz’s Marche des pèlerins from Har-
old in Italy, 172n13
Rossini operas, 58, 176n10
Rossini songs, 58, 176n10
Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture, 78,
172n13, 181n1
Partitions de piano, 37–56; added con-
tent in, 32; categorization of, 39–41,
172n13; concept of, 7, 12, 18, 26,
37–43; differences among, 39–40;
differences in approach between
Beethoven and Rossini, 58, 62, 63,
76–77; distinguished from other
arrangements, 40, 155; engraving
as inspiration for, 24–25; fidelity’s
importance in, 18, 37–43, 59–60, 61,
76–77, 156; instrumental cues in,
43–47, 56, 62–63, 65, 146, 173n35,
180n30; later, 172n13; layout of
orchestral textures, 49–56; meticu-
lous notation of, 43–56, 60; miscon-
ceptions about, 39; ossias in, 49–50,
65, 73, 75, 181n43; performance and
expressive markings, 47–49; periods
of composition, 3, 40t, 58; registral
contrast in, 32, 35, 153, 202n9;
“sacred text” notion, 38, 39, 43, 44,
47, 174n55
Kim.indd 222
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 1, 38,
40t; use of additional staves, 51,
51–52, 174n58
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 2, 38, 40t
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 3, 38,
40t; , “Marcia Funebre,” 38, 40t,
176n8; three-stave notation,
174n58
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 4, 38,
40t; three-stave notation, 174n58
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 5, 7,
37–39, 40t, 43, 176n8; dedication
to Ingres, 2, 24; Fink’s assessment
of, 45, 60, 155; preface to, 2, 38,
45–46, 159–61, 168n19
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 6, 7,
37–39, 40t, 43, 176n8; dedication
to Ingres, 2, 24; Fink’s assessment
of, 45, 60–61, 155, 178–79nn20–
24; preface to, 2, 38, 45–46, 159–
61, 168n19; reception of, 59–61,
177n15, 193n3; “Storm” move-
ment popularity, 59, 177n12
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7, 32, 35,
35–36, 38, 40t, 43, 151, 176n8;
horn staccatos in, 47
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 8, 38,
40t; three-stave notation, 174n58
Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9, 38,
40t; three-stave notation, 50–51,
52–53, 53, 55, 55, 174n53, 174n58
Berlioz’s Danse des sylphes de la Dam-
nation de Faust, 172n13, 181n1
Berlioz’s Les francs-juges overture,
40t, 43, 172n13
Berlioz’s Marche au supplice de la Sym-
phonie fantastique, 172n13, 181n1
Berlioz’s Le roi Lear overture, 40t, 43,
45, 46, 172n13
Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, 3, 7,
37–38, 40, 43, 44–45, 172n13,
177n12; frequency of perfor-
mance, 59; improvisatory-like
passages in, 76; performance
markings in, 49, 50
chamber music, 40, 172n13
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 index of liszt’s works by genre
Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture, 7,
40t, 56, 57–59, 61–77, 176n10,
181n39; enrichment of “Ranz des
vaches” section, 58, 62, 63, 64,
65, 67, 67, 68–69, 72; free caden-
zas and embellishments in, 58,
72–73, 75–76, 76–77; frequency
of performance, 58, 59; notation
in, 62–63; pizzicatos in, 63; recep-
tion of, 61–62, 179n27; reworking
techniques, 43, 58, 62–76; three-
hand texture, 65, 67; timpani
rolls in, 58, 72, 74, 146, 150,
181n42, 192n58
symphonies and overtures, 39–40,
40t
Weber overtures, 40t, 43, 76,
177n11, 180n30, 192n59
Two-piano arrangements, 78–101;
as experiments, 101; distinctive
position of, 79–80; distribution of
material in, 84, 86, 89, 101, 153–54,
188n37; fidelity in, 80, 83–84, 156;
Liszt’s preference for over four-hand
arrangements, 78, 81, 184–85n19;
orchestral arrangements done at
Weimar, 78, 79t; performance anec-
dotes, 82–84; period of composition,
3; placement of pianos, 86; private
purpose of, 26, 81–82, 83; public
performances of, 83–84, 187n31;
rigid patterns avoided in, 153–54;
simultaneous publication with
orchestral scores, 82; techniques
Kim.indd 223
❧ 223
indicating program, 93–94, 95, 96,
97, 98, 99, 100, 101; timpani rolls in,
96, 192n58; transferal techniques,
7, 80, 84, 86, 89, 100, 101; virtuosic
figurations, 89–90, 90, 150, 151
Beethoven Symphony no. 9, 79t, 80,
176n8
Liszt’s Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne,
79t, 185n20
Liszt’s Faust-Symphonie, 79t, 80,
183n13, 187n31
Liszt’s Festklänge, 79t, 83–84,
185n20
Liszt’s Hamlet, 79t, 83, 185n20,
186n30
Liszt’s Héroïde funèbre, 79t, 82,
185nn20–21, 186n26
Liszt’s Hungaria, 79t, 185n20
Liszt’s Hunnenschlacht, 79t, 82,
93–94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100,
146, 185nn20–21; “Agitato”
motive, 98, 100, 100; Crux fidelis
melody, 96, 98, 99, 100
Liszt’s Die Ideale, 79t, 83, 185n21
Liszt’s Mazeppa, 79t, 83, 89–90, 90,
100, 151, 153, 185n20, 189n40
Liszt’s Orpheus, 79t, 83, 185n20
Liszt’s Les préludes, 79t, 82–83, 84, 85,
86, 154, 185n20
Liszt’s Prometheus, 79t, 185n20
Liszt’s Symphonie zu Dantes Divina
Commedia, 79t, 80, 83, 86, 87, 89,
180n37, 187n31
Liszt’s Tasso, 79t, 82–83, 184n19,
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Kim.indd 224 2/5/2019 4:11:53 PM
 Subject Index
Page numbers in italics indicate musical examples or illustrations.
Adami, Heinrich, 26, 59–60, 61, 62,
178n17
Allaga, Géza: Cimbalom iskola, 9, 103,
115–21, 117, 119, 121, 124, 130, 139,
140
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 45
Altman, Wilhelm, 80, 183nn9–11
arrangement (as term), 7–8
art critics, printmakers’ relationships
with, 5, 17–18, 22–24
artiste, L’, 5
Aubry-Lecomte, Hyacinthe, 6
autonomous artwork, ideal of, 157
Bache, Walter, 83–84, 93, 98, 187n32,
187–88n34
Bach family, 108, 195n27
Balzac, Honoré de, 25
Bann, Stephen, 4–5, 18, 23, 26, 164n12
Barabás, Miklós: The Arrival of the Bride,
107
Baroque trio sonata, 104
Bartók, Béla, 111; studies of Hungarian
Gypsy music, 136, 138
Beethoven, Ludwig van: Bonn festi-
val for erection of monument to
(1845), 58, 175n7, 193n3; fantasies
of, 201n114; keyboard fantasias,
139; Rossini contrasted with, 57–58,
175nn2–3; Septet, op. 29, 40,
172n13; style hongrois music, 122;
symphonies arranged for piano,
164–65n23, 183nn15–16, 193n3 (see
also separate index of Liszt’s works
under partitions de piano; two-piano
Kim.indd 225
arrangements); symphonies of, 32,
33–34, 53, 54, 171n83; Violin Sonata
in A minor, 25
Bellman, Jonathan, 9, 143
Beraldi, Henri, 15; Les graveurs du XIXe
siècle, 5
Berlioz, Hector: Damnation de Faust,
172n13, 181n1; Harold en Italie,
172n13; Symphonie fantastique,
172n13. See also separate index of
Liszt works under paraphrases, fan-
taisies, etc.; partitions de piano
Bervic, Charles-Clément, engraving of
the Laocoön, 29
Betzer, Sarah, 27, 29
Bihari, János, 107, 114–15, 194n23
Blanc, Charles: on Calamatta, 22–23,
26; on color/contour distinction,
20–21, 44; on engraving, 15–16,
17–18, 19–20, 22; as Gazette des beaux-
arts editor, 5; Grammaire des arts du
dessin, 1, 5, 22; training as engraver,
23
Boissier, Madame Auguste, 46
Boissier, Valérie, 46
Bolster, Richard, 25
Bolwert, Pontius and Wostermann, 22
borrowing, musical, studies on, 8, 9,
156
Boucher-Desnoyers, Auguste, engrav-
ings after Ingres, 27, 28, 29, 30
Brassai, Sámuel, 136
Breitkopf & Härtel publishing firm, 44,
50, 183n13, 183n15, 190n46
Bronsart von Schellendorff, Hans, 81
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 226 ❧ subject index
Bruckner, Anton, symphonies of,
183–84n16
Brunner, Christian, four-hand arrange-
ment of Mozart symphonies, 45
Bülow, Hans von, 81, 185n21
burin technique of engraving, 5, 14–15,
18, 23, 26, 164n9, 167n2
Burka, Sándor, 135
Burkholder, J. Peter, 8, 165n29
Burnet, John: “Comparative Merits of
Line Engraving and Mezzotinto,”
21–22
Burty, Philippe, 5, 15
Busoni, Ferruccio, transcription as used
by, 41, 42
Calamatta, Luigi, 2, 6; Blanc’s assess-
ment of, 22–23; engraving as ordeal
for, 15, 20; engraving of George
Sand portrait, 23; engraving of
Ingres’s Le vœu de Louis XIII, 22–23,
26; engraving of Ingres’s Paganini
portrait, 26; engraving of Leon-
ardo’s Mona Lisa, 14–15, 170n57;
engraving techniques of, 23; Ingres
and, 170n57; Liszt’s acquaintance-
ship with, 25–26; skill of, 15, 16; visi-
tors to studio of, 2, 163n5
capriccio, a capriccio in cimbalom play-
ing, 108–9, 114, 124, 126, 139, 140,
142, 196n34
chiaroscuro, 6, 12, 22, 23
Chopin, Fryderyk: pedal markings,
174n47; Polonaise-Fantaisie, 142,
201n119; Calamatta studio visits, 2,
23, 163n5
Christensen, Thomas, 6, 173n35
cimbalom: alternate names and related
instruments, 104, 194nn12–13; in
Baroque trio sonatas, 194n15; carry-
ing technique, 104; diagram of, 105;
in eighteenth-century Hungarian
Gypsy bands, 104–5, 107; engraving
of, 106; as essential constituent of
Gypsy ensemble, 104; Hebenstreit
and his pantalon, 107–10; mallet
Kim.indd 226
coverings, 108; Neue Zeitschrift für
Musik 1852 article on, 103, 119–20 ;
nineteenth-century development
of, 110–11, 113; ornamentation
on, 119–21, 120; pedal for, 196n46;
performers known to Liszt, 115–16;
pitch layout and tuning, 111, 112,
113, 128–29, 151–52, 196–97n49;
playing position, 105; Vivaldi’s writ-
ing for, 198n80
cimbalom playing: adapted into style-
hongrois tradition, 121–22; ascend-
ing direction of ornamentation,
121, 139, 140; capriccio designation,
108–9, 114, 126, 140, 142; ecstatic
repetition, 132–33; improvisation
and hallgató style, 120–21, 135–36,
137, 138, 138, 142, 153; interaction
with violinist, 133–34; Liszt’s render-
ings of, 3, 11, 102–3, 110, 111, 113,
146, 153, 154, 155; method books, 9,
103, 115–21; ornamentation, 113–
14; resonant arpeggiation, 118, 119,
120, 121, 129–30, 152; shimmering
sound, 118, 122, 123–24, 125, 126–
27, 146, 153; single-note hammer-
ing, 118, 119, 130–31, 146, 151, 153,
154; techniques, 116–21; trills and
tremolos, 116–18, 117, 123–24, 125,
126–29, 134, 146; vibrating sounds,
118–19
color, Blanc’s notion of, 1; in engrav-
ing, 20–24, 44; contour distin-
guished from, 16, 21–22
color, timbral: musical cues and, 43–47,
56; registral contrast and, 10, 26, 27,
29, 32, 35–36, 149, 153; two-piano
arrangements and, 86
contour in engraving, 17–18; color dis-
tinguished from, 16, 21–22
Cory, William Michael, 6
crayon-manner engraving, 26
Cristofori, Bartolomeo, 109
csárdás, 167n41
Cui, César, works arranged by Liszt,
165n27
2/5/2019 4:11:54 PM

cult of composer, nineteenth-century,
157
Czartoryska, Marcelline, 82, 83
Czerny, Carl, 139, 164n23, 183n16,
201n114
Cziffra, Georges, 130
Czinka, Panna, 104
d’Agoult, Marie, 25–26
Dahlhaus, Carl, 175nn1–3; Die Musik des
19. Jahrhunderts, 57
Davies, Stephen, 42
Delaborde, Henri, 5, 15, 17, 18
Delacroix, Eugène, 23
Delaroche, Paul: as engraver, 6, 17;
paintings as source for engravers, 5,
18, 19–20
Délibáb, 115
descriptive notation, 48, 174n46
Domokos, Zsuzsanna, 6, 164n23
Doré, Gustave, 83
engraving, 14–36; art critics and
commentators on, 15–16, 22–24;
burin technique, 5, 14–15, 18, 23,
26, 164n9, 167n2; of cimbalom
player, 106; color and, 20–24; color
limitation in, 1; contour and, 21;
conveyance of effect in, 20; crayon
technique, 26; creative modifica-
tions in, 16, 18, 20; fidelity in, 16,
17–18, 20, 157; hatching in, 18, 22,
169n43; justified inaccuracy in, 16,
18–20; light-cut and inter-cut tech-
niques, 23; mezzotint technique,
21, 22, 27, 167n2, 169n36; Ponce’s
conception of, 1–2; studies on, 4–5;
style in, 1; translation metaphor for,
1, 16–20, 21, 24, 39, 157
Fallon-Ludwig, Sandra, 100, 190n47,
192n60
Fawcett, Trevor, 4
fidelity, notion of: in arrangements
and transcriptions, 6–7, 41, 42–43,
59–60, 156–57; in engraving, 2, 12,
Kim.indd 227
subject index ❧ 227
16, 17–18, 20, 157; in Liszt’s parti-
tions, 18, 37–43, 59–60, 61; in Liszt’s
two-piano arrangements, 80, 83–84;
in music performance, 57–58,
156–57
Fink, G. W., 26, 45, 59, 60–61, 62, 155,
178–79nn20–24
folk–art juncture, 1760s to mid-nine-
teenth century, 105, 107
Frigyesi, Judit, 121, 135, 136, 138
Fromme’s musikalische Welt, 187n31
Fuellhaas, J. G., engraving by, 106
Fux, Johann Joseph, 108
Gárdonyi, Zoltán, 142–43
Gautier, Théophile, 18
gazette des beaux-arts, La, 5, 17–18
Gelbart, Matthew, 105
Gifford, Paul, 104
Göllerich, August, 46–47, 48, 187n31
Goupil, Adolphe, 18–19
graveurs du XIXe siècle, Les (Beraldi), 5
Griffiths, Anthony, 4
Grunsky, Karl, 183–84n16, 188n37
“Gypsy” as term, 167n41
Halifax Guardian, 61
Hallé, Charles, 177n15, 178n18
hallgató style, 135–43
Hamilton, Kenneth, 8, 48–49
hammered dulcimer, 104, 105,
194nn12–13. See also cimbalom
Handbuch der musikalischen Literatur
(Whistling and Hofmeister), 79,
182n4
Hanslick, Eduard, 127–28
Haydn, Franz Joseph: fortepiano music,
110; style hongrois music, 121
Hazlitt, William: “Sketches of the Princi-
pal Picture-Galleries in England,” 21
Hebenstreit, Pantaleon, 107–10, 114,
126, 129, 195n25, 195nn27–28,
195nn32–33
Henriquel-Dupont, Louis Pierre,
163n5; engravings after Delaroche,
5, 19–20
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 228 ❧ subject index
Herder, Johann Gottfried: Sculpture, 29
Hinson, Maurice, 39
Hoffmann, E. T. A.: on piano transcrip-
tion, 1, 15, 44
Hofmeister, Friedrich, 79, 182n4
Hölgyfutár, 115
Hooker, Lynn, 9, 11, 143
Hughes, Walden, 6
Hugo, Victor, 25
Hummel, Johann Nepomuk: arrange-
ments of Beethoven symphonies,
164n23; Septet, op. 74, 40, 172n13
Humorist, Der, 61
Hungarian Gypsy performance prac-
tice: ensemble instrumentation and
roles, 104, 113–14, 133–34, 200n103;
exoticism and, 9, 143; folk–art
juncture in, 105, 107; hallgató style,
135–43; importance of melody in,
107; improvisation theory applied
to, 142; lassu section, 118–19, 120;
Liszt’s continuing study of, 8, 10–11,
102–3, 165n28, 199n94; Liszt’s
encounters with bands and perform-
ers, 114–16, 135, 197n58, 197n65;
Liszt’s renderings of, 123–43,
165n28; painting of wedding band,
107; scholarship on, 11, 103, 116;
style hongrois and, 11, 116, 121–22,
123–24, 129–30, 143, 155; virtuosity,
ornamentation, and improvisation
in, 102, 113–14, 119–21, 135–43,
166n35. See also cimbalom playing
Hunter, Mary, 42, 157
improvisation theory, 142, 201n117
Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, 6;
Calamatta’s engravings of works by,
22–23, 25–26; Calamatta’s relation-
ship with, 170n57; drawing of Cupid
and Psyche, 29, 31; Liszt drawn by,
24; Liszt’s dedication of transcrip-
tions to, 2, 24; Liszt’s relationship
with, 16, 24–26; paintings as source
for engravers, 22–23; private pur-
poses of engraving, 26; reasons
Kim.indd 228
for revisiting subjects in art, 157;
reproductions of statues, 10, 26, 27,
28, 29, 30, 35–36; on value of piano
transcriptions, 2; as violinist, 25,
169n52; visits to Calamatta studio, 2
Institut de France, Engraving Depart-
ment, 5
Jókai, Mór, 110
“Káka tövén költ a ruca” (Hungarian
song), 139, 140, 140, 141
Kalkbrenner, Friedrich, 171n6
Kaulbach, Wilhelm von: Die Hunnen-
schlacht, 93, 94, 189–90nn42–43,
190n45; Liszt’s letter to wife of, 82
Kiesewetter, Raphael Georg, 175n2
“Kilencet ütött az óra” (Hungarian
song), 135, 137; embellishment of,
138
Köhler, Louis, 26, 78, 81, 184n17,
184n19
Kregor, Jonathan, 4, 48, 49, 171n6,
176n10
Kuhnau, Johann, 108, 109
Lambert, Susan, 4
Legány, Dezsö, 115, 187n30,
197n65
Leonardo da Vinci: Mona Lisa, 14–15,
170n57
Liszt, Eduard, 82
Liszt, Franz: Calamatta’s studio visits,
2, 163n5; encounters with Hungar-
ian Gypsy bands and performers,
114–16, 135, 197n58, 197n65; Erard
piano of, 171n8; four-hand arrange-
ments viewed by, 78, 81, 184–85n19;
Ingres and, 16, 24–26, 169n52; as
interpreter and disseminator of
Beethoven’s music, 57–58; as inter-
preter and disseminator of Rossini’s
music, 58; Parisian artistic circle of,
25–26; at Paris World’s Fair, 115;
portraits of, 24, 163n6; Rossini and,
176n9; transcriber’s role described
2/5/2019 4:11:55 PM

by, 2; virtuosity of, 42, 61–62, 67,
102–3, 139, 150–51, 176n7; as Wei-
mar Kapellmeister, 78. See also head-
ings below; separate index of Liszt’s
works
Liszt, Franz, correspondence of : with
Bache, 93, 98, 187–88n34; to Breit-
kopf & Härtel, 44, 50; with Eduard
Liszt, 82; with Köhler, 26, 78, 81,
184n17, 184n19; with Pictet, 15, 37,
149, 171n1; with Sayn-Wittgenstein,
82–83
Liszt, Franz, piano writing and compo-
sitional techniques of: assessments
of arrangements by others, 171n6;
avoidance of rigid patterns, 153–57;
compositional process, 8, 139–40;
concept of “performer’s wit” and
performer’s role, 44, 45–47, 48,
56, 157, 202n11; contrast and jux-
taposition exploited by, 152–53;
cross-hand technique, 94; notational
particularities, 48, 55–56, 60, 113;
orchestral concept of sound, 43–47,
56, 149–50; recurring techniques
and aesthetics, 145–57; rethinking
of piano writing, 9–10, 45–47; rubato
and tempo fluctuations, 48, 109,
126, 130–31, 138–40, 142, 146, 153;
visual effects, 10, 13, 20, 32, 35–36,
53, 55, 84, 86, 94, 96, 100, 101, 124,
127, 129, 130, 131, 151–52, 154, 156,
180n35
Liszt, Franz, writings of: An Artist’s
Journey: Letters of a Bachelor of Music,
15; Des bohémiens et de leur musique en
Hongrie, 11, 42, 102–3, 113–14, 122,
126, 132–33, 135, 155, 157
lithography, 4, 5, 6
Maffei, Scipione, 109
Marzio, Peter, 6
Massart, Lambert, 25
Mattheson, Johann, 108
Mayor, A. Hyatt, 6
McKee, George D., 18, 27
Kim.indd 229
subject index ❧ 229
Mercuri, Paul, 2, 6, 15, 16, 17; engrav-
ing after Delaroche’s The Execution of
Lady Jane Grey, 18
mezzotint engraving method, 21, 22,
27, 167n2, 169n36
Morris, William, 15
Moscheles, Ignaz: Piano Concerto in G
Minor, op. 58, 45
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, Brunner’s
four-hand arrangement of sympho-
nies by, 45
Musée français, 18, 27, 28, 29, 30
Musée Napoléon, 29
Musical Journal, 152
Naumann, Ernst, 183n15
Neue Liszt Ausgabe, 39, 142–43
Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 9, 103, 116
Novalis, 199n94
Paganini, Niccolò, 26
pantalon, 107–10, 195n25. See also cim-
balom; cimbalom playing
Paris World’s Fair (1874), 115
partition, Liszt’s concept of, 3, 7, 8,
37–43, 155
Patikárus, Ferenc, 115
performance practice, early Romantic-
era, 42; creativity and, 157; piano
notation in, 47–48
pianiste, Le, 47–48
piano: nineteenth-century improve-
ments to, 48, 171–72n8; pantalon’s
influence on development of,
109–10
Pictet, Adolphe, 15, 37–38, 149
Pintér, József, 115
Pintér, Pál, 115
Pintér, Zsiga, 115
Pityó, József, 197n61
Planté, Francis, 82–83, 186n26
Pohl, Richard, 186n27
Ponce, Nicolas: engraving as conceived
by, 1, 20–21
prescriptive notation, 48, 174n46
presse, La, 25
2/5/2019 4:11:55 PM
 230 ❧ subject index
Pressel, Gustav: “Die Musik der
Ungarn,” 116, 118–20, 119, 120, 130,
139, 140
printmaking, 4, 5, 12, 14, 20–21, 23. See
also engraving
Pruckner, Dionys, 81
Rácz, Pál, 115
Raff, Joachim: Caprice on themes from
King Alfred, 150
Raimondi, Marcantonio, 17; engravings
after Raphael, 21
Raphael, engravings after, 21, 22
registral contrast, 10, 153; use of
shadow as comparable with, 26, 27,
29, 32, 35–36
Reinecke, Carl, 62, 67, 180n29
Reissiger, Karl, 44–45
reproductive arts: importance during
Romantic era, 4–6; lack of color in,
44; Liszt’s enthusiasm for, 25; notion
of, 2–3, 157; private purposes of, 26,
81–82, 83, 186–87n30; social func-
tion of, 6. See also engraving; tran-
scription, musical; translation
revue des deux-mondes, La, 5, 17
Revue et gazette musicale, 15
Robillard-Péronville, Pierre, 28, 29, 30
Rossini, Gioacchino: Beethoven con-
trasted with, 57–58, 175nn2–3;
Guillaume Tell, premiere of, 177n13;
Guillaume Tell Overture, 59, 63, 64,
65, 66, 70, 72, 73, 176n10, 180nn31–
33 (See also separate index of Liszt’s
works under partitions de piano); Liszt
and, 176n9; Liszt’s arrangements
of works by, 176n10; operas of, 58;
soirées held by, 176n9; Les soirées musi-
cales, 58, 176n10
Rubens, Peter Paul, 22
Rudorff, Ernst, arrangement of Mos-
cheles Piano Concerto, 45, 173n36
Ruskin, John, 19
Saint-Saëns, Camille: analysis of Liszt’s
Mazeppa, 89–90, 189n41; on Czerny’s
Kim.indd 230
arrangements of Beethoven sympho-
nies, 183n16; as pianist, 82–83; role
in Liszt’s reception, 186n26; works
arranged by Liszt, 165n27
Sand, George, 17; commentaries from
Oeuvres autobiographiques, 5; on
engravers and engraving, 15; por-
trait engraved by Calamatta, 23; vis-
its to Calamatta studio, 163n5
Saphir, Moritz, 61
Sárosi, Bálint: Gypsy Music, 11, 104, 107,
135, 139, 140, 142, 166n36, 197n61,
200n110
Sayn-Wittgenstein, Carolyne, 82–83,
189n42, 197n58
Scheffer, Ary, 2
Schröter, Christoph Gottlieb, 109
Schubert, Franz: Divertissement à la
hongroise, D. 818, 116, 121–22, 123,
123–24, 129–30; fortepiano music,
109; songs arranged by Liszt, 58, 65,
67, 71, 72, 181n39
Schuberth, J., publishing firm, 183n13
Schumann, Robert: on Liszt’s perfor-
mance, 151; on instrumental cues in
arrangements, 44; on Thalberg, 55
Schunda, V. József, concert cimbalom
of, 108, 110–11, 115–16, 134
Silbermann, Gottfried, 109–10
Stasoff, Wladimir, 81, 184n18
Stildualismus, concept of, 57, 175nn2–3
Stravinsky, Igor, 111
style hongrois, 11, 116, 121–22, 123–24,
129–30, 143, 155, 198n81
Szelényi, István, 142–43, 192n1
Telemann, George Philipp, 108, 195n27
Thalberg, Sigismund, 53, 55
Thern, Károly, 83
timpani rolls, Liszt’s transferal to piano,
9, 53, 58, 72, 74, 96, 146, 150
transcription, musical: Busoni’s concept
of, 41, 42; fidelity and creativity in,
41, 42–43, 59–60, 61, 156–57; Hoff-
mann’s comparison with black-and-
white sketch, 1, 151; lack of color in,
2/5/2019 4:11:56 PM

44; performance as, 41, 42; purposes
of, 6–7; as term, 7–8, 41–43; value
before invention of recording, 2–3
Transkription (term), 41
translation: engraving viewed as, 1,
16–20, 21, 24, 39, 157; theory of, 4
tremolos, cimbalom, 116–18; Liszt’s
piano renderings of, 123–24, 125,
126–27, 134, 136, 146, 151, 152, 153,
154; one-note, 116–17, 117, 120; two-
note, 117, 117–19, 122, 124, 151
tremolos, string: Liszt’s transferal to
piano, 9, 86, 89
trills, cimbalom, 116–18, 117, 127–29;
mordent sign with, 117, 119
two-piano arrangements, nineteenth-
century, 79–80. See also separate
Kim.indd 231
subject index ❧ 231
index of Liszt’s works under two-
piano arrangements
Übertragung (term), 41
verbunkos, 11, 167n41
Visconti, Ennio Quirino, 29
Wagner, Richard: on performer’s role,
157; Tannhäuser Overture, 78
Weber, Carl Maria von: overtures
arranged by Liszt, 40t, 43, 76; style
hongrois music, 121
Whistling, Carl Friedrich, 79
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim: The
History of the Art of Antiquity, 27, 29
Wright, Stephen, 150
2/5/2019 4:11:57 PM
Kim.indd 232 2/5/2019 4:11:58 PM
L

Kim
i s z t ’ s a d a p tat i o n o f e x i s t i n g m u s i c i s s ta g g e r i n g i n
its quantity, scope, and variety of technique. He often viewed the model work
L I S Z T ’ S R E PR E S E N TAT I O N
as a source that he strove to improve, rival, and even surpass. Liszt’s Repre-
sentation of Instrumental Sounds on the Piano: Colors in Black and White provides of I N S T RU M E N TA L S O U N D S on

LISZT’S REPRESENTATION of INSTRUMENTAL SOUNDS on THE PIANO

a comprehensive survey of Liszt’s reworking of instrumental music on the piano,
particularly his emulation of tone colors and idiomatic gestures. The book relates T H E PIA NO
Liszt’s sonic reproductions to the widespread nineteenth-century interest in visual-art
reproduction. Hyun Joo Kim illustrates Liszt’s diverse approaches to the integrity of
the music in a detailed, vivid, and insightful manner through close study of his
colors in black and white
arrangements of Beethoven’s symphonies and Rossini’s Guillaume Tell Overture,
his two-piano arrangements of his own symphonic poems such as Mazeppa and Hyun Joo Kim
Hunnenschlacht, and his Hungarian Rhapsodies. By examining orchestral music and
Hungarian Gypsy–­style music as sources of Liszt’s sound representations, this book
reveals Liszt’s musical discourse as straddling the musical, cultural, and aesthetic
divides between mainstream and peripheral, art and folk, serious and popular.

“Liszt’s Representation of Instrumental Sounds on the Piano: Colors in Black

and White is a detailed study of Liszt’s orchestral transcriptions. This book
includes valuable insights into his evocation of the cimbalom in the Hun-
garian Rhapsodies and, more importantly, links Liszt’s own conceptions
about his music to complementary concerns shared by contemporary visual
artists. Hyun Joo Kim joins the ranks of great scholars who can describe
musical instruments and aspects of performance with scholarly rigor in
precise, elegant writing.”
— R O B HA SK I N S , University of New Hampshire

H Y UN JO O KIM holds a PhD from Indiana University and is an independent

scholar in Seoul, South Korea.

668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA

PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.urpress.com
Cover image: Josef Danhauser, Franz Liszt Fantasizing at the Piano, 1840.
bpk-Bildagentur/Nationalgalerie/Juergen Liepe/Art Resource, NY.