Liszt relied on music popular in the towns as performed mainly by gipsies, who had often embellished the material. Scientific research into such areas of folklore did not exist in Liszt's time, so the precise music of the Hungarian peasants would have to wait two more generations for its annotation through musicologists. The first page of Homer Bartlett's 1910 edition of Liszt's 'Hungarian Rhapsody No 2' for the University Society Inc. They were unlike anything ever heard on a solo piano, technically astounding, rising in the style of a czardas, from a relaxed tempo to the wildest exhilaration. The strings are struck or plucked.Ī few of the first fifteen transcriptions, or at least one, has become overplayed because of its excessive popularity, obscuring most of the others. In their day, those rhapsodies must have been of immense originality since then, they have carried the fame of Hungarian music from end to end of the world.Ī top view of a modern concert cimbalom, showing the playing area. all the effects of a gipsy band, with extraordinary success. The tapping and rattling of the cimbalom is embodied in Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, equally with the chorus of violins and the solos of its leader. Sacheverell Sitwell (1897-1988), in his biography of Franz Liszt (1811-86), wrote: Liszt died in Bayreuth, Germany, on July 31, 1886.The Hungarian cimbalom is a gong-like dulcimer in folk bands, with clarinet and strings. The complexion of his music darkened the flash that had characterized his previous efforts gave way to a peculiar introspection, manifested in strikingly original, forward-looking efforts like Nuages gris. In his final decade he joined the Catholic Church and devoted much of his creative effort to the production of sacred works. Liszt was well into his thirties before he mastered the rudiments of orchestration but made up for lost time in the production of two "literary" symphonies and a series of orchestral essays that marks the genesis of the tone poem as a distinct genre.Īfter a lifetime of near-constant sensation, Liszt settled down somewhat in his later years. The "transcendence" of his Transcendental Etudes, for example, is not a reference to the writings of Emerson and Thoreau, but an indication of the works' level of difficulty. He wrote most of his hundreds of original piano works for his own use accordingly, they are frequently characterized by technical demands that push performers–and in Liszt's own day, the instrument itself–to their limits. As his career as a touring performer, conductor, and teacher burgeoned, he began to devote an increasing amount of time to composition. Inspired by the superhuman technique of the violinist Paganini, Liszt set out to translate these qualities to the piano. Ultimately, his Hungarian origins proved a great asset to his career, enhancing his aura of mystery and exoticism and inspiring an extensive body of works, none more famous than the Hungarian Rhapsodies. When he was turned down there–foreigners were not then admitted–he instead studied privately with Anton Reicha. He studied for a time with Carl Czerny and Antonio Salieri in Vienna, and later sought acceptance to the Paris Conservatory. Though already a veteran of the stage by his teens, Liszt recognized the necessity of further musical tuition. Though contemporary accounts describe his improvisational skill as dazzling, his talent as a composer emerged only in his adulthood. From his youth, Liszt demonstrated a natural facility at the keyboard that placed him among the top performing prodigies of his day.
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