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Franz Liszt (Man & His Music)

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Franz Liszt:

The Man and His Music

Edited by Alan Walker

Barrie & Jenkins, Hardback, 1970.

8vo. xvi, 471 pp. First Edition. Edited by Alan Walker. Preface by the editor, 6 May 1968 [xiii-xiv].

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Editorial Note

Notes on Contributors

Preface

Sacheverell Sitwell:

Liszt: A Character Study

Arthur Hedley:

Liszt the Pianist and Teacher

Alan Walker:

Liszt's Musical Background

Louis Kentner:

Solo Piano Music (1827-61)

John Ogdon:

Solo Piano Music (1861-86)

David Wilde:

Transcriptions for Piano

Louis Kentner:

The Interpretation of Liszt's Piano Music

Christopher Headington:

The Songs

Robert Collet:

Works for Piano and Orchestra

Humphrey Searle:

The Orchestral Works

Robert Collet:

Choral and Organ Music

Alan Walker:

Liszt and the Twentieth Century

A Biographical Summary

Register of Persons

Bibliography

Complete Catalogue of Liszt's Works

Index to Music Examples

General Index

What a great surprise this book has turned out to be! Considering all that has happened in Lisztian scholarship during the last four decades or so, the volume is surprisingly little dated. Indeed, a great deal has happened; one may even call it a complete re-evaluation of Liszt's position among the great composers of the nineteenth century. Two events stand out: Alan Walker's magisterial biography Franz Liszt (3 vols., 1983-1996), a product of brilliant writing style, powerful mind and quarter of a century scrupulous research that has managed in mere 1500 pages or so demolish tons of legendary myths about Liszt's personality; and the second fabulous achievement in the field is, of course, Leslie Howard's monumental recording of Liszt's complete piano music, a gargantuan mission which took more than two decades of his life and nearly 100 well-filed compact discs, to say nothing of the fact that he himself has done all the research as well. So today we have a much better idea of Liszt's complex personality and his vast output; Leslie's recordings include a number of world premieres prepared from unpublished manuscripts, whereas in recent years such totally forgotten in the past parts of Liszt's oeuvre such as his songs or choral works have been recorded many times and assiduously studied; it is worth noting that Liszt symphonic works, too, have enjoyed fecundity of recordings unknown before. Mr Walker has been accused of partisanship and Mr Howard's artistry has been criticised, but no one has ever doubted the scholarship of either. Considering all that, Franz Liszt: The Man and His Music still makes surprisingly rewarding read.

The major reason for my acquiring this book was the fact that it is edited by Alan Walker. As it turned out, the man is just as brilliant an editor as he is an author. Apart from two fine chapters that will be discussed below, Alan Walker has written a short, but extremely meaningful, preface and has supplied the writings of his contributors with abundant footnotes indicating cross-references and adding important additional nuances. The final success of the book is no doubt due also to Mr Walker's choice of contributors: all of them are experienced Liszt scholars, and almost each one of them is also musician who has carried ''Liszt's music in his ears and fingers, and who has lived on terms of intimacy with it for a long time - in some cases, for a lifetime.''

It is only fair to mention right away the major, and expected, caveat of the book which is made explicit by Alan Walker in the last paragraph of his preface which I have omitted above. The editor makes no bones that the volume is primarily addressed to professional musicians. So one must expect tons of musical examples - and the layman must make allowances for ''sixths'', ''thirds'', ''augmented triads'', tons of tonalities and numerous other cryptic terms. The professional musician, or least the amateur one who is able to read music fluently, will certainly profit from the book infinitely more than the musically illiterate layman. That said, being a prominent member of the latter group, I do guarantee that none of the chapters here is entirely without interest for those unfortunate enough to have no idea what C major is and how on earth it differs from C minor. Indeed, most of the chapters are rich in fascinating insights that may be understood by all who can read. The only other condition that a reader should fulfill is that he or she really should have a lively interest in the mind and music of Franz Liszt. Finally, I want to make it clear that the severe technical analyses are not a reason to degrade the book. For one thing, they are there by design; for another, one should be ready for them after reading the preface.

Now that I mentioned it, I might as well say few words about the drawbacks of the book. There are two major ones and they are both minor ones indeed: 1) though the chapters have dated surprisingly little, all of them ARE dated to some extent; and 2) the treatment of Liszt's music is sometimes rather perfunctory. Now, both of these drawbacks are to be expected considering, as already remarked, 1) the year of the first edition and 2) the volume, to say nothing of the variety, of Liszt's output, yet none of them is negligible. All the same, the book makes a thoroughly compelling read for anybody for whom Franz Liszt is not just another composer. Apart from the editor's contributions, those by Messrs Sitwell, Hedley, Kentner and Searle - altogether seven chapters - are all minor masterpieces. The rest four chapters are considerably less accomplished but do contain a number of fascinating points, even for the layman.

In addition to his perceptive preface, Alan Walker has contributed two full-scale chapters, a number of very useful footnotes with cross references or alternative hypothesis, and a wonderful Register of Persons in which he has explored the relationships between Liszt and a number of his contemporaries, and even an original catalogue of Liszt's stupendous legacy (dated, certainly, but still useful for almost all of the major works, including sets of pieces; cross references with the catalogues of Searle and Raabe are given).

The first thing about Mr Walker's contributions that must be said is that they sometimes are surprisingly badly dated. It is tremendously amusing to see Mr Walker, whose biography of Liszt is famous for his meticulous research, obviously taking seriously some of the most preposterous gossip ever attached to Liszt, such as the notorious accident with Lola Montez locked up in a hotel room and his having three (?!) illegitimate children by the Princess. Of course we must never forget that this was first published in 1970, more than a decade before the first volume of Mr Walker's biography (1983); at the time he hadn't even started his research. So the facts in these chapters, as anywhere in the volume indeed, should be read with great caution. Indeed, the book must be read only after one is intimately familiar with all three volumes of Mr Walker's magisterial biography; in the first of these he completely demolished both episodes.

That said, both of Alan Walker's chapters are pure gems. 'Liszt's Musical Background' explores in great detail the far-from-simple and multifarious relationships between and four composers whom he knew personally and was greatly influenced by: Paganini, Chopin, Berlioz and, above all, Wagner. The only gentle criticism that can be leveled against Mr Walker here is that he tends to overestimate the impact of Paganini. To be sure the Italian incarnation of the Devil (as he was famously referred to) did have an enormous influence over the young Hungarian who at the time in deep depression after a disastrous infatuation with the a beautiful creature from the wrong class; and it was Paganini, too, who inspired Liszt to start practicing like crazy until he became ''Paganini of the piano'' and just about the greatest virtuoso of that instrument the world had ever seen. But to claim that this was the most important event in Liszt's life is a bit too much.

'Liszt and the Twentieth Century' is another powerful chapter, mostly concerned with the amazing transformation in Liszt's old age (which is without precedent in the music history, Beethoven included, as pointed out by John Ogdon; see below). Mr Walker's makes a very strong case that Liszt was indeed he father of modern music as he had anticipated impressionism and atonality long before Debussy and Schoenberg put them to regular use. He discusses in detail many of Liszt's remarkable late pieces, most notably 'Les jeux d'eaux a la Villa d'Este' from the third 'year' of 'Annees de Pelerinage', one of the most historically significant among Liszt's original compositions.

To finish with Mr Walker's contributions, certainly the most valuable ones, a word about his endlessly charming footnotes. These often are way more than helpful cross references, giving lots of additional information that makes the picture much more coherent and compelling. As every great editor, Mr Walker has obviously read carefully the chapters of all contributors and he sometimes effectively questions some of their assumptions.

Sacheverell Sitwell is the only one among the contributors who is neither a musician nor a musical critic. He is a writer and a poet. However, among his writings there is a biography of Liszt which, judging by this chapter, is well worth reading. Of course Mr Sitwell's facts should be taken with a solid pinch of salt, firstly because his book was first published in 1934 (though it was revised in later years), and secondly because he seems to have little idea of scholarship and original sources. Yet, being a writer, Mr Sitwell might offer us some precious insight into Liszt's mind; as a matter of fact, that what he does in his chapter. 'Liszt: A Character Study' is more like a short summary of biographical facts, rather than an exclusively psychological portrait. Despite a certain exaggeration here and there, it makes a highly entertaining and not a little illuminating read. Mr Sitwell was well aware of many things which today, thanks to the high-quality Listzian scholarship of the last few decades, may seem commonplace, but this was certainly not the case in 1970; examples here range from Liszt's improving the original sources for some of his opera paraphrases (a truly advanced notion for its time!) until Liszt's considerable artistic stature not being tarnished by whatever personal faults he might have had (a truly sacrilegious notion for its time!); if Mr Sitwell had expressed all that in his earlier biography, written in a vastly anti-Lisztian climate, his observation must indeed have been extraordinarily prescient.

Mr Hedley's chapter is an excellent overview of Liszt's enormous work as a teacher. It is all but forgotten today but Liszt was one of the first to champion the concept of the master class in which he never bothered with technique, which he took for granted, but only subtlety of interpretation. Liszt's list of pupils reads almost like Who's Who of great pianism from the beginning of XX century: d'Albert, Rosenthal, Siloti, Menter, to say nothing of Bülow and Tausig in earlier years. As for Liszt the banger and piano smasher, this highly mythological notion is completely demolished by Mr Hedley using deftly the few reliable contemporary testimonies of Liszt's playing. Whether Liszt was as technically accomplished as a Horowitz is debatable, but what is certain is that his playing was infinitely more than glittering virtuosity, including his fabulous career as touring virtuoso which is almost without precedent in musical history. Despite some harsh words, at one time or another Liszt made incoherent with admiration people of mighty caliber: Wagner, Berlioz, Schumanns (both of them), Mendelssohn, Stasov, Charles Halle.

Humphrey Searle was a prolific British composer of nowadays completely forgotten serial music (if 'music' is the right word), but his place in history is secured thanks to his enormous dedication to Lisztian scholarship, especially his fine catalogue of works (S.) which was first published well over half a century ago and is still very much in use; much dated but still useful version of it is printed in his excellent book 'The Music of Liszt' (The Music of Liszt (Second Revised Edition)). His chapter here is an extended version of the one in this book. It discusses succinctly and insightfully all of Liszt's symphonic poems, his two symphonies and the 'Two Episodes from Lenau's Faust': all of Liszt's major orchestral works in fact. Much as I disagree with some of Mr Searle's negative remarks, some of them are quite to the point indeed. The analysis of the historical background and the programmatic significance (including many relevant quotes from Dante and Goethe) is impeccable. Last but not least, Mr Searle stresses firmly what some still doubt today: Joachim Raff did not teach Liszt to orchestrate, much less did he (Raff) originally orchestrated his early symphonic poems; apart from his duties as a copyist, Raff might, at most, have give one or two suggestions that were later accepted, that's all.

The two chapters by Louis Kentner are pure gems, literally bursting with perceptive observations and insightful touches that often amount to wisdom. In 'Solo Piano Music (1827-61)' these range from the wise advice not to take the program titles of the Transcendental Studies too seriously to a remarkable interpretation of the B minor Sonata in terms of dramatic play for the stage, most probably concerned with Faust and Mephistopheles. Mr Kentner's evaluation of works such as the 'Dante Sonata' or his touching defense of the Hungarian Rhapsodies are well worth the time of anybody who loves these compositions. 'The Interpretation of Liszt's Music' is a chapter that MUST be read by all modern virtuosos who still think that Liszt's music is but a little more than wrist-breaking bravura, or those equally misguided fellows who think that slow tempi will necessarily lead them to a profound interpretation. Even though the chapter discusses many technical aspects such as pedaling or phrasing, it does contain enough non-technical stuff to be deeply fascinating even for the layman. Obviously, Louis Kentner was not just a great pianist - check some of his mind-blowing recordings: Piano Works - but a fine writer and a charming man as well.

John Ogdon, another internationally renowned virtuoso who is equally skilful with the pen, has done an almost equally fine job with Liszt's post-Weimar works. Among his most original touches is an astonishing comparison of the friendship between Liszt and Wagner with that between Melville and Hawthorne. Mr Ogdon also mentions a number of charming details which are bound to raise your appreciation of Liszt's music, such as the stories behind his Two Legendes, some of the most explicitly programmatic among his works, or the translation and the etymology of enigmatic titles like 'Sursum Corda' or 'Sunt Lacrymae Rerum'. Finally, it is worth noting that Mr Ogdon regards the unbelievable transformation of Liszt's old age as unprecedented in the history of music, Beethoven's three periods being 'a monolithic unity' in comparison.

The rest of the musical chapter are less accomplished but by far not without many points of interest. In addition to a fine, if necessarily superficial, overview, Mr Wilde analyses perceptively the Norma Fantasy, its connections with Bellini's opera and its technical challenges, and he is rather awed by the extraordinary scope of Liszt's operatic paraphrases in terms of exploring the instrument's full advantages. The only thing that mars his chapter a negativity towards, of all pieces, the Don Juan Fantasy. Mr Collet's two chapters are finely done as well. I disagree with him about the loose structure of the Second Concerto, but I am pleased by his high opinion of the First and of his frank statement that it has often been victim of meretricious performances and is still under-rated - startlingly modern notion that. Also to his credit, Mr Collet takes issue with Bartok's inane criticism that one of the most lyrical variations degrades so fine a work as 'Totentanz', which Mr Collet regards as Liszt's masterpiece in the genre. The chapter on the choral works is even better done and even more relevant - for even today, more than 40 years later, almost all of Liszt's choral works are completely neglected. Mr Collet's comparative analysis of 'Christus' and 'St Elisabeth' is highly illuminating about the strengths and the weaknesses of Liszt's two major oratorios; his admiration for the Gran Mass is touching. As for Liszt's songs, also almost completely forgotten today, Mr Headington has a number of interesting things to say about languages, tonality, structure, countless revisions or the tenuous relationship between words and music.

In conclusion, magnificent book for all Lisztians, musicians or laymen. It is certainly badly dated and it must be read only after one is intimately familiar with Alan Walker's magisterial biography. But it does contain infinitely greater amount of insight and wisdom about Liszt's personality and music than the much more modern Liszt Companions - the Cambridge one, The Cambridge Companion to Liszt (Cambridge Companions to Music), and the one edited by Ben Arnold, The Liszt Companion: - both of which are far less dated, but far less compelling and a great deal more prejudiced as well. It is a pity that there is no new and updated edition of this volume - especially considering the fact that the editor is still alive and active - but second-hand copies of any of the old editions from the 1970s are easy to obtain and very cheap. The book is worth every cent and every minute you spend on it. I promise.