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This chapter uncovers the roots of the myth of a pianistic golden age in the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, along with offering a preliminary discussion of national performance styles, and the influence of Beethoven, Czerny, Liszt, and Chopin. The vexed claim of a “continuous performance tradition” is analysed and shown to be erroneous.

This chapter examines the virtually universal custom before the mid-decades of the 20th-century of pianists improvising preludes and transitions between pieces, with especial attention to Chopin, Czerny, Liszt, von Bülow, Busoni, and Grainger. Possible reasons for the origin and eventual demise of the custom are suggested.

This chapter chronicles the evolution of Liszt's attitude to piano performance, piano music, and piano teaching, with especial reference to the performance of his own music and the playing of his pupils Friedheim, Siloti, von Sauer, and Rosenthal.

This chapter traces the evolving role of the piano in 19th- and early-20th century musical life, along with the traditions of performance of some standard repertoire works by Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt whose technical difficulties became more severe as the piano itself evolved. It is argued that performance traditions ultimately not derived from the composer should be investigated more fully and treated with a greater respect than has hitherto been the case, with the adaptations of Busoni used as an illustrative example.

Although some writers took a cynical view of the influence of virtuosos touring the United States, most believed the visiting pianists were useful models for budding pianists and were responsible for awaking a general interest in music and improving the public's discrimination. Alfred Jaëll (1832-82) was the next world-famous pianist to visit America, making his debut in 1851 and touring with the Germania Musical Society orchestra. Two other important pianists who soon made debuts were the Americans Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829-69) in 1853 and William Mason (1829-1908) in 1854, both returning from studying and performing abroad. Neither was as successful as the European performers, reflecting America's discrimination against native-born talent. Although there were frequent rumors that Franz Liszt (1811-86) would tour America, he never yielded to the numerous offers.

Sigismund Thalberg (1812-71) was the one pianist to rival Liszt in the 1830s. Bernard Ullman, with a decade of managerial experience, masterminded Thalberg's two-year American tour (1856-8) that included almost nightly concerts and totaled at least 340 concerts in seventy-eight cities. Thalberg found devoted audiences that returned over and over again to hear flawless performances of his celebrated virtuoso showpieces. While in the US, he also wrote variations on “The Last Rose of Summer” and “Home, Sweet Home”, the latter extremely successful. Ullman arranged a continuously changing roster of assisting artists that included singers and the American pianists Louis Moreau Gottschalk and William Mason. His performances of Beethoven concertos were a significant departure for a visiting virtuoso and were well received.

It is not long since orchestral music had only two forms at its disposal: the symphony and the overture. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven did not write anything else; who would dare to depart from their example? Franz Liszt dared. To dare, in art, is the most terrible thing. In theory, nothing is simpler. There are no laws against the arts and artists being free to do whatever they like; who is there to stop them? In practice, everything stops them. The new forms that people ask for and desire, or at least appear to, inspire terror and repulsion. In order to accept new forms and grasp their meaning, the mind has to make an effort: those people willing to make this effort are rare. Liszt realized that, if he wanted to impose new forms, he had to make them seem necessary. He set out to create the symphonic poem.

Chapter five is dedicated to bass clarinet music grouped in the categories: early reported works; notation practice; a chronological description of works from 1834 to 1860 listed by composer; band music; and music written for the contra bass and contra alto clarinets.

The folk song has so many facets that it is not surprising few people can see all sides of the subject at once. Lucy Etheldred Broadwood spent much of her early life in country surroundings at Lyne in Sussex, but the Broadwoods had also a town house that was visited from time to time by many musical celebrities from Europe including Franz Liszt, whose playing of double thirds filled her with admiration. This combination of rural background and urban culture was the basis of her character. Lucy was an excellent pianist and a most artistic singer; her inventive mind was shown in her accompaniments to her collection of folk songs and a few original compositions, which, though slight in texture, show considerable musical imagination. In 1893 her name suddenly sprang into public recognition as the collaborator with J. A. Fuller Maitland on the now-famous English County Songs.

This chapter is a discussion at greater length of the migration of the mazurka from Poland to Russia and of Chopin’s mazurka and its appeal to Caribbean composers and dancers as well as the fact that Chopin too was an immigrant as well as a short character sketch of Chopin

This chapter begins by discussing how Franz Liszt came to know of Bachian music. It provides evidence that Liszt gained interest in the Six Great Preludes and Fugues for organ, and that he began to play actual works by Bach on the organ. It narrates that 1839 was a milestone in Liszt's musical career, for it inaugurated an eight-year period during which he gained his reputation as the leading pianist in the world. It narrates that shortly after living in Weimar, Liszt's passion for Bach's music was stimulated. It then narrates that Liszt must notate and then publish his piano transcriptions of all half dozen of Bach's six Great Preludes and Fugues for organ. It also tells that the local organist, Alexander Wilhelm Gottschalg, have been closest to Liszt for the longest period. It highlights that teaching was central to Liszt's musical existence throughout his long career.

Three models for thinking the relation between interpreting bodies and the sound-producing body: 1. Virtuosity according to Liszt; 2. Glenn Steinway as described by Thomas Bernhard in a piece of fiction (The Loser) inspired by Glenn Gould; and 3. Nietzsche, for whom it is already “the formation of an organ” that is itself “an interpretation.”

Although rhapsodies—since the mid-19th century predominantly identified as musical compositions without fixed form—were composed by a number of prominent European and American composers, it was Franz Liszt, the author of Rhapsodies hongroises, who played the seminal role in establishing the status of rhapsody as a musical genre intrinsically joined with the imaginary ideal of gypsyness (defined as an intellectual construct). The chapter discusses consequences of uniting the concept of rhapsody with gypsyness, but also underlines the similarities between instrumental rhapsodies and ballads. It argues that although both genres shared a number of resemblances, the distinctive feature of the rhapsody remained its close association with romantic ideals of gypsyness. This strong link, the author claims, has been affecting the development and reception of the rhapsody as a genre.

This chapter gives a semiotic analysis of Lizst's Orpheus. It begins by identifying the work's building blocks one after another. The second part of the analysis includes comments on the discourse of form and meaning that this particular disposition of blocks makes possible. The analysis is able to determine that although Orpheus resists a reading as a continuously illustrative work, certain features encourage speculation about its illustrative potential.

This chapter examines Lowell Liebermann’s Six Songs on Poems of Raymond Carver (2002). This exciting cycle requires a proficient and polished singer/pianist team. Vocal technique and musicianship will certainly be fully exercised; the songs are satisfyingly meaty, oozing with vitality and assurance. The vividly idiomatic piano writing is a test of stamina and concentration, and balance between voice and keyboard is a crucial issue. Bracingly memorable texts contain much sardonic, dark humour, tempered by passages of touching tenderness. Elements of pastiche, including ‘neoclassical’ runs and repeated rhythmic figures, are successfully incorporated—the fourth song even emulates a decorative Arabic monody. Some extremes of range may tax a young, inexperienced singer, but the cycle should make a tremendous impact in performance.

Franz Liszt began by incarnating on the piano the panache of Romanticism; then, leaving behind a style belonging to the Middle Ages that could no longer be found in France, despite all the efforts of poets to restore it. Most of the piano pieces he had published seemed unperformable by anyone except him, and were indeed so using the old-fashioned performing techniques that called for immobility, with the elbows tucked into the sides, limiting movement to the fingers and forearms. He had turned his back on his earlier successes and was engaged on works of serious composition, dreaming of a renovation of art. On their own, the memories left by Liszt's time in Paris provided ample material for suggestions of every kind. The truth, when it concerned him, no longer needed the support of likelihood.