Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology, 2013
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Browsing Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology, 2013 by Subject "Franz Liszt"
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Item Liszt and Mahler in the postmodern fi lmic visions of Ken Russell(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013) Golianek, Ryszard DanielThe British fi lm and television director Ken Russell is esteemed principally for creating fi lmic biographies of composers of classical music. In the 70s, he shot his most original fi lms on musical subjects: fi ctionalised, highly individual composer biographies of Mahler (Mahler) and Liszt (Lisztomania), which are the subject of the article. Neither of the fi lms is in the least a realistic documentary biography, since Russell’s principal intention was to place historical biographical facts in cultural contexts that were diff erent from the times in which Mahler and Liszt lived and worked. This gave rise to a characteristically postmodern collision of diff erent narrative and expressive categories. Russell’s pictures remain quite specifi c commercial works, exceptional tragifarces, in which the depiction of serious problems is at once accompanied by their subjection to grotesque deformation and the demonstration of their absurdities or denaturalisation. The approach proposed by this British director, in which serious issues are accompanied by elements of triteness, is a hallmark of his style. The director’s musical interests are refl ected by the fundamental role of music in the structure of his cinematographic works. The choice of musical works also denotes a kind of aesthetic choice on the director’s part, especially when the composers’ biography comes into play.Item Liszt and the French literary avant-garde of the 1830s(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013) Gamrat, MałgorzataIn France the 1820s and 1830s brought about enormous changes in the perception of literature and art as a whole. Young poets, encouraged by the success and novelty of Méditations poétiques by Alphonse de Lamartine, started seeking new possibilities of expression and ways of breaking with the several-centuries-old tradition. They met with a strong protest from conservative milieu, especially those linked to Académie française, and this made them fi ght for a new paradigm in literature. They eagerly experimented with language as sound (Lamartine, Sainte-Beuve) and graphic (Nodier) matter. They published their texts in the press (Le Globe) and presented them during meetings in artistic salons, which functioned as a kind of laboratory. Thanks to the support of Charles Nodier they could publish their poems in the best publishing houses, which largely contributed to their success. The fi nal victory of the romantics was the premiere of Hernani by Victor Hugo in February 1830. Franz Liszt, who came to Paris in 1823, was an active participant in the artistic and intellectual life there. Moreover, he was also a friend of many prominent artists of the epoch, which can be seen in his letters, writings, and piano music from the early 1830s. A particular example of the relationship between the composer’s music and literary avant-garde is the piece Harmonies poétiques et religieuses of 1835. We fi nd there the domination of the sound element, formal freedom, the intertwining of poetical techniques, experiments with structure, and a strong stress on the word aspect of the oeuvre, for example through very precise notation of tempo markings.Item Liszt and the issue of so called Gypsy music(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013) Piotrowska, Anna G.The article attempts to shed light on Liszt’s connections with so called Gypsy music, with particular emphasis on the sources and manifestations of the composer’s interest in the subject. The paper also shows the eff ects of Liszt’s thought on his academic successors. Liszt’s fascination with Gypsy music and culture is discussed by outlining his childhood memories as well as indicating numerous personal contacts he had with renowned Gypsy musicians. The author of the paper also links Liszt’s enchantment with Gypsy culture with his readiness to identify his travelling virtuoso status with that of a Gypsy-wanderer. Special attention in the article is put on Liszt’s book Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie (1859). The author of the article claims that Liszt’s cosmopolitanism may be a key factor while explaining the composer’s predilection to Gypsy culture and music. While focusing on the reception of Liszt’s views on so called Gypsy music by the posterity Bartók’s interpretation of Liszt’s ideas is reminded. Discussed are also their repercussions in the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty fi rst century.Item Liszt’s experiments with literature(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013) Gamrat, MałgorzataLiszt’s aspiration to create his own musical language and to fi nd new tools of musical expression was unusually strong almost from the very beginning of his artistic career. Not only did the artist gladly spend his time among writers and read numerous texts, but he also turned to the technical and expressive means originating in literature. Among the most important attempts to work out new musical means on the basis of literary devices we may list: a strong emphasis on the sound factor, formal freedom and mixing of genres, composing a musical cycle on the basis of a poetic one (a narrative whole, leitmotifs), appealing to emotions by means of the appropriate selection of an oeuvre’s parameters, in particular articulation and dynamics, poetic quotations preceding the score, transposition of literary genres into the fi eld of music, or synthesis of poetry and music in songs, symphony choruses, and piano transcriptions of songs. Album d’un voyageur is an excellent example of Liszt’s borrowings from literature and a very individual cycle with literary value. It is a story of a voyage across a small part of Europe in search of self-understanding; it is also a history of rebellion and the doubts which come as its consequence, as well as fi nding peace through contact with nature and through searching for God. Liszt created here an unusual oeuvre that combines poetic images and sounds. In 1884 Liszt declared that the most perfect form of synthesis of poetry and music is transcription of songs. It is here that music interprets poetry with its own means, which are often invented for the purposes of this synthesis. On the basis of the transcription of the song Ich liebe dich from 1860 we may observe how music becomes a language capable of imitating the intonation of the human voice, expressing emotions and, symbolically, relying on a programme, also expressing ideas.Item ‘Petrarch's Sonnets’ by Liszt(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013) Nowik, WojciechThe article ‘Petrarch’s Sonnets’ by Liszt revolves around the phenomenon of transformation, which dominated F. Liszt’s works. His impressive composing achievements made Liszt an unequalled author of all types of elaborations, paraphrases, adaptations, transcripts of both his own and other composer’s works, representing various styles and epochs. What is more, the transformation techniques employed by Liszt, diff erent from the commonly applied evolutionary ones, coupled with extended tonality and harmony as well as new textures, resulted in an extremely broad scale of expression and subtly diverse expressive eff ects. Three of Petrarch’s Sonnets from the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta collection are dedicated to Laura and represent this article’s major area of interest. The Hungarian composer worked on them three times: twice he composed them as songs and once as a piano triptych included in the Années de Pèlerinage. Dèuxieme Année: Italie series. His interpretation of the Sonnets, as well as the remaining works in the series, was inspired by the art of the old Italian masters married with the Romantic idea of correspondence des artes. While it is a part of artistic tradition to turn poetic works into songs (resulting in the vocal lyrics so typical of Romanticism), adding a musical dimension to a sonnet, a piece of poetry with a specifi c organisation of its content, a unique form and verse discipline, seems risky. It is extremely diffi cult to successfully transfer equivalent themes and structures onto a diff erent medium i.e. piano music. By turning to Petrarch’s Sonnets, Liszt created congenial palimpsests, refl ecting the syntactical and formal rudiments of the verse but, fi rst and foremost, managing to portray Laura in new incarnations, subtly changing in the eternal search for the ideal of femininity, the so-called “Ewig-weibliche”. Especially in the piano version, Liszt seems to have accomplished the esoteric subtlety of the “Sprache über Sprache” available to and understood solely by poets and those in the know.Item The ‘Faust’ or ’Lucifer’ Sonata? On Liszt’s idea of programme music as exemplifi ed by his Piano Sonata in B minor(Katedra Muzykologii, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PTPN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2013) Polony, LeszekThe musicological tradition places Liszt’s Sonata in B minor within the sphere of compositions inspired by the Faustian myth. Its musical material, its structure and its narrative exhibit certain similarities to the ‘Faust’ Symphony. Yet there has appeared a diff erent and, one may say, a rival interpretation of Sonata in B minor. What is more, it is well-documented from both a musical and a historical point of view. It has been presented by Hungarian pianist and musicologist Tibor Szász. He proposes the thesis that the Sonata in B minor has been in fact inspired by Milton’s Paradise Lost, with its three protagonists: Adam, Satan and Christ. He fi nds their illustrations and even some key elements of the plot in the Sonata’s narrative. But yet Milton’s Paradise Lost and Goethe’s Faust are both stories of the Fall and Salvation, of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. The triads of their protagonists – Adam and Eve, Satan, and Christ; Faust, Mephisto and Gretchen – are homological. Thus both interpretations of the Sonata, the Goethean and the Miltonian, or, in other words, the Faustian and the Luciferian, are parallel and complementary rather than rival. It is also highly probable that both have had their impact on the genesis of the Sonata in B minor.