Composer, pianist, organist, and conductor Franz Liszt is a fascinating and intriguing figure in the music world. His legendary and charismatic personality, along with his musical innovations, significantly influenced Romanticism and the subsequent generations of composers. Liszt’s innovations involved the changing role of the piano, the development of tonality, and the connection of art, literature, and religion with music.
I recently discovered Liszt’s transcriptions and was amazed at their quantity. Almost half of his œvre consists of arrangements of music by other composers, and song transcriptions are a specific subcategory. Here, Liszt creates “Lieder ohne Worte” or “songs without words” because the poetry and text, which are crucial elements of the songs, are missing. It’s fascinating to see how Liszt translates the poetic content into the musical narrative, creating an additional interpretive layer that enhances the symbolic content of the poem. Through pianistic and virtuosic elaborations, Liszt changes the aesthetic of the performance. Playing and analyzing these transcriptions has changed my love and appreciation for these pieces. We’re fortunate to have Liszt’s transcriptions notated, since they are translations from one medium to another, bringing out what Liszt believed to be the essence of the original composition, becoming far less ambiguous than the original compositions.
