Musical Works of Franz Liszt - Late Works

Late Works

With some works from the end of the Weimar years a development commenced during which Liszt drifted more and more away from the musical taste of his time. An early example is the melodrama "Der traurige Mönch" ("The sad monk") after a poem by Nikolaus Lenau, composed in the beginning of October 1860. While in the 19th century harmonies were usually considered as major or minor triads to which dissonances could be added, Liszt took the augmented triad as central chord.

More examples can be found in the third volume of Liszt's Années de Pèlerinage. "Les Jeux d'Eaux à la Villa d'Este" ("The Fountains of the Villa d'Este"), composed in September 1877 and in usual sense well sounding, foreshadows the impressionism of pieces on similar subjects by Debussy and Ravel. But besides, there are pieces like the "Marche funèbre, En mémoire de Maximilian I, Empereur du Mexique" ("Funeral march, In memory of Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico"), composed 1867, without any stylistic parallel in the 19th and 20th centuries.

At a later step Liszt experimented with "forbidden" things such as parallel 5ths in the "Csardas marcabre" and atonality in the Bagatelle sans tonalité ("Bagatelle without Tonality"). In the last part of his "2de Valse oubliée" ("2nd Forgotten waltz") Liszt composed that he could not find a lyrical melody. Pieces like the "2d Mephisto-Waltz" are shocking with nearly endless repetitions of short motives. Also characteristic are the "Via crucis" of 1878 as well as pieces such as the two Lugubrious Gondolas, Unstern! and Nuages Gris of the 1880s.

Besides eccentricities of such kinds, Liszt still made transcriptions of works by other composers. They are in most cases written in a more conventional style. But also in this genre Liszt arrived at a problematic end. An example from 1885 is a new version of his transcription of the "Pilgerchor" from Wagner's "Tannhäuser". Had the earlier version's title been "Chor der jüngeren Pilger", it was now "Chor der älteren Pilger". In fact, the pilgrims of the new version have become old and very tired. In the old complete-edition of the "Franz Liszt Stiftung" this version was omitted since it was feared, it might throw a bad light on Liszt as composer.

One of the most striking of Liszt's late paraphrases is his setting of the Sarabande and Chaconne from Handel's opera Almira. This transcription was composed in 1879 for his English pupil Walter Bache, and it is the only setting of a baroque piece from Liszt's late period. Liszt's last song transcription was on Anton Rubinstein's "Der Asra" after a poem by Heine. No words are included, and the keyboard setting is reduced nearly to the absurd. In several parts the melody is missing. One of those parts is that with words, "Deinen Namen will ich wissen, deine Heimath, deine Sippschaft!" ("I want to know your name, your homeland, your tribe!") The answer is given at the song's end, but again without melody, i.e. with unspoken words. "Mein Stamm sind jene Asra, die sterben, wenn sie lieben." ("My tribe are those Asras, who are dying when they love.") Even more hidden, Liszt implemented still another answer in his piece. To the part with the question he put an ossia in which also the original accompaniment has disappeared. As own melody by Liszt, the solitary left hand plays a motive with two triplets, most resembling the opening motive of his Tasso. The key is the Gypsy or Hungarian variant of g-Minor. In this sense it was Liszt's answer that his name was "Tasso", with meaning of an artist of outstanding creativity. His true homeland was art. But besides, he was until the grave "in heart and mind" Hungarian.

Several of Liszt's pupils of the 1880s left behind records from which the pieces played by themselves and their fellow students are known. With very few exceptions, the composer Liszt of the 1870s and 1880s did not exist in their repertoire. When a student, nearly always August Stradal or August Göllerich, played one of his late pieces, Liszt used to give sarcastic comments to it, of the sense, the composer had no knowledge of composition at all. If they would play such stuff at a concert, the papers would write, it was a pity that they had wasted their talents with music of such kinds. Further impressions can be drawn from the edition in twelve volumes of Liszt's piano works at Edition Peters, Leipzig, by Emil Sauer.

Sauer had studied under Liszt in his latest years. But also in his edition the composer Liszt of this time does not exist. In the volume with song transcriptions, the latest pieces are the second version of the transcription of Eduard Lassen's "Löse Himmel meine Seele" ("Heaven, let my soul be free") and the transcription of Schumann's "Frühlingsnacht" ("Night in spring"). Liszt had made both in 1872. In a separate volume with the Années de Pèlerinage, the only piece of Liszt's third volume is "Les Jeux d'Eaux à la Villa d'Este", while all of the rest was excluded. Of Liszt's transcriptions and fantasies on operatic melodies, the "Feierliche Marsch zum Heiligen Gral" of 1882 is present. However, also in this case a problematic aspect is to be found. In the original edition at Edition Schott, Mainz, Liszt - in a note at the bottom of the first page - had asked the player to carefully take notice of the indications for the use of the right pedal. In Sauer's edition, the footnote is included, but Liszt's original pedal indications were substituted with pedal indications by Sauer. There is little doubt that Sauer, as well as several further of Liszt's prominent pupils, was convinced that he himself was a better composer than his old master.