Musical Works of Franz Liszt - Original Songs

Original Songs

Franz Liszt composed about six dozen original songs with piano accompaniment. In most cases the lyrics were in German or French, but there are also some songs in Italian and in Hungarian. A single song, "Go not, happy day" after Alfred Tennyson, is in English. In several cases, Liszt took lyrics which were also set to music by Schumann. Examples are the songs "Am Rhein, im schönen Strome", "Morgens steh ich auf und frage", "Anfangs wollt' ich fast verzagen" and "Über allen Wipfeln ist Ruh'".

In 1839 in Italy, Liszt composed the song "Angiolin dal biondo crin". The lyrics were taken from an Italian poem by Marchese Cesare Bocella who had become a close friend of Liszt and Marie d'Agoult. With that "Little angel with blond hair", Liszt's daughter Blandine was meant. The child had hummed a simple melody of which Liszt made the song. In 1841 he started composing additional songs. His first ones were "Die Lorelei" after Heine, composed on November 20, 1841 in Cassel, and "Oh! quand je dors" ("Oh! when I'm dreaming") after Victor Hugo, composed at end of December 1841 in Berlin. Both songs were composed for Marie d'Agoult.

By 1844 Liszt had composed about two dozen songs. Some of them had been published as single pieces. In addition, there was a series "Buch der Lieder" which had been projected for three volumes, consisting of six songs each. The first two volumes were published in 1843. In 1844 a third volume appeared, but this volume's title was only "6 Lieder". Liszt also made piano transcriptions of the first two volumes. While the transcriptions of the first volume were published 1846, Liszt did not publish the transcriptions of the second volume.

The songs in the first volume of the "Buch der Lieder" were "Die Lorelei", "Am Rhein im schönen Strome", "Mignons Lied", "Der König von Thule", "Der du von dem Himmel bist", and "Angiolin dal biondo crin". The lyrics of the first two songs were by Heine, those of the following three songs by Goethe. The second volume contained songs with lyrics by Hugo. They were "Oh! quand je dors", "Comment, disaient-ils", "Enfant, si j'etais roi", "S'il est un charmant gazon", "La tombe et la rose", and "Gastibelza", a Bolero.

The third volume should have included the song "O lieb so lang du lieben kannst", of which Liszt's piano transcription is famous and well known as the third "Liebestraum". But Liszt had to change his plan. Since in the beginning of 1844, when the volume was printed, he could not find the manuscript and did not like writing down the song again, he took "Morgens steh' ich auf und frage" instead. The printed volume contained the songs "Du bist wie eine Blume", "Dichter, was Liebe sei", "Vergiftet sind meine Lieder", "Morgens steh' ich auf und frage", "Die todte Nachtigall", and "Mild wie ein Lufthauch im Mai". The volume was dedicated to the Princess of Prussia whom Liszt visited in March 1844 in Berlin for the purpose of giving a copy to her. The lyrics of "Dichter, was Liebe sei" were by Charlotte von Hagn who also lived in Berlin.

Although Liszt's early songs are seldom sung, they show him in much better light than works such as the paraphrase "Gaudeamus igitur" and the Galop after Bulhakow, both composed in 1843. The transcriptions of the two volumes of the "Buch der Lieder" can be counted among Liszt's finest piano works. However, the contemporaries had much to criticize with regard of the style of the songs. Further critical remarks can be found in Peter Raabe's Liszts Schaffen.

Liszt's contemporary critics measured his songs with expectations derived from Lieder by Schubert and other German masters. According to this, a Lied should have a melody which for itself was expressing a single mood and could be sung without much effort. The harmonies, supporting that mood, should be comparatively simple, without strong modulations. It was also presumed, that the piano accompaniment was easy to play. Since Liszt had in many cases offended against those rules, he was accused of never having had a proper grasp of the German Lied. While all this might have been true, it is obvious that Liszt had by no means tried to write German Lieder, sounding like those by Schubert. His "Oh! quand je dors", for example, has French lyrics and music in Italian style.

Raabe tried to show that – in cases – Liszt's declamation of the German lyrics was wrong. "Mignons Lied", for example, was composed in 4/4 time. Of the words "Kennst du das Land", "du" was put on a first, and "Land" on a third beat. Raabe imagined this as if only "du" was stressed while "Land" was not stressed. Of the next verse "wo die Zitronen blühn", "die" was put on a first, and the second syllable of "Zitronen" on a third beat. It could be imagined as if "die" was stressed, and the second syllable of "Zitronen" was not stressed. Singing it this way would indeed sound strange, not to say ridiculous. But Raabe forgot that 4/4 time was by nearly all composers treated as compound time, consisting of two equivalent halves. There are examples where the stress on the third beat equals the stress on the first beat or is even stronger. An example of this kind is Schubert's Lied "Das Wirtshaus" of his cycle "Die Winterreise". More examples can be found in further works by Schubert as well as in works by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Wolff, Strauss, Reger and others.

Also, Liszt had occasionally treated his lyrics with some freedom, especially by adding repetitions of important words. In "Der du von dem Himmel bist", for example, he had changed Goethe's "Süßer Friede, komm, ach komm in meine Brust" into "Süßer Friede, süßer Friede, komm, ach komm in meine Brust". While Raabe criticized this as unforgivable sin, he would have better taken a careful look at Lieder by German masters such as Schubert and Schumann who both had treated their lyrics with freedom of similar kinds.

Liszt had good reasons for resisting his critics. But a letter to Joseph Dessauer of the 1850s shows that – until then – he himself had taken a critical point of view. Dessauer had sent own new songs with dedication to Liszt. After Liszt had praised the songs, he wrote:

My own early songs are mostly too swelled out sentimental and frequently too much crammed in the accompaniment.

As consequence, during the Weimar years Liszt not only revised most of his early songs, but rewrote them, giving a much more unpretentious style to them. He also composed additional new songs. The new versions of the early songs as well as some of the additional songs were at end of 1860 published in seven books as "Gesammelte Lieder".

In letters of 1860 Liszt told, some of his songs had at occasions been sung. Since they had been considered as posthumous works by Schubert, they had been applauded and encored. However, with few exceptions, Liszt's songs were never genuine successes. The following remarks of spring 1879 by Eduard Hanslick are of a comparatively friendly kind. After Hanslick had reviewed a performance of Liszt's "Gran Mass", he continued:

Also at the last Philharmonic Concert the liveliest interest was that in Liszt: since Pauline Lucca - obviously in honour of the present composer - sang two songs by Liszt: "Mignon" and "Loreley". Of all of Liszt's compositions, his songs - there are half a hundred of them - are the least known and sung ones. The most circulated and popular one, in any case, is "Es muß ein Wunderbares sein", one of the few songs by Liszt, of which the tender homogenous mood is nowhere forcefully broken, and which can be purely enjoyed. Remarkable are all of them, those songs, as most individualistic expressions of an interesting personage, who however is behaving very freely towards most of the poems.

In 1879 and 1880 Liszt continued the series of his "Gesammelte Lieder" with songs such as "J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie", "Ihr Glocken von Marling", "Sei still", "Mild wie ein Lufthauch im Mai" (2nd version), "Isten veled (Lebe wohl)", "Mir ist die Welt so freudenleer" and others. Further songs were published 1883. Liszt had until then adopted a very abstract style. Characteristic examples are the new versions of his three sonnets after Petrarca. In comparison with the earlier versions, they are shocking because Liszt took everything away which could remind of Romantic style.

Today, Liszt's songs are nearly entirely forgotten. One exception is the often-cited "Ich möchte hingehen", due to a single bar which resembles the opening motif of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde". While it is commonly claimed that Liszt wrote that motif ten years before Wagner started work on his masterpiece, it has turned out that this is not true: the original version of "Ich möchte hingehn" was composed in 1844 or 1845. There are four manuscripts, and only a single one, a copy by August Conradi, contains the said bar with the Tristan motif. It is on a paste-over in Liszt's hand. Since Liszt was in the second half of 1858 preparing his songs for publication, and he just at that time received the first act of Wagner's Tristan, it is most likely that the version on the paste-over was a quotation from Wagner. This is not to say, the motif was originally invented by Wagner. An earlier example can be found in bar 129 of Liszt's Ballade No.2 in B Minor for piano, composed 1853.