Paris, et plus largement la France, ont préoccupé Wagner tout au long de sa vie. Entre 1830 et 1861, il ne séjourne pas moins de sept fois en France et même lorsqu’il se trouve en Allemagne, puis exilé en Suisse, il garde toujours Paris à l’esprit. Bien que Wagner se soit toujours présenté avant tout comme un Allemand et qu’il se soit toujours défini comme un compositeur allemand, la France, sorte de miroir dans lequel il ne cesse de considérer sa patrie, lui sert de référence pour définir une nouvelle Allemagne essentiellement artistique et appelée à devenir sur ce plan le modèle de l’Europe. Cette thèse se propose d’analyser les relations de Wagner et de la France entre 1830 et 1861 sous ce nouvel éclairage et d’étudier la réception française des œuvres wagnériennes. Cette dernière repose avant tout sur un malentendu et trouve son origine non pas dans la musique ou les écrits du compositeur, mais dans les différents articles de Liszt qui paraissent à partir de 1849 / Throughout his lifetime, Richard Wagner was preoccupied by Paris, in particular, and by France, in general. Between 1830 and 1861 — the period upon which this thesis concentrates — he went to Paris on no fewer than seven occasions. Although Wagner always introduced himself as above all a German, and although he always considered himself to be a German composer, still, France—as a kind of mirror in which he never ceased to see the reflection of his homeland—always served him as a crucial point of reference as he attempted to define a new and essentially artistic Germany that was destined in this sense to become a model for all of Europe. It is in this new light, then, that I propose, in this thesis, to analyze the relations between Wagner and France and to study French reception of Wagner’s creations. That reception, based above all on a kind of misunderstanding, finds its beginnings neither in the composer’s music nor in the composer’s writings, but rather in Franz Liszt’s various articles on Wagner that began to appear in 1849

Notre recherche porte sur une analyse comparative des interprétations de la Sonate en si mineur de Liszt. Nous avons analysé vingt-cinq enregistrements de pianistes regroupés en cinq écoles :hongroise, française, russe, américaine et allemande. Nous avons comparé les déviations des interprètes par rapport à la partition et les divergences entre les différentes interprétations, en sélectionnant sept paramètres qui nous ont permis de caractériser chaque interprétation. Une double analyse a été effectuée : « à l'oreille » et à l'aide d'un logiciel informatique. Notre recherche a démontré l'importance de plusieurs facteurs d'influence complémentaires : l'enseignement reçu, l'époque où l'on vit et l'on crée, le tempérament et l'individualité artistique. Au terme de notre recherche, nous avons démontré l'existence de spécificités qui se manifestent au sein de chacune des écoles pianistiques nationales, et également de particularités caractérisant le mode de jeu des différentes générations. / Our research focuses a comparative analysis of the performances of Liszt's Sonata in b minor. We analysed twenty-five recordings by pianists grouped into five piano schools : Hungarian, French, Russian, American and German. We compared the deviations of the performers from the score and the differences between the individual performances, based on a selection of seven parameters that allowed us to characterise each of them. A double analysis was made: "by ear" and with the aid of acomputer. Our research has shown the importance of several complementary factors of influence : education, the period during which the pianists lived and created, the artists' temperaments and their artistic individualities. At the end of our research, we demonstrated the existence of specific features within each of the national piano schools, and also of some features that characterise the performing style of each generation.

This essay in musicology is combined with a CD-recording of piano improvisations. Its purpose is, on the one hand, to examine some of the ideas permeating piano improvisation during the first part of the nineteenth century, and, on the other, to find ways to apply these nineteenth century ideas of improvising to modern piano playing. The artistic part of the work is as important as the theoretical, and the two strands are supporting and reinforcing each other. The first section of the text focuses on preluding – that is, a genre of improvisation. The second section investigates some aspects of the improvising of Franz Liszt – that is, different types of improvisation as practised by an important nineteenth century musician. The instructional music literature written by Carl Czerny is the basic source of reference in both portions. The text and the recordings of my piano improvisations aim to show that monothematic strategies are simple and useful tools for improvising, regardless of tonal language used. Half of the recordings consist of improvisations of separate pieces in a contemporary musical language. The other half are preludes, interludes and a cadenza improvised in the context of compositions by Liszt, Chopin, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Grieg.

This study examines Liszt's use of the style hongrois in his Swiss book of Années de pèlerinage to reference certain sentiments he had experienced. The event that brought Liszt to Switzerland is discussed in Chapter 1 in order to establish an understanding of the personal difficulties facing Liszt during the period when the Swiss book took shape. Based on Jonathan Bellman's research of the style hongrois, Chapter 2 examines the Swiss pieces that exhibit musical gestures characteristic of this style. Bellman also introduced a second, metaphoric meaning of the style hongrois, which is discussed in Chapter 3 along with Liszt's accounts from his book Des Bohémien as well as the literary quotations that are included in the Swiss book. Together, the biographical facts, the accounts from Des Bohémien, and the literary quotations show that Liszt was using the style hongrois to substantiate the autobiographical significance of the Swiss book.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886) made fifty-six transcriptions of Schubert's songs over a period of eight years (1838-46) to introduce the name of the composer, who was little known both in and outside Vienna during his lifetime. Because Liszt intentionally preserved all the details of the original songs, these transcriptions present challenges for a pianist, such as how to produce a vocal line on the piano, as well as interpretive issues such as ornamentation, style, and conveying the meaning of the lyrics on the piano. The purpose of this study is to introduce pianists to study practices employed by singers, with the goal of interpreting the vocal aspects of Liszt's Schubert song transcriptions. The composer Robert Schumann once remarked that Liszt's transcriptions were perhaps the most difficult pieces written for the piano up to that time, and only an intelligent artist could satisfy Liszt's high level of virtuosity without destroying the identity of the original work. This could be considered a warning to pianists not to focus on the technical aspects only. The pedagogical guide presented in the study, based on singers' approaches to the actual songs, should help pianists to "see beyond the notes" and achieve a performance closer to the heart of the songs.

Schon im Oktober 2007 geschah, was im Mai 2008 endlich der Öffentlichkeit vorgestellt werden konnte: der Fund einer Handschrift von Franz Liszt in der Bibliotheca Albertina durch Annegret Rosenmüller, zum damaligen Zeitpunkt Mitarbeiterin in den Sondersammlungen der Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig.

The dissertation consists of four recitals: one chamber music recital, two solo recitals, and one lecture recital. The chamber music program included a trio with the violin and cello performing with the piano. The repertoire of all of the programs was intended to demonstrate a variety of types and styles of piano music from several different historical periods. The lecture recital, "The Poetic Ideal in the Piano Music of Franz Liszt," was an attempt to enter a seldomexplored area of Liszt's musical inspiration. So much has been written about the brilliant and virtuosic compositions which Liszt created to demonstrate his own technical prowess that it is easy to lose sight of the other side of his creative genius. Both as a composer and as an author, Liszt reiterated his belief in the fundamental kinship of music and the other arts. The visual arts of painting and sculpture were included, but he considered the closest relationship to be with literature, and especially with poetry.

Volumes one and two of Annees de Pelerinage contain travel impressions. The pieces in volume three serve as a means of expressing a religious pilgrimage. The religiousmeaning is implied by the titles and by letters Liszt wrote concerning specific pieces. For the pieces to have programmatic significance, the music must support the verbal clues. This dissertation maintains that selected pieces in Annees de Pelerinage III are programmatic and that Liszt provided musical clues that have not been discovered or, if noticed, have not been analyzed in detail. Also, the dissertation explores similarities between selected pieces of Annees de Pelerinage III and other programmatic or texted works by Liszt sharing the same subject. The findings reinforce the premise that Liszt deliberately intended to express certain extra-musical ideas within the music itself. The paper briefly analyzes the musical reasons for labeling Annees de Pelerinaae III a cycle. Different sources call these pieces cyclic, citing the shared common religious theme as the reason. This dissertation discusses musical reasons that reinforce the idea of a cycle. Chapter II discusses Liszt's views on program music. Chapter III identifies common themes in Liszt's programmatic works and discusses the symbolic significance of thematic transformation. Chapter IV suggests an approach to analyzing program music. Chapter V discusses Liszt's musical narrative and his use of common rhetorical devices. Chapter VI analyzes extra-musical associations in selected pieces from the Annees de Pelerinaae—Troisieme Annee. Five pieces have been selected for analysis—Anaelus1. Aux Cypres de la Villa d'Este I and II, Marche funebre. and Sursum corda.

This is a stylistic study of the four versions of Liszt's Three Petrarchan Sonnets with special emphasis on the revision of poetic settings to the music. The various revisions over four versions from 1838 to 1861 reflect Liszt's artistic development as seen especially in his use of melody, harmony, tonality, color, tone painting, atmosphere, and form. His use of the voice and development of piano technique also play an important part in these sonnets. The sonnets were inexplicably linked with the fateful events in his life and were in a way an image of this most flamboyant and controversial personality. This study suggests Liszt's importance as an innovator, and his influence on later trends should not be underestimated.

The purpose of this study is to analyze four late solo piano works of Franz Liszt that all bear the name "Mephisto" in their titles, in order to examine, identify and trace the development in the use of harmonic and melodic idioms that produced non-tonal or "omnitonic" effects, on the one hand, and to emphasize the need to duly accord Liszt a recognition of historical position as the nineteenth century's most influential avant garde composer whose attitude and approach had helped to shape much of the ideal of the atonal composition of this century, on the other. Chapter One presents the issues and the purpose of this study; Chapter Two investigates the principal forces that shaped Liszt's mature compositional style; Chapter Three identifies and discusses the requisites for tonal and atonal compositions; Chapter Four analyzes the four "Mephisto" dances: Waltz no.1 (1860); Polka (1883); Waltz no.3 (1883); and Bagatelle (1885). Chapter Five summarizes the findings from this study and attempts to identify in these late works of Liszt a pattern of conscientious, continuous, purposeful and progressive use of devices toward creating musical effect that would defy the established tonal requisites and undermine the tonal orientation in the composition. This study submits that it was Liszt who had first shown a way to free music from the shackles of prescribed idiomatic constraints, and to force us the listeners to approach and appreciate music for its own sound's sake. Additionally, this study submits that this effort of Liszt should be understood and appreciated in terms of programmatic association; that is, Liszt found in the persona of Mephisto the Diablo the ideal imagery for depicting the nature of the "music of the future" where tonality would be freed from any prescribed procedural requisites.