Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, San Diego, 2009. / Title from 1st page of PDF file (viewed Dec. 16, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Includes sound files of the thesis recital in 44K stereo. and 96K formats.

The relationship between Franz Liszt and Ludwig van Beethoven has always held a special position in the biographical tradition of Liszt. Liszt claimed that he received a consecration kiss (the Weihekuss) from Beethoven when he was eleven. However, the story probably was fabricated: in other words, the personal relationship between Liszt and Beethoven was never realized and never existed. Even though Beethoven and Liszt probably have never met, the Weihekuss still served as, in Liszt's words, "the palladium of my whole career as an artist." Liszt constructed a rather complicated relationship with Beethoven around this myth. In this study, I shall examine how the Weihekuss influenced both Liszt's life and his professional development as a performer and editor. In chapter one, I will analyze Liszt's psychological state through the anecdote and further examine the impact that Beethoven had inserted on both Liszt's life and career. On becoming a concert pianist, Liszt was the first person who performed Beethoven's piano sonatas in public and eventually elevated the genre of the sonata into the concert repertory. In chapter two, through eyewitness testimonies, Liszt will be viewed in a broader cultural and historical perspective. Meanwhile, Liszt's relationship with his audiences and his marketing strategies will also be included in this discussion. Liszt's "authority" on Beethoven led him to complete an edition of Beethoven's thirty-two piano sonatas in 1857. By examining Liszt's edition, particularly those sonatas that he performed, one can get a sense of how Liszt himself may have interpreted the music. According to Liszt himself, he performed ten Beethoven piano sonatas in public. These ten sonatas will be the primary focus in chapter three. Liszt both added and omitted articulation and pedal markings, creating different emphases and lines from those present in Beethoven's original manuscripts. The edition, in a sense, is Liszt's final tribute to Beethoven, but also reveals his constant disappointment in never having met the composer. To edit the sonatas was, for Liszt, a way to communicate with Beethoven spiritually, if not personally.

The dissertation examines Liszt's experimentation with harmonic, formal, and programmatic procedures in the piano works of his Weimar period (1848--1861). Liszt's music has often been criticized as "new wine in old bottles." His radical development of keyboard technique and harmonic vocabulary appears contained within, and constrained by, traditional forms. Here, however, it is argued that Liszt's "form" and "content" go hand in hand. A change in one compositional element (e.g., harmonic vocabulary) leads to changes in other elements (e.g., formal and tonal design), so that a kind of compositional "chain reaction" occurs. / Chapter one (introduction) establishes the plan of study and describes three organizational strategies ("conflict," "block," and "object") found in the selected works. Chapter two investigates the Etudes d'execution transcendante and focuses on harmonic innovations at the thematic level. In comparing different versions of the Etudes, the chapter shows how the composer's virtuoso keyboard idiom interacts with harmonic content and how surface harmonic procedures function as structural determinants. Chapter three concentrates on the smaller sets of "poetic" piano works. These include the Consolations , the Liebestraume, and the two Ballades as well as selections from the larger cyclical collections, the Annees de pelerinage and the Harmonies poetiques et religieuses. The analytical focus is on Liszt's manipulations of phrase- and section-level formal functions. The works display strophic and through-compositional tendencies that mirror developments in nineteenth-century lieder, and formal ambiguities that arise from the hybridization of traditional instrumental formal types. / Chapter four focuses exclusively on the B-minor Sonata. The composition, perhaps Liszt's most successful and complex work, engages us in a synthetic approach to harmony, form, and programme. The motivic and formal design of the Sonata may be accounted for in programmatic terms. Compositional similarities between the Sonata and the Faust Symphony suggest their shared programmatic subtext. The extensively developed "love interest" in Goethe's Faust invokes issues of gender and sexuality. The programme-related construction of gender as well as the arousal and channeling of desire can be connected with the Sonata's formal and tonal organization. Emphasizing the use of five motives and their various transformations, it is shown how Liszt portrays, through musical means, the three principal characters---Faust, Marguerite, and Mephistopheles---and how the work embodies a variety of narratological and interpretive paradigmsheroic, feminist, and psychological.

No description available.

In 1970, the Hungarian publishing firm Editio Musica Budapest began a long term project, ending in 2005, that endeavored to compile and publish all Liszt's works in a complete edition titled, The New Liszt Edition (NLE). Through the efforts of this firm, Liszt's Technical Studies were published in the way that he had originally intended for the first time in 1983. Yet, although the eminent Liszt-scholar Michael Saffle has stated that 'Pedagogy is one of the most thoroughly-mined veins of Liszt material ever uncovered', academic discussions on Liszt's Technical Studies (Walker, 2005), his definitive pedagogical work for piano, are scarce. What it was that Liszt set out as being fundamental to the acquisition of pianistic virtuosity in the Technical Studies and the nature of its trajectory is generally unknown. Through an examination of the didactic instruction Liszt supplied in the Preface of the autograph manuscript to the Technical Studies and specific technical commentaries written by Mme. Auguste Boissier in her Liszt pedagogue, I will argue that the Technical Studies are built on six artistic and mechanical principles, exemplified by Liszt in the exercises, written to help the pianist acquire technical virtuosity. The methodical divisions of the work into sections that deal with specific mechanical objectives are illustrated with musical examples and their technical trajectory defined.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed Aug. 22, 2007). PDF text: 74 p. : music. UMI publication number: AAT 3237872. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

Diss.--Paderborn, 1996. / Bibliogr. (t.2) p. 127-164.

abstract: This paper investigates the origins of the piano recital as invented by Franz Liszt, presents varying strategies for program design, and compares Liszt's application of the format with current trends. In addition it examines the concepts of program music, musical ekphrasis, and Gesamtkunstwerk and proposes a new multimedia piano concert format in which music combines with the mediums of literature and the visual arts; Picturing Rachmaninoff, and Picturing Ravel provide two recent examples of this format. / Dissertation/Thesis / D.M.A. Music 2012

The topic of my master thesis is to introduce piano piece from Ferenc Liszt Totentanz, which is very rarely interpretated and not very well – known, as it could be.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University / Franz Liszt's essay, "De la Situation des Artistes et de leur Condition dans la Societe," published in the Gazette musicole de Paris between 5 May and 11 October 1835, is one of the first comprehensive studies by a nineteenth-century French composer on the status of musicians in society. Liszt criticizes contemporary society for exploiting the talents of artists while disregarding their needs, and concerns himself with the creation of a new position for artists in society. The most frequently cited influence of the essay has been Liszt's contact with the Saint-Simonians movement. I wish to show that emphasis on the Saint-Simonians fails to show properly Liszt's debt to French Romantic ideas and philosophies during the 1830's. I define the social romantictsm that infused France and French artists and literary figues such as Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny and Alphonse de Lamartine, in the 1830's, and differentiate it from the utopian socialism of the period. I give an overview of the state of music journalism during the 1830's in Paris and discuss various relevant music-related journalists and their influences. specific aims and styles. Finally, I look at the compositional forms promoted and utilized by the Saint-Simonians and examine the compositions of Liszt during this period to see the extent of Liszt's experimentation with Saint-Simonian ideas within his musical compositions, and make conclusions as to the principal musical ideas which the Liszt pursued. Though this critique of the essay, and a discussion of the various influences which led up to it, I suggest an interpretation that clearly recognizes Liszt's place within the French social romantics during the 1830's.