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.

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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.

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.

An understanding of the piano transcription is basic to any proper comprehension of nineteenth-century piano music and performance practice. In this study, the transcription for solo piano is examined in relation to several musical milestones in the mid-nineteenth century, including far-reaching technical developments in the piano, the beginning and growth of the public concert, the birth of the solo piano recital, and the influence of virtuosity as a Romantic ideal. In addition, as Liszt was undoubtedly the greatest transcriber of the nineteenth century, several representative transcriptions of Liszt are analyzed and compared to their original models, including Schubert's Gretchen am Spinnrade and Auf dem Wasser zu singen, Chopin's Moja pieszczotka ("My Joys"), Wagner's Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, and the quartet from the final act of Verdi's Rigoletto.

Franz Liszt, who was the greatest virtuoso pianist in the nineteenth-century, was also a productive composer. But his tremendous technique brought the misunderstanding that his compositions were just flashy and superficial, thus creating an obstacle for appreciating his music. The purpose of this study is to encourage an understanding of the value of Liszt's music, especially his Schubert Lieder transcriptions. The study starts with an introduction, which states the revival of the art of transcription, gives the muscial background of Liszt and describes the instruments that were available to him. Then follows a discussion about his experimentation with the conventional piano techniques and how he applied them to the song transcriptions. Two transcriptions "Hark, Hark, the Lark" and "Der Lindenbaum" are analyzed in detail to show the transcriptive procedure and the relation between the poetry and the musical expression. A conclusion summarizes the study.

Through his exceptional creative and performing abilities, Franz Liszt was able to transform compositions of many kinds into unified, intelligible, and pleasing arrangements for piano. Nineteenth-century definitions of "arrangement" and "Klavierauszug," which focus on the process of reworking a composition for a different medium, do not adequately describe Liszt's work in this area. His piano transcriptions of Schubert's songs, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and the symphonies of Beethoven are not note-for-note transcriptions; rather, they reinterpret the originals in recasting them as compositions for solo piano. Writing about Liszt's versions of Schubert's songs, a Viennese critic identified as "Carlo" heralded Liszt as the creator of a new genre and declared him to have made Schubert's songs the property of cultured pianists. Moreover, Liszt himself designated his work with Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and the symphonies of Beethoven "Partitions de piano": literally, piano scores. As is well known, concepts of genre in general create problems for musicologists; musical arrangements add a new dimension of difficulty to the problem. Whereas Carl Dahlhaus identifies genre as a tool for interpreting composers' responses to the social dimension of music in the fabric of individual compositions, Jeffrey Kallberg perceives it as a "social phenomenon shared by composers and listeners alike." The latter concept provides a more suitable framework for discussing the genre of transcriptions, for their importance derives in large part from relationships between the original and the derivative works, both as constructed by Liszt and perceived by critics and audiences. During the nineteenth and early twentieth century's, Liszt's transcriptions of songs and symphonies were construed as both compositions for pianists and subsets of the originals. Consequently, these compositions should be studied for their own musical value as well as for the light that they shed on the original works. Liszt's transcriptions are derivative and at the same time created distinct genres.