Franz Liszt (1811-86): 8-12/5/17

[smittims]

Oh well, maybe it is indeed a matter of taste. I can only say I've never felt 'lapses of taste' in Liszt. Maybe my taste is nearer to his than others'.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Well you've picked a couple of sentences out of an otherwise overwhelmingly laudatory post, but for what it's worth my criticism of Liszt essentially comes down to lapses of taste - I think this is the general complaint about Liszt. Just at the point where the music reaches an apogee of inspired exultation, you're hoping, just hoping, he won't "blow it" with some facile rounding off of a long lead up, which often turns out to be the case. And then there's the bombast: the main theme soon after the start of "Les Preludes" is one instance. Harmonically there's an over-dependence on diminished chords as a means for sustaining tension for over-protracted periods. Examples are too legion to instance as they are so characteristic they tell you who the composer is even with a work you haven't heard before. The Piano Sonata was one of the rare instances where Liszt engaged creatively and successfully with organic sonata form development; usually the "thematic transformation" methods of which he was the innovator amounted to little more than repeating thematic material with just changes in tempo, rhythm or harmony rather than expanding new thematic materials the way Beethoven had and Brahms, Mahler, Sibelius, Schoenberg, Bartok et al would do. Liszt was one of those "all or nothing" instinctualist composers thrown up by the Romantic movement at its most unbuttoned, so one is bound to find excesses and lapses, which is fine as long as they are not predominant, which in the cases of Liszt, Berlioz and Messiaen they generally aren't. That's my case made!

I think it’s true he does over do the diminished sevenths. I know his piano music pretty well and not just the stuff that’s always trotted out. It’s hard to find a duff page really. He was a compulsive rewriter - three versions of the Transcendental etudes for example but most of them are miniature masterpieces . His piano works are incredibly satisfying to play - those of them I can manage that it is - which might cloud my judgement. They are almost sensuously pleasurable under the fingers in a way that Bach or Mozart , to me , aren’t . I’m not sure what “lapses of taste “ are.All sounds a bit Victorian to me - rather like their criticisms of Shakespeare. As far as “lapses of taste “ in music ( and theatre ) are concerned I’m all in favour !
Just reminded myself of Les Preludes . A superb piece and for me nothing bombastic about it at all.
I would also take issue with the word “instinctualist “ with regards to Liszt . Much of his music exhibits an extremely fine musical intellect - his almost unerring ability in his piano transcriptions to reach into the core of another composers piece and find its musical heart, his attempts to reproduce in music religious , even transcendent experience - all these to me indicate a musical thinker of the highest order.

[Serial_Apologist]

Oh well, maybe it is indeed a matter of taste. I can only say I've never felt 'lapses of taste' in Liszt. Maybe my taste is nearer to his than others'.

Maybe you're just more open-minded than me, smittims!

[Serial_Apologist]

As far as “lapses of taste “ in music ( and theatre ) are concerned I’m all in favour !

When intended they are fine - Ibert's Divertissement is an example of conscious bad taste for debunking purposes; but when supposed to be taken with the utmost seriousness?

[pastoralguy]

When intended they are fine - Ibert's Divertissement is an example of conscious bad taste for debunking purposes; but when supposed to be taken with the utmost seriousness?

A work I’ve always switch off when it comes on the radio!

[Serial_Apologist]

A work I’ve always switch off when it comes on the radio!

Ibert's satire is admittedly rather heavy-handed, as compared with Poulenc's in many ways comparable "Les Biches". One senses that Poulenc was genuinely in love with the models he sends up - Ravel, Stravinsky, Massenet, Gounod, Mozart, Bach - and thus sends himself up in a very knowing way - whereas with Ibert - and Auric in Les Matelots and some of his other music from the 1920s - it's almost like they didn't care and wanted you to know it. Other later works - Ibert, who had once composed so evocatively for Escales, in the later Flute Concerto; Auric in the ironic scores he wrote for Ealing comedies in the late 40s and 50s... and they were ironic in their plagiarizing Wagner for a film about war and then contributing music of the utmost Frenchness for films like Passport to Pimlico and The Lavender Hill Mob whose underlying theme was British eccentricity.

[pastoralguy]

Ibert's satire is admittedly rather heavy-handed, as compared with Poulenc's in many ways comparable "Les Biches". One senses that Poulenc was genuinely in love with the models he sends up - Ravel, Stravinsky, Massenet, Gounod, Mozart, Bach - and thus sends himself up in a very knowing way - whereas with Ibert - and Auric in Les Matelots and some of his other music from the 1920s - it's almost like they didn't care and wanted you to know it. Other later works - Ibert, who had once composed so evocatively for Escales, in the later Flute Concerto; Auric in the ironic scores he wrote for Ealing comedies in the late 40s and 50s... and they were ironic in their plagiarizing Wagner for a film about war and then contributing music of the utmost Frenchness for films like Passport to Pimlico and The Lavender Hill Mob whose underlying theme was British eccentricity.

Actually, I should have been more specific. I once played this piece in an ad hoc orchestra when I was 19 and a music student. Alas, I was sitting next to an 11 year old girl who was a far superior player to me! I think she’s now in the first fiddles of the Philharmonia Orchestra!!

So, as well as disliking the piece it has memories of the unfairness of talent!