PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

L
ISZT’S SHEER INDUSTRY IS ONE of his most daunting
characteristics; his enthusiasm, indeed his voracious
appetite, for music of all sorts and conditions—
whether as composer, conductor, pianist, teacher or
transcriber—remains unparalleled. Even in an age of
musical rediscovery of many a recondite composer, the
works of the present gathering of minor nineteenthcentury
Germans and Austrians remain quite untrammelled,
but Liszt, partly out of friendship for his
colleagues, and certainly with the desire to help proselytize
their work, did his best, by linking his name with theirs, to
raise public awareness of their music. As ever, Liszt did
none of this work for his own personal gain, even at such
times in his later years when his assets became much
reduced.
Johann Ritter von Herbeck (1831–1877) was an
important figure in the Viennese musical life of the day,
with a zeal for the new music of Liszt, Wagner and
Bruckner, as well as for the rehabilitation of the unknown
Schubert. Liszt’s dealings with him relate particularly to
Herbeck’s position as choirmaster of the Männergesangverein
in Vienna, and Liszt’s first setting of the Mass in an
arrangement for men’s choir and wind orchestra,
prepared by Herbeck in consultation with Liszt in 1859.
Herbeck’s Tanzmomente for orchestra was published in
1868 as his Opus 14, and Liszt’s piano transcription
appeared the following year. The influence of Schumann is
clear in the music, but there is also an obvious kinship
with the dance music of the Strausses. The work consists
of eight dances, mostly in waltz form, the last of which is
on a much grander scale than the others. Liszt’s delicate
transcriptions mirror the winsome innocence of the
originals. He allows himself some liberties in the fourth
piece—extending many phrases to five bars from four—
but the alternative version offers a more regular arrangement.
But in the final piece Liszt develops the work into a
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real waltz-fantasy. The whole set, like the Bunte Reihe of
Ferdinand David (in Volume 16) deserves to be much
better known.
We have already encountered the music of Eduard
Lassen (1830–1904) in Liszt’s arrangements of some of
his incidental music (in Volume 18: ‘Liszt at the Theatre’).
This Belgian-trained, Danish-born composer settled in
Weimar in 1857 when Liszt took on the production and
performance of his first opera (Landgraf Ludwigs
Brautfahrt, originally Le roi Edgard), and he remained
there as Liszt’s assistant and eventual successor. Nowadays
only a few songs remain on the fringes of the repertoire.
The works of Lassen which Liszt transcribed suggest that
there may be more of his music worthy of exploration, and
the song transcriptions in particular indicate an interesting
musical personality. Liszt first transcribed Löse, Himmel,
meine Seele (‘Heaven, save my soul’) in 1861, and captured,
as did Lassen before him, the most palatable aspects of
this rather hot-house poem (by Peter Cornelius)—a
prayer for love and for understanding of the world’s joys
and for deliverance from being turned to dust.
(Incidentally, it is this version which currently is in print
in Peters Edition, despite their inaccurate dating and
presumption that it is the later version.) In the later
version Liszt extended the introduction and replaced the
music of the final verse and climax for publication in 1872
alongside the newly-transcribed Ich weil’ in tiefer
Einsamkeit (‘I remained in deep loneliness’)—another
much-dated poem: the poet sings of his love to a portrait
of his beloved recollecting happiness amidst present
loneliness. The setting moves with magisterial restraint,
and the change to the major key in accordance with the
poem’s reminiscences is memorable. Liszt’s transcription
exists in two manuscripts which exemplify clearly his care
in making such arrangements: the earlier has many
corrections, and a paste-over where Liszt’s happy second