PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

for the version with viola), was apparently foreshadowed by the present text – whose
manuscript is held in the Library of Congress – where the phrases are shorter, and the coda
has not yet been added.
The first version of what Liszt later called Fantasie und Fuge über das Thema B-A-C-H
(see Volume 3) but originally entitled Präludium und Fuge über das Motiv B-a-c-h
(touchingly writing in Bach’s name wherever the musical motif is encountered) remained
unpublished until the excellent Neue Liszt-Ausgabe issued it in 1983. This version is a
piano transcription of the first version for organ, completed in 1856. The piano version
probably dates from around the same time. Liszt made the second piano version using a
copy of the first as a starting point, and finally made the second organ version from the
second piano version! All the versions follow more or less the same structural arrangement,
but differ in a myriad of details which make for fascinating comparisons. Only the fugal
exposition is exactly the same.
There must have been at least four complete versions of the ‘Christmas Tree’ Suite,
Weihnachtsbaum, although only parts of a second version survive. For the purposes of
this series the third version, as published by Gutheil, is being left aside, containing as it
does no material which is not present in the final version (recorded in Volume 8) or in the
unpublished first version – now preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The
twelve pieces correspond in their broad outlines through all the extant versions, but each
revision extends phrases – very often to avoid four-bar predictability (yet this very
predictability is what gives some added attraction to the original version as a possible
vehicle for children to play). In the case of the second piece, the original version is tiny by
comparison with the much longer piano piece and choral work which it was to become.
Most of the introductions and codas underwent enormous change and expansion,
particularly Nos X and XII. It is a pity that the original version has never been published
(nor its arrangement for piano duet, also to be found in Paris, attached to the solo version)
because it completely avoids the occasional risk of longueur presented by the final version
which may be a factor in its relatively rare appearances in concert.
The original unpublished manuscript of À la chapelle Sixtine – Miserere d’Allegri et Ave
verum de Mozart is held in the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar. It shows a great deal
of reworking and cancelled first thoughts but, in the light of the final published version
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