PIANO MUSIC - Abeille Musique

of the Breitkopf version, which is otherwise the basis for all the currently available éditions. He
establishes that the order of the pieces as printed is at variance with Liszt's original instructions
to his intended publisher Tâborszky. The altérations in the order stem from August Göllerich,
who made the copy and then withheld it for many years. But, as Legâny rightly shows, Liszt's
musical intentions make his original order very logicai. The rightful order of the pieces is
Szechenyi, Deâk, Teleki, Eötvös, Vörösmarty, Petófi and Mosonyi, and the fifths motif can be
readily identified in numbers 1, 2, 4 and 5. In number 3 it occurs within the ostinato and at the
coda, whilst in number 6 its appearance is at the transition to the second theme.
As we know, Liszt had worked on the pieces over many years, and it was only probably in 1885
that the final conception of the cycle took place. And it really is a cycle, in that there is a motif of
a falling fifth which occurs very regularly throughout, even though the other thematic material of
the pieces remains distinct. Of course, Liszt had already published Petöfi and Mosonyi in earlier
versions (Volume 11), and these he revised to make the versions for the cycle. (And as we know,
he made a longer, separate version of Teleki in the Ungarische Trauer - Vorspiel und Marsch -
also in Volume 11.) It may be by a happy coincidence that the falling fifths occur in Petöfi
already, and Liszt's changes here just extend the material and add a coda that makes the correct
link to the final piece, Mosonyi.
Now it seems very likely that Göllerich never saw Mosonyi in its final form and that he made his
copy from an intermediate version - in the present writer's view, the Library of Congress copy
before Liszt made his last altérations and additions. In the form as we now know it, the motif of
the falling fifth is missing. The only différences from the early version are the répétitions of two
short phrases towards the end. These changes have been written in ink in Liszt's hand into the
copy now bequeathed to the Library of Congress, and they create the version of Mosonyi in the
currently available éditions of the Portraits. This ending is a little disturbing, because such a
conclusion does not seem to warrant the placing of Mosonyi at the end of a cycle where the last
piece fails to pull the threads together by its failure to include the important falling fifths motif at
ail. But now, in the Library of Congress holograph, there is a second layer of revision which
dispels ail doubt: Liszt has used blue crayon to write the new title of the piece - simply
'Mosonyi' - and, with the same crayon, he has crossed out again and again the D major 6/3
chords that make up the last four bars. Then he has added, pasted to the back of the last sheet of
the printed copy, two pages of manuscript, themselves pasted together. These sheets are in Liszt's
hand, in ink, and clearly written at a différent time and with a différent pen from the extra bars
inked into the printed score. The page number 10 in his hand follows the numbering of the
11