Liszt’s experiments with literature

• Authors: Małgorzata Gamrat
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

Liszt’s aspiration to create his own musical language and to find new tools of musical expression was unusually strong almost from the very beginning of his artistic career. Not only did the artist gladly spend his time among writers and read numerous texts, but he also turned to the technical and expressive means originating in literature. Among the most important attempts to work out new musical means on the basis of literary devices we may list: a strong emphasis on the sound factor, formal freedom and mixing of genres, composing a musical cycle on the basis of a poetic one (a narrative whole, leitmotifs), appealing to emotions by means of the appropriate selection of an oeuvre’s parameters, in particular articulation and dynamics, poetic quotations preceding the score, transposition of literary genres into the field of music, or synthesis of poetry and music in songs, symphony choruses, and piano transcriptions of songs. Album d’un voyageur is an excellent example of Liszt’s borrowings from literature and a very individual cycle with literary value. It is a story of a voyage across a small part of Europe in search of self-understanding; it is also a history of rebellion and the doubts which come as its consequence, as well as finding peace through contact with nature and through searching for God. Liszt created here an unusual oeuvre that combines poetic images and sounds. In 1884 Liszt declared that the most perfect form of synthesis of poetry and music is transcription of songs. It is here that music interprets poetry with its own means, which are often invented for the purposes of this synthesis. On the basis of the transcription of the song Ich liebe dich from 1860 we may observe how music becomes a language capable of imitating the intonation of the human voice, expressing emotions and, symbolically, relying on a programme, also expressing ideas.

Keywords

PL

Franz Liszt; Album d’un voyageur; Ich liebe dich; Friedrich Riickert; poetic music; musical epic; piano transcription; romantic song

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
• Year: 2014
• Issue: 13
• Pages: 107-126

Dates

published

2018-10-17

Contributors

author

Małgorzata Gamrat

• PhD in humanities, since October 2013 an assistant professor in the Chair of Theory and Aesthetics of Music of the Institute of Musicology at the University of Warsaw, where as a part of the grant ‘Fuga 2’ of the National Science Centre she carries out a research project Franz Liszt’s Lieder and their piano transcriptions as an example o f the 19th-century practice o f hybridisation o f genres and mutual enlightening o f arts. The main fields of her academic interest include Franz Liszt’s music and its interactions with other fields of art (especially with literature) as well as French and German culture of the 19th century. She carried out her academic research in Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Archives Nationales, Institut de France in Paris, and in The Franz Liszt Memorial Museum and Research Centre in Budapest. She took her doctorate at the Jagiellonian University and École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, on the basis of the dissertation entitled Franz Liszt’s piano music in the context of the idea o f ‘correspondance des arts’, written under the supervision of professor Renata Suchowiejko and professor Catherine Massip. Małgorzata Gamrat participated in numerous international academic conferences and interdisciplinary research projects, both in the field of music and literature studies in Poland (e.g. ‘Laboratorium Myśli Muzycznej’) and abroad (e.g. ‘Musical Signification Project’ under the supervision of Eero Tarasti; ‘Od dialektü k literârnim jazyküm v Evropë / Dès les dialectes aux langues littéraires en l’Europe’, 2012).