LISZT THREAD

da dum dum dum... da dum dum dum... da dum dum DUM! da dum dum DUM!

nowhere to go out in sc :(

compelled to post and take back my upthread opinion of Lisztomania, as two recent viewings has convinced me that the film is 100% wonderful from beginning to end

also nostalgia for spontaneous estrogen fires on noize board

i want to see this now!

Hey Milton don't write off Liszt himself either! He's one of my v. favorite composers. His piano music is full of stunning vision, avant-garde thrills, roaring violations of good taste and overindulgences, with no real way of separating one from the other.

Plus, in his operatic fantasies for piano, all improvisations captured on paper, he's a true 19c anticipation of Coltrane's "My Favorite Things".

And Wagner really did quarry extensively from Liszt's musical territory.

Also super super recommend Alan Walker's 3 volume biography of Liszt. Awesome panorama of the 19c and L's charisma will seize you right across 121 years.

But, um, I really wanna see Lisztomania too even though I H8 Roger Daltrey. The Devils is one of my favorite movies.

third book of années de pèlerinage w/ lazar berman!

haha milton parker, I don't think I've seen Lisztomania yet!

But I do love Liszt right now, just exclusively listening to some of his late piano pieces, circa 1881-86. The mood is almost all somber, mysterious or introspective -- and paying attention to the writing, is ahead of its time. The style most reminds me of Satie, using a kind of harmony that neither functions to do anything in particular (like resolving from one chord to another), or suggests a key/mode. Liszt appears to have been writing music where the notes involved were just that -- notes, to serve "pure" music, and in turn "pure" expressionism (or abstract expressionism, as in the case of painters doing the same thing with imagery and color in the 40s-50s). Lots of composers did this in music later, most notably Schoenberg and Stravinsky, though taking it further than Liszt did.

I just got a book on his late life, and expect I will branch out into other pieces from him soon.

I would say the best flip side to the late piano works are the piano fantasias on opera themes. Especially try the Don Juan, Norma, and Les Huegenots ones.

Do the recordings of the late stuff you are listening to have the four Valses Oubliees? I am obsessed with these, they're as strange and surreal as Nuages Gris but in a chipper vein.

the dante symphony anticipates the ecstatic despondency of late liszt
also the mephisto waltzes

Mephistos 2 through 4 are late liszt. Well 3 and 4 for sure.

two is still mostly ithin the world of the grand virtuouisc liszt, fraying harmonically
the howard waltz lp is so good because all of the waltzes from all periods form a sort of private idiom
the album leaf waltz is 50 seconds long as probably my favourite miniature in all of music

anyway im loathe to think of liszt in this tripartite scheme thatis imposed on him because he wrote great music from the 1830s until his death and it is more interesting to trace the continuities than to view the late liszt as a staging post between high romanticism and atonality

I am new to Liszt, and this late music is my entry point. But from what I have read, even Liszt agrees with you that he was thinking along these lines for quite a while before his late period. Another thing I learned (and never ceases to amaze me regarding famous composers) is how little his compositions were accepted during his lifetime, particularly his later ones, which he often refused to perform (or have performed). It seems he was really pigeonholed as a performer.

the howard waltz lp is so good because all of the waltzes from all periods form a sort of private idiom

Otm. If only he'd been able to sustain this level through the whole series. But at least the first ~dozen volumes are great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv7asNiRFDI