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Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses is a piano suite comprised of ten compositions, Liszt dedicated the suite to his companion princess Sayn-Wittgenstein.

I. Invocation

II.   Ave Maria

III.  Benediction de Deus dans la Solitude

IV.  Pensee des Morts

V.  Pater Noster

VI.  Hymne de L’enfant a Son Reveil

VII.   Funerailles

VIII.   Miserere D’Apres Palestrina

VIIII   Andante Lagrimoso

X.      Cantique d’Amour

Many innovative concepts are explored in this suite such as constantly changing meters, no key signatures in addition to emphasis on the tritone.  Liszt develops these innovations further in his later compositions.  Fifty years later Liszt once again returned to the exploration of atonality in his Bagatelle ohne Tonart (Bagatelle Without Tonality).

On the autograph manuscript of Funérailles,Liszt writes October 1849.  Liszt indicated it was an elegy written as a tribute to three of his friends who died in the failed Hungarian Revolution.  Prince Felix Lichnowsky,  Count Laszlo Teleki and the Hungarian Prime Minister, Count Lajos Batthyany. It was a colossal defeat to the Hungarian people.

Death of Chopin October 1849

The intuitive use of material from Chopin’s heroic Ab Major Polonaise Opus 53 leads to speculation that this piece was more than an elegy to the Hungarian people but also an elegy to his dearly departed colleague F. Chopin.