Franz Liszt

Optimize Your Piano Practice Time

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The Art of Piano Performance

Practice Tips for Developing a Solid Technique in Piano Performance

Practicing is both an art and a science. Every student of piano performance must remember that their achievement on the instrument will be the direct result of the amount of time and the quality of their practicing.

The art and science of practicing is not just time spent at the instrument but time spent listening to the music the student is working on, studying and understanding the harmonic analysis of the music as well as researching the time period and technical characteristics of the composer of the piece you are working on.

In addition to this, it is advisable for the student to prepare a weekly plan outlining the time spent on specific techniques, repertoire, sight-reading and review of old or previously learned repertoire.

Technique

The purpose of technique is to serve the pianist’s imagination and realize his/her interpretive ideas…

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‘St Francois de Paule marchant sur le Flots’ Franz Liszt

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‘Among the numerous miracles of St. Francis of Paola, the legend celebrates that which he performed in crossing the Straits of Messina. The boatmen refused to burden their barque with such an insignificant looking person, but he paying no attention to this, walked across the sea with a firm tread’…Franz Liszt

The story is beautifully captured in Liszt’s music. The calm strength of the opening hymn-like music is throughout the piece pitted against the roaring and crashing of the waves (represented by rushing scales and tremolos), finally emerging victorious in a glorious fortissimo restatement at the end of the piece.

Franz Liszt: Legend No.2 “St. Francois de Paule marchant sur le flots”

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‘St. Frances of Paola Walking on the Water’ 

‘Among the numerous miracles of St. Francis of Paola, the legend celebrates that which he performed in crossing the Straits of Messina.  The boatmen refused to burden their barque with such an insignificant looking person, but he paying no attention to this, walked across the sea with a firm tread’…Franz Liszt

The story is beautifully captured in Liszt’s music.  The calm strength of the opening hymn-like music is throughout the piece pitted against the roaring and crashing of the waves (represented by rushing scales and tremolos), finally emerging victorious in a glorious fortissimo restatement at the end of the piece.

Many of Franz Liszt’s compositions sprang from religious inspirations. In 1863, he composed his 2 Légendes, a duo of programmatic pieces based on the legends of St. Frances of Assisi and St. Frances of Paolo. The work is among Liszt’s forward-looking composition and considered by some to be the roots of Impressionism.

The second piece of the set depicts the legend of St. Frances of Paolo who, not having any money to the fee, was denied passage on a ferry across the Straits of Messina. Mocked by the ferryman, he throws his cloak in the water and stands on it. Using his staff to guide his way across the Straits, St. Frances arrives ahead of the ferry and its passengers. Though this story served as Liszt’s inspiration of the piece, the end result is a magnificent universal depiction of struggle and triumph. The principal theme is announced immediately at the outset in unadorned octaves, and its emphasis upon the key of the mediant minor foreshadows the impending struggles. Stated again in the tonic key of E major above rippling tremolos in the bass, the theme is presented regally and in full glory. However, as the music progresses, the harmonic underpinnings become more violent and clash against the theme. Throughout the middle portion of the piece, the theme is nearly overwhelmed by the torrent of chords and surging chromatic lines. Following the harshest part of the struggle where unrelenting octaves build to their dramatic outcome, the theme returns in and triumphal splendor. Finally, a brief coda turns the mood solemn, like a prayer of thanksgiving. The principal melody then returns for a final statement in the bass and the piece concludes with heroic ascensions through the tonic triad.

Funérailles – Harmonies Poétiques et Religieuses

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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.