Franz Liszt's Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie: Defining and Defending Virtuosity

Mayes, Catherine (2025) Franz Liszt's Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie: Defining and Defending Virtuosity. STUDIA MUSICOLOGICA: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGY OF THE HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 66 (1-2). pp. 1-11. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

Franz Liszt originally intended Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie as a short explanatory preface to his Hungarian Rhapsodies, but by the time his ever-expanding essay was published as a book in 1859, the Rhapsodies were successful compositions that required no clarification. Instead, I suggest that Liszt's book was part of his larger response to the increasing criticism of virtuosity in the mid-nineteenth century, for in it he offers perhaps his clearest definition and defense of virtuosity as a creative practice. Liszt's engagement with virtuosity was multi-faceted, as numerous scholars have established, yet Des Bohémiens et de leur musique en Hongrie has yet to be considered as an important part of Liszt's response to his critics.

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