Several stages — one piano: Philological and compositional problems with reference to Liszt’s unfinished or fragmentary Rossini arrangements

Gyarmati, Eszter (2008) Several stages — one piano: Philological and compositional problems with reference to Liszt’s unfinished or fragmentary Rossini arrangements. Studia Musicologica, 49 (3-4). pp. 245-273. ISSN 1788-6244

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Abstract

The following study starts out from the examination of two fragmentary piano compositions by Liszt: Introduction des variations sur une marche du Siège de Corinthe and Maometto Fantasy , which were based on two Rossini operas, Le Siège de Corinthe and Maometto II , respectively. Since the literature has tended to confound the sources related to these two works, I strive to clarify and reinterpret the intricate connections between the two fragments and their different manuscript sources. I propose that the “Maometto — Mosè Fantasy,” the Valse à capriccio sur deux motifs de Lucia et Parisina , the Variations de bravoure pour piano sur des thèmes de Paganini , the Fantasie über Motive aus Figaro und Don Juan and the God Save the Queen. Paraphrase de concert all reflect the composer’s intense concern with the integration of themes of different origins in a single work — an aesthetic problem that haunted him for decades, and remained unresolved in most of the above cases. Liszt appears to have been able to solve this problem satisfactorily only if he could rely on some kind of “outside” musical help, like the common genre of the waltz in the Valse à capriccio ; or if he succeeded in “sublimating” one of the themes, as in the case of God Save the Queen . For want of such extraordinary solutions, all other compositions that experimented with the integration of themes of different origins in the late 1830s and early 1840s were eventually buried in oblivion by Liszt himself.

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