Sunday, February 24, 2008

Liszt Funerailles

This piece opens with ominous dissonant bell sounds: low Db and C. It's really innovative in that Liszt asks the performer to capture octave C's in the opening for seventeen measures. The rhythm in the right-hand is it's is paired with the left is quite unusual, almost too intellectual. He builds this idea with the following structural plan: motive a, motive a, Extend ended motive a. He does this two more times rising the relative pitch level up a step. He continues the idea increasing intensity by using tremolos and extra chords in the left-hand. Liszt seems to do what he always does when he has to expand a section: repeat it again in octaves. After a transitional unwinding section, Liszt moves into a dark scary melody. Mysterious and without hope, this chromatic theme is again repeated in octaves (surprise) and drifts into a poor Chopin imitation theme. As is typical of a Chopin melody, the phrases are sentences (a, a, a continuation 4 +4+8. He also uses this weaving motion to move from one a motive to another: Fb, Eb, Ab, Bb, C. He also uses a typical Chopin melodic embellishment: C, Db, C, B, C, G, F. The left-hand chordal spacing is also reminiscent of a nocturne. He continues this idea. In order to avoid boredom, Liszt uses his famous textures: He adds a harmonic upper voice and puts it back in octaves with eighth-note inner chords. He rambles the phrase on preparing for the ultimate rip-off section. Although it is quite clear that Liszt is not trying to hide the Ab polonaise influence from Chopin, he could have at least made it sound as descent. The melodic line appears either too boring with constant Ab repetitions or it resembles 'I've been working on the Railroad' song. The passage gets a little more interesting on the repetition when the left-hand shifts to chromatic up and down octaves. The coolest part of this piece is the section after this. Liszt repeats the mysterious scary theme now with, guess what, octaves and big chords. After this basic insertion, Liszt dies away one last time. It is unusual that the melodic has been transposed by an augmented fourth. Just when we expect the piece to die away (morendo) Liszt decides to put in a one-more-time Chopin rip-off coda. Then it dies away and stops.

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