Sunday, February 24, 2008

Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody 12

From the beginning of the piece, Liszt is introducing all sorts of different pianistic textures. Textures which unfortunately are all too familiar to listeners. First we have the typical lone octaves (each note embellished with a repeated octave). Then we have the sudden crescendo tremolo figure. The drama is intense, but the effect is cliche since we find it many times. The variety of pianistic textures in these first few pages seems to fragment the line. All the fermatas and rests seem to chop up the music. A lot of times, his form of structure is solely based on antecedent consequent phrases. After this he immediately abandons the idea and does something new. He does, however, repeat the same kinds of figurations, here, the repeated embellishment, extended fast note ornaments, and double dotted figures. It is quite humorous how Liszt moves away from this serious over dramatic into this light shallow melody based on four note scale. The melody is long winded. Liszt is constantly delaying cadence points, something that Wagner would take even further. On the second appearance Liszt subdivides the accompaniment part into eighth notes which successfully increases the relative intensity. At the end of this first variation Liszt does something quite awesome. He sets up a faster texture in sixteenth-notes. There is no doubt in my mind that Liszt knows how to stir up a crowd. By setting up this variation system, the audience is beginning to expect another variation. This logical step from quarter-note, to eighth-note, to sixteenth-note is a simple expected progression. These four measures of lead-in material is obviously there to create anticipation and excitement in the listeners who know what is coming next. He further creates a mood / textural change at the expense of musical continuity. This very expressive Italian singing style section is so beautiful that despite the existing stereotype, the part defies any sense of overuse. The phrase length is simple: 4 and 4 antecedent consequent, followed by a a varied repetition now in octaves. The return of the first tempo and the reappearance of low left-hand chromatic octaves and right-hand tremolos signifies the serious mood. Sure enough Liszt presents the first real melodic figuration from the beginning this time in a different texture. The right-hand is now in octaves and the left-hand is a series of sixteenths tied to eighth notes. Earlier the texture was rolled chords. Liszt moves back to the giojoso (silly) section by including the same lead-in used earlier to create anticipation. This time he simplifies the already simple shallow melody. This time he adds a continuous right-hand trill and includes occasional full keyboard sweeps (chromatic, pentatonic, scalar). He keeps an element of the earlier theme variation idea going by immediately moving to a more complex section (double thirds) with similar harmonic and phrase structure. From there on out things get more and more difficult to play. Liszt asks for an increased tempo (stretta vivace) and makes the left-hand more difficult (now fast abduction and adduction rotations). The right-hand moves to thirty second-notes and then the left-hand takes the melody and then the left-hand has the thirty-second notes. There's the chromatic descending left-hand octaves, the grand repeat of the giojoso section and the typical adagio right before the end. No one can argue that this piece is not exciting.

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