The Mephisto Waltzes (German: Mephisto-Walzer) are four waltzes composed by Franz Liszt from 1859 to 1862, from 1880 to 1881, and in 1883 and 1885. Nos. 1 and 2 were composed for orchestra, and later arranged for piano, piano duet and two pianos, whereas nos. 3 and 4 were written for piano only. Of the four, the first is the most popular and has been frequently performed in concert and recorded. [1]
Associated with the Mephisto Waltzes is the Mephisto Polka, which follows the same program as the other Mephisto works.
The most popular of the series and, along with the third Waltz, most praised musically, the Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke: Erster Mephisto-Walzer ("The Dance in the Village Inn: First Mephisto-Waltz"), or the First Mephisto Waltz, is the second of two short works he wrote for orchestra under the title Zwei Episoden aus Lenaus Faust. While the work preceding it, Midnight Procession (Der nächtliche Zug), is rarely given (though both works have been recorded together), the waltz has been a concert favorite, with its passion, sensuality and dramatics generating an emotional impact. James Huneker described the work's "langourous syncopated melody" as "one of the most voluptuous episodes outside of the Tristan score". [2]
The first Mephisto Waltz is a typical example of program music, taking for its program an episode from Nikolaus Lenau's 1836 verse drama Faust (not from Goethe's Faust). The following program note, which Liszt took from Lenau, appears in the printed score:
There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer, and the nightingale warbles his love-laden song. [3]
Liszt intended to publish the Waltz simultaneously with the Night Procession: "...The publication of the two Lenau's Faust episodes... I entrust to Schuberth's own judgement; as to whether the piano version or the score appears first, makes no difference to me; the only important thing is that both pieces should appear simultaneously, the Night Procession as No.1 and the Mephisto Waltz as No.2. There is naturally no thematic relationship between the two pieces; but they are related nonetheless by all the contrasts of emotions. A Mephisto of this kind may only arise from such a poodle!..." [4] Liszt's request was not fulfilled and the two episodes were published separately.
The waltz was conceived as both an orchestra and a piano work. Three versions, orchestral (S.110/2), piano duet (S.599/2) and piano solo, (S.514), all date more or less from the same period (1859–62). The piano duet version is a straightforward transcription of the orchestral version, while the solo piano version is an independent composition. Liszt dedicated the piece to Karl Tausig, his favourite pupil. [5] A further two piano version, published by Schuberth in 1885, was arranged by Dr. Fritz Stade and later revised by Isidor Philipp.
The orchestral version also has an alternate, softer ending which, while not as rousing as the usual coda, some critics argue is closer to the intent of Lenau's tale.[ citation needed ] While this ending is not often heard in the concert hall, both Fritz Reiner and James Conlon have recorded it. Liszt also provided two extra passages for the piano solo version. It is not known when Liszt wrote these extra passages, but it was a habit of his later years to make alterations while teaching his works to his pupils. [5]
The Second Mephisto Waltz, S.515, followed the first by some 20 years. Its composition took place between late 1880 and early 1881. Liszt wrote the orchestral version (S.111) first, then based both the piano solo (S.515) and four-hand (S.600) versions on it. The orchestral version was premiered in Budapest in 1881. After this performance Liszt extended the work and changed the ending radically. The printed music for all three versions is based on this revision and is dedicated to Camille Saint-Saëns. [6]
Harmonically, the second waltz anticipates Scriabin, Busoni and Bartók. Liszt begins and ends the work with an unresolved tritone, a musical interval famous as representing the devil in music, and the music overall is more violently expressive than both its predecessor and Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre , which Liszt had transcribed a few years earlier. [7] The piece, for all its dissonance, remains firmly in E♭ major until the B–F tritone shatters the work's climax at the piece's end. [5] This gesture leaves the work's ending unresolved harmonically. [8]
Composed in 1883, the Third Mephisto Waltz, S.216, takes the harmonic language even further, featuring chords built up by fourths with numerous passages of descending minor triads whose roots are a semitone apart. The chord on which these progressions are based, according to Alan Walker, "is difficult to explain in terms of traditional harmony. It is best regarded as a 'fourths' chord in its last inversion." [9] Tonally, the music is pulled between F♯ major, D minor and D♯ minor. As in its predecessors, the Third Waltz has the devil dancing in triple time while other groups of three move past so quickly that a larger rhythm of four is established, and triple time is abandoned altogether in the dreamlike passage near the work's conclusion. [5] Humphrey Searle, in his book The Music of Liszt, considers this piece to be one of Liszt's finest achievements. [10]
This waltz bore no dedication initially. After French pianist Marie Jaëll played the work for the composer (who asked her to repeat certain passages over and over again), he made extensive changes to the work and dedicated it to her. Saint-Saëns, Jaëll's composition teacher at the Paris Conservatoire (who also dedicated his first piano concerto to her), commented about her interpretation of Liszt's works that "only one person in the world [besides Liszt] who can play Liszt—Marie Jaëll". [11] Liszt made no orchestral version of the piece. [5] However, British composer and arranger Gordon Jacob orchestrated this along with other late works of Liszt for the Sadlers Wells ballet Apparitions, a project conceived by composer Constant Lambert. [7]
The first recording of this piece was by France Clidat in her traversal of Liszt's works for Decca. [12]
The Fourth Mephisto Waltz, S.696, remained unfinished and was not published until 1955. Liszt worked on the piece in 1885. Like the second waltz, the fourth uses an introduction and coda which do not stick to the basic key. While the work is mainly in D major, it begins and ends in C♯ minor. This, writes noted Australian Liszt scholar and pianist Leslie Howard, [13] was an encouragement while working on his performing version to refer to the main material in the slow Andantino and to recapitulate a portion of the fast Allegro before Liszt's coda. [14] Some critics do not consider this waltz as original as its predecessors and surmise that, had Liszt lived to complete it, he might have made considerable improvements. [15] No orchestral version of this waltz was made by Liszt.
Despite its being unfinished, this waltz is still considered playable. [15] It is usually performed in a version (S.216b) combining the completed fast outer sections, omitting the incomplete slow middle section. Howard made a performing version of this waltz in 1978 which utilizes a middle section assembled from Liszt's manuscript sources, completed in line with the composer's late style and with a minimum number of added notes from Howard. A recording of this completion is available on Hyperion's "Complete Piano Music of Liszt" series, while the sheet music, dedicated to Alfred Brendel, has been published by Basil Ramsey, [16] and once again in 1988 by Orpheus Publications. However, the first recording of a version of this piece was by France Clidat in her traversal of Liszt's works for Decca. [12]
The Bagatelle sans tonalité ("Bagatelle without tonality"; German : Bagatelle ohne Tonart), S. 216a, is sometimes included with Liszt's Mephisto Waltzes. The manuscript bears the title "Fourth Mephisto Waltz" [17] and may have been intended to replace the Fourth Mephisto Waltz when it appeared Liszt might not be able to finish it. [18] Critics point out the similarity in tonal center between these two pieces (D major) as confirmation of their composition shortly after one other in 1885 as well as Liszt's initial intent with the "Bagatelle". [19]
The pieces are referenced as the title of the 1969 novel, The Mephisto Waltz by American author and Juilliard-trained pianist Fred Mustard Stewart. Composer Jerry Goldsmith incorporated the pieces into his score for the 1971 film of the same name based on Stewart's novel.
Franz Liszt was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than six decades, he is considered to be one of the most prolific and influential composers of his era, and his piano works continue to be widely performed and recorded.
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust.
Bagatelle sans tonalité is a piece for solo piano written by Franz Liszt in 1885. The manuscript bears the title "Fourth Mephisto Waltz" and may have been intended to replace the piece now known as the Fourth Mephisto Waltz when it appeared Liszt would not be able to finish it; the phrase Bagatelle ohne Tonart actually appears as a subtitle on the front page of the manuscript.
Danse macabre, Op. 40, is a symphonic poem for orchestra, written in 1874 by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It premiered 24 January 1875. It is in the key of G minor. It started out in 1872 as an art song for voice and piano with a French text by the poet Henri Cazalis, based on the play Danza macàbra by Camillo Antona-Traversi. In 1874, the composer expanded and reworked the piece into a symphonic poem, replacing the vocal line with a solo violin part.
The Piano Sonata in B minor, S.178, is a piano sonata by Franz Liszt. It was completed in 1853 and published in 1854 with a dedication to Robert Schumann.
The Fantasy on Themes from Mozart's Figaro and Don Giovanni, S.697, is an operatic paraphrase for solo piano by Franz Liszt, based on themes from two different Mozart's operas: The Marriage of Figaro, K.492 and Don Giovanni, K.527.
A Faust Symphony in three character pictures, S.108, or simply the "Faust Symphony", is a choral symphony written by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's drama, Faust. The symphony was premiered in Weimar on 5 September 1857, for the inauguration of the Goethe–Schiller Monument there.
A bagatelle is a short piece of music, typically for the piano, and usually of a light, mellow character. The name bagatelle literally means "a short unpretentious instrumental composition" as a reference to the light style of a piece. Although bagatelles are generally written for solo piano, they have also been written for piano four hands, harpsichord, harp, organ, classical guitar, vibraphone, unaccompanied oboe, clarinet, violin, viola, various chamber-music configurations, orchestra, band, voice and piano, and a cappella choir.
Leslie John Howard is an Australian pianist, musicologist and composer. He is best known for being the only pianist to have recorded the complete solo piano works of Franz Liszt, a project which included more than 300 premiere recordings. He has been described by The Guardian as "a master of a tradition of pianism in serious danger of dying out".
Faust has inspired artistic and cultural works for over four centuries. The following lists cover various media to include items of historic interest, enduring works of high art, and recent representations in popular culture. The entries represent works that a reader has a reasonable chance of encountering rather than a complete catalog.
The symphonic poems of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt are a series of 13 orchestral works, numbered S.95–107. The first 12 were composed between 1848 and 1858 ; the last, Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe, followed in 1882. These works helped establish the genre of orchestral program music—compositions written to illustrate an extra-musical plan derived from a play, poem, painting or work of nature. They inspired the symphonic poems of Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák, Richard Strauss and others.
The radical change Franz Liszt's compositional style underwent in the last 20 years of his life was unprecedented in Western classical music. The tradition of music had been one of unified progression, even to the extent of Johannes Brahms' First Symphony being known as "Beethoven's Tenth". Beethoven's own three periods of composition are monolithic and united. Liszt's, by comparison, seem deconstructivist. Replacing pages which in Liszt's earlier compositions had been thick with notes and virtuoso passages was a starkness where every note and rest was carefully weighed and calculated, while the works themselves become more experimental harmonically and formally.
Marie Jaëll was a French pianist, composer, and pedagogue. Marie Jaëll composed pieces for piano, concertos, quartets, and others, She dedicated her cello concerto to Jules Delsart, and was the first pianist to perform all the piano sonatas of Beethoven in Paris. She did scientific studies of hand techniques in piano playing and attempted to replace traditional drilling with systematic piano methods. Her students included Albert Schweitzer, who studied with her while also studying organ with Charles-Marie Widor in 1898–99. She died in Paris.
The Mephisto Polka is a piece of program music written in folk-dance style for solo piano by Franz Liszt in 1882–83. The work's program is the same as that of the same composer's four Mephisto Waltzes, written respectively in 1859–60, 1880–81, 1882 and 1885 and based on the legend of Faust, not by Goethe but by Nikolaus Lenau (1802–50). The following program note, which Liszt took from Lenau, appears in the printed score of the Mephisto Waltz No. 1:
There is a wedding feast in progress in the village inn, with music, dancing, carousing. Mephistopheles and Faust pass by, and Mephistopheles induces Faust to enter and take part in the festivities. Mephistopheles snatches the fiddle from the hands of a lethargic fiddler and draws from it indescribably seductive and intoxicating strains. The amorous Faust whirls about with a full-blooded village beauty in a wild dance; they waltz in mad abandon out of the room, into the open, away into the woods. The sounds of the fiddle grow softer and softer, and the nightingale warbles his love-laden song.
The three csárdás that Franz Liszt wrote in 1881–82 and 1884 are solo piano pieces based on the Hungarian dance form of the same name. Liszt treats the dance form itself much less freely than he did much earlier with the verbunkos in the Hungarian Rhapsodies, and the material itself remains more specifically Hungarian than gypsy in thematic material. Their spare lines, angular rhythms and advanced harmonies show these pieces to be direct ancestors of the compositions of Béla Bartók. Because of these attributes, the csárdás are considered by Liszt scholars among the more interesting of the composer's late output.
Walter Bache was an English pianist and conductor noted for his championing the music of Franz Liszt and other music of the New German School in England. He studied privately with Liszt in Italy from 1863 to 1865, one of the few students allowed to do so, and continued to attend Liszt's master classes in Weimar, Germany regularly until 1885, even after embarking on a solo career. This period of study was unparalleled by any other student of Liszt and led to a particularly close bond between Bache and Liszt. After initial hesitation on the part of English music critics because he was a Liszt pupil, Bache was publicly embraced for his keyboard prowess, even as parts of his repertoire were questioned.
Tasso: lamento e trionfo, S. 96, was composed by Franz Liszt in 1849, revising it in 1850–51 and again in 1854. It is numbered No. 2 in his cycle of 13 symphonic poems written during his Weimar period.
Although Franz Liszt provided opus numbers for some of his earlier works, they are rarely used today. Instead, his works are usually identified using one of two different cataloging schemes:
France Clidat was a French pianist renowned for her interpretations of the works of Franz Liszt, a great many of which she recorded, and Erik Satie, whose complete piano works she recorded.
The French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) wrote in many genres, including songs, chamber music, orchestral pieces, and choral works. His compositions for piano, written between the 1860s and the 1920s, include some of his best known works.