Dance and Program Music

Liszt Mephisto Waltz No. 1

The beginning of this piece, up until the un poco meno mosso section, is extremely inventive in Liszt’s use of orchestral tools as special effects for piano. The use of quintal harmonies harkens back to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Liszt’s use of intervallically leaping and transposing octaves also reminds me of the chromatic sounds of Wagner. The swift tempo and thick textures make Liszt’s use of rests strategically brilliant in terms of suspension and excitement. In the next section Liszt uses rising fourths and falling fifths within a cantabile section which is exotic and charming in its use of dissonance and rhythmic syncopation. The presto section with the thirds and trills serves as an excellent transition, not into new harmonic material, but into similar material with an all new accompaniment and overall air of excitement. Liszt’s use of three staves to employ his “three-handed” techniques is extremely innovative in terms of a composer’s use of notation to inspire correct voicing, not relying on the inherent knowledge of the interpreter as his predecessors would have. His use of syncopations and chromatics, as well as swiftly altering registers, gives the music a feeling of turmoil that seems to invoke the heart to change beats while listening. You can see Liszt’s use of roaring arpeggios with exotic harmonies as a means of showing off Thalberg’s famed techniques but with greater ingenuity. The chromatic median chords which bring the piece to a close are extremely far removed from any of the music we have yet listened to, showing off Liszt’s ability to make functional use of previously non-functioning harmonies.

Chopin Scherzo No. 2

The beginning of this piece probably makes just as much importance of the harmonies as with the rests. Chopin will use the motivic material here to weave the entire piece together through various moods and textures. At the con anime section Chopin creates a melody with similar contour to the original motive, displayed in its use of three note stepwise movement followed by a leap. The left hand in this section is deceptively difficult and requires a great deal of melodic shaping to keep the levels balanced. Chopin writes out the repeat for this apparent sonata form. For the sostenuto theme Chopin once again makes use of the original motive, in this way this work is a new take on sonata form by using related motives for both the A and B themes. With the next part Chopin ingeniously weaves the exact same motive together in three ways with a quarter note version in the soprano, a triplet eighth-note version in the alto, and a half note version in the bass, with an accompanimental figure in the tenor. The E major arpeggio section, though lovely, is hard to see as having to do with any of the other harmonic material, unless Chopin was using it as an entry point for the arpeggiated figure, with which he will weave the development section. The development is a thick and complicated mixture of components from throughout the piece. The recap is nearly identical to the beginning except that the B-flat note is now held at the end of the original motive. The coda is a brilliant and virtuosic ending filled with arpeggios, chords, and large leaps.

Brahms Ballade Op. 10, No. 1

The beginning of this ballade is very much like a dark and ominous hymn song. At the allegro the character changes into a triumphant and heroic account. When the original theme reenters it now has this heroic quality but as the “battle-drums” slowly fade away the mood worsens again. The ending is interesting in its use of the 1st section but with a only slightly embellished accompaniment. I recall Nicole Agostino mentioning that the triplets in the bass symbolized the dripping of blood, and I can definitely hear this within the music now.

Tchaikovski The Seasons, Op. 37b

November- I don’t have much to say about this piece… to be honest it’s a bit too happy-sounding for my tastes. It sounds a little bit like a cowboy song to me. The use of the sixteenth-note figure at the end is interestingly harmonically to me in the way that it combines the folksy melody with the sounds of chromatic swirling.

December – The use of December as a waltz is interesting to me. I wonder what Tchaikovski was thinking in terms of musical portrayal with a winter month. To me it does not really sound as though his winter was in a place where it snowed frequently.

Liszt Dante Sonata from Years of Pilgrimage, Year 2

Liszt makes great use of the tritone interval at the start of this piece to display a descent into hell. All throughout the piece he uses these techniques of thick textures which descend and ascend, I would imagine this is to symbolize difficult attempt to escape the hellish entities. The use of repeated chords and octaves as lamenting figures is wonderful in its depiction of fear, it almost makes you feel as though you yourself are shaking at the sight of the terrible imagery. The technical devices in this piece in no way make me feel as though the piece is primarily about showing off virtuosity, but rather about depicting larger than life visual images that require larger than life technique. It is in works like this where Franz Liszt begins transitioning from the german story-telling composition into the french picture-painting composition. Liszt uses the form to tell the story, but he uses the timbres and the acrobatics of the piano to cause a visual response to what is happening in the music.