Liszt- large-scale works

Ballade No 2 in B minor- The piano accompaniment which begins the piece is no doubt the musical representation of something “stormy”. Not necessarily an actual storm, but perhaps the storm within. I would lean more towards the inner storm, considering that the proceeding section is notably beautiful and feminine in orchestration. This reminds me of a Chopin ballade in its story telling capability, except that in this beginning I am assuming that the storm is a result of self and that the feminine theme is what brings peace to it. In Chopin’s case it usually seems like the storm is the result of the loss of the feminine theme. The Allegro deciso reminds me of Chopin’s 2nd Ballade in its aggressive nature. With the broken-octave section Liszt takes Beethoven’s famed technique and turns it into a special effect, more so than an accompaniment. The slow romantic sections seem to me to most certainly be love-songs to the woman in question, assuming that this is a love story. This idea is furthered by Liszt’s use of a baritone register for the melody, which is then answered in the soprano. The virtuosic effects are well placed, in my opinion, showing the heights of human emotion when real love is present.

Sonata in B minor- The beginning of the sonata demonstrates supreme invention in the area of utilizing moments of silence to create real music. Liszt shows himself in the beginning of this sonata to be an innovator of registral use for pianistic device. Liszt’s use of octaves in the introductory material displays his seriousness on the subject of being able to do anything on a piano that an orchestra can do. I should note that I feel the repeated A octave with the “thumping” bass note section to be one of the greatest idea’s ever presented to any form of music. How any composer could originate this idea in a texture already so rich with notes and register is beyond me. The fugue within the sonata seems to me to be Liszt’s attempt to not only show off his compositional devices to the “non-believers”, but also a way of him taking a baroque-style tool and making at virtuosic as humanly possible. Liszt’s use of thematic transformation in this sonata is enough to write thousands of dissertations on.