by Anna Alberati
Franz Liszt’s musical sources in the Casanatense Library (22 october 1811-2011)
On the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth of Franz Liszt, 22 October 1811, which was celebrated and is celebrated with a variety of events, the Casanatense Library makes its small contribution with a list of the composer’s musical sources which are preserved in its precious collection Music. The compositions present, except for four manuscript copies, are all printed editions and are all part, except one, of the Giovanni Sgambati Archive, which is now preserved at the Casanatense Library and which is an important collection which has become part of the patrimonial assets of the Italian state following the purchase made by the MIBACT in the auction held at Christie’s on 13 December 1994, together with the furnishings of the musician’s studio and his Erard piano, which were placed in the Museum of Musical Instruments in Rome.
The figure of Giovanni Sgambati (1841-1914) is that of a pianist and composer of value who was of fundamental importance especially in Roman musical life in the second half of the nineteenth century.
He was born in Rome, but his widowed mother settled in Trevi in Umbria in 1849, where Sgambati, far from both Papal Rome and the battles of the Risorgimento, dedicated himself exclusively to the study of piano and harmony. At the age of 13, he performed in an exam concert at the Residence of the Pontifical Institute of Santa Cecilia (which was located in via di Ripetta), with which he was admitted as a member of the Pontifical Congregation and Academy of Santa Cecilia. He then settled permanently in Rome in 1860, and quickly acquired a good reputation due to his way of playing and the nature of the programs he performed in his concerts: his favorite authors were Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, Bach, Handel.
About to go to Germany in order to improve his piano studies, in 1862 he had the opportunity to meet Franz Liszt, who remained in Rome until 1869, where his various homes became meeting points for Italian and foreign artists and above all of young students: the relationship that Sgambati had with Liszt was particularly important, both for his artistic life and for his own career as a musician and composer.
The provenance of these Lisztian sources, which come directly from Sgambati’s personal library, determines their physiognomy, which is characterized by a particular connotation, so much so that each of these printed editions can be considered a unique example. In fact, each piece, which shows signs of careful study and assiduous consultation, is enriched by numerous annotations and musical additions which are in the handwriting of Giovanni Sgambati. The latter, a brilliant young pianist, was Liszt’s favorite pupil during his stay in Rome in the years 1860-1869 and was then a great friend of him and of Princess Carolyne Sayn Wittgenstein, his partner.
The compositions by Franz Liszt present in the Casanatense Library are the following:
22 Original printed compositions (n. 1-22), of which 17 for piano, from Les cloches de Gêneve (n. 1) composed in 1835 to Csárdás n. 1 (n. 17) composed in 1884, with some of the best-known Lisztian compositions, Ballade n. 1 (n. 2-3), Liebesträume (n. 8), Ungarische Rhapsodie n. 2 (n. 11), Valse impromptu (n. 4-5) “a small, delightful masterpiece, which transmits not only the joy of dancing, but the elegant pleasure of the great lord who knows how to play with minute things, shaping them to perfection make it a jewel” (Michele Campanella); Weinachtsbaum (n. 19), a collection of pieces written for his granddaughter Daniela von Bülow, about which Ferruccio Busoni wrote that they represented “Liszt’s metamorphosis from devil to angel, from the first Grande fantasia de bravure sur la Clochette (diabolical suggestion by Paganini) up to the infantile mystique of the Christmas Tree in which that final innocence which is the fruit of every experience transports us with its peculiar sound guise to a better country”; the oratorio Christus for voices and piano (no. 21), in which Liszt tried to achieve a difficult balance between the language of the Roman liturgical tradition, Italian cantability and the modern orchestra; some parts of the Requiem (n. 20), which was performed with the direction of Giovani Sgambati on 2 April 1887 at 10.30 am, in the National Teutonic church of S. Maria dell’Anima in suffrage «of the illustrious Francesco De Liszt» (dead on 31 July 1886), at the wish of Carolyne Sayn Wittgestein, and had already been performed and directed by Sgambati himself for the funeral of Carolyne, who had died shortly before, on 9 March 1887 .
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12 Compositions for piano between Paraphrases and Transcriptions of themes by other printed authors (n. 23-32), a small example of the endless catalog of this music created by Liszt, the Lied Adelaide by Beethoven (n. 23), one of the most beloved musicians and studied, Valse from Gounod’s Faust (n. 26), Mendelssohn’s Lied Auf Flügeln des Gesanges (n. 27), the fourth of the Études d’éxécution transcendante d’après Paganini, the violinist that Liszt listened to in Paris in 1831 and which became the inspiration and model for his own transcendental virtuosity (n. 30), Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture (n. 32)
4 manuscript copies of Compositions and Transcriptions (n. 33-36)
4 autograph manuscripts by four authors, with their dedications to Liszt (n. 37-40): Augusta Browne-Garrett, prolific composer born in Dublin but lived in the United States, Adele aus der Ohe, German pianist and composer, one of the few child prodigies who were students of Liszt, Nàndor Plotényi, a Hungarian violinist discovered by the violinist Ede Remenyi (who was a friend of Sgambati), finally Heinrich Schulz-Beuthen, a German composer, author of operas, symphonies and concerts for piano and orchestra, highly esteemed by Liszt.
The artistic evolution that clearly manifests itself in Liszt’s compositions, from those of his youth to those of his last years, is reflected in human events, in the journey of Liszt the man who shows his great capacity for evolution and renewal, as you can read it in these short biographical notes.
Franz Liszt was born on 22 October 1811 in Raiding (in Hungarian Doborjan) in the county of Ödenburg (in Hungarian Sopron), a region that then belonged to Hungary but which in 1920 was annexed to Austria: the population, predominantly Germanic, spoke the German language, like Liszt, who then used French as his preferred language. He began studying the piano very early, with the guidance of his father, an amateur musician and administrator of Prince Nicholas Esterházy, who after hearing one of his first concerts, in 1820, offered him a scholarship to complete his musical education.
He moved with his family to Vienna, where he was a pupil of Carl Czerny for the piano and for the composition of Antonio Salieri and where his dazzling career as a pianist began. In December 1823 he arrived in Paris, where he remained for 12 years and where he had his cultural and artistic education, although he was not admitted to the Conservatory where foreigners were not allowed to enter. Here he met the three musicians who profoundly influenced him: Hector Berlioz, met on 4 December 1830, Niccolò Paganini, heard for the first time on 9 March 1831, who led him to transform his piano technique into “transcendental virtuosity”, and finally Chopin , met on 26 February 1832. In 1833 he met another fundamental figure, namely the Countess Maria d’Agoult, with whom he had a relationship in the years 1835-39 and saw the birth of his three children, Blandine, Cosima (who married the musicians Hans von Bülow and Richard Wagner) and Daniel. In 1839 he discovered Rome, where in one evening he invented the piano recital which he called “soliloquy”, with a concert given alone.
From 1839 to 1847 he held concerts throughout Europe, always with resounding success. During a tour in Ukraine in 1847, he met Princess Caroline de Sayn-Wittgenstein, who would be his lifelong companion. From 1848 to 1861 he remained permanently in Weimar, where he was appointed Kapellmeister and where he was active as a conductor and piano teacher, attracting a large group of pianists, and where above all he devoted himself intensely to composition. His situation, both due to his relationship with the princess and due to cultural disagreements and personal intrigues, then became so difficult that he was forced to leave Weimar. On 21 October 1861 he joined the princess, who hoped to obtain the annulment of her marriage from the Pope, in Rome, where he remained until 1869. Here, with the aim of becoming the official composer of the Vatican, he dedicated himself to the composition of sacred music and to the activity of piano teacher, he also took the tonsure and minor orders. In 1869 he agreed to return to Weimar, while in 1871 he was appointed royal advisor by the Hungarian government: from this moment Liszt spent his life between Rome, Weimar and Budapest, “a trifurcated life” as he himself wrote, that of a man “half gypsy and half Franciscan”, and composed almost exclusively pieces for piano. After having reconciled with his daughter Cosima and his friend Wagner, he continued his activity as a director and teacher. Upon returning from a triumphal tour in England and France he died in Bayreuth on 31 July 1886.
Always one step away from paradise.
Franz Liszt is a great musician: he was a very famous, charismatic and fascinating pianist, but also a much discussed composer. The phrase that opens the title of this editorial is a reflection (the origin of which is unknown) according to which the music composed by Liszt is so beautiful that “Liszt is always one step away from heaven, but he never gets there” . The reflection is not only ungenerous but also certainly inaccurate, but it shows with a particular tone of immediacy how and how often the quality of Liszt’s compositions was questioned, both among his contemporaries and among music critics of different eras. Misunderstandings, misunderstandings, prejudices: Liszt is at the center of a problem that considers him almost exclusively as a great piano virtuoso, overshadowing his qualities as a composer and above all as an innovator of musical thought. In reality Liszt never sought an easily identifiable identity, among other things in a period of intense search for nationalism, so much so that he is now defined as the first truly European composer, and, in relation to this, a letter sent by Liszt is reported to Ödön Péter József von Mihalovich:
“The whole world is against me. Catholics because they find my church music profane, Protestants because my music is Catholic, Freemasons because they consider my music clerical. For conservatives I am a revolutionary, for futurists a false Jacobin. As for the Italians, despite Sgambati, if they are Garibaldians they hate me as a bigot, if I am on the side of the Vatican they accuse me of moving the temple of Venus into the church. For Bayreuth I am not a composer, but an advertising agent. The Germans hate my music because they consider it French, the French because they consider it German; for the Austrians I make gypsy music, for the Hungarians I make foreign music. And the Jews hate me and my music for no reason.”
Finally, one of the most interesting aspects of Liszt’s artistic production as a composer is that Liszt was not a theorist, but his music is “the result of a slow elaboration of ideas born at the keyboard, probably improvising”, as Michele Campanella says (who recently communicated in an exciting way his personal experience as a performer for a new way of interpreting Liszt’s music), who states, among other things, that “thehe music of Franz Liszt, based on an imaginative poetics of colours, atmospheres, images, unknown evocations, requires an interpretation adequate to some extent at the level of its creator, supreme interpreter of himself”, an interpreter that one can imagine listening to only through his musical compositions.
The illustrations in the editorial come in part from: Burger, Ernst. Franz Liszt : die Jahre in Rom und Tivoli, 1839, 1861-1886. Mainz : Schott, c2010. – 229 p. : ill. ; 31 cm + 1 CD (location D. 1080; the CD is placed CD 93)