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Liszt's Experimental Idiom and Music of the Early Twentieth Century Allen Liszt's Experimental Idiom and Music of the Early Twentieth Century Allen Forte 19th-Century Music, Vol. 10, No. 3, Special Issue: Resolutions I. (Spring, 1987), pp. 209-228. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0148-2076%28198721%2910%3A3%3C209%3ALEIAMO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E 19th-Century Music is currently published by University of California Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/ucal.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Fri May 25 15:01:16 2007 Liszt's Experimental Idiom and Music of the Early Twentieth Century ALLEN FORTE The question of historical precedents for the re- last fifty years or so. While older studies, such as markable new music that suddenly-or so it Ernst Kurth's Romantische Harmonik, sug- seemed to contemporaries-appeared on the gested in somewhat less-than-precise terms the scene in 1908-09 has always fascinated musi- existence of certain evolutionary processes in cians. The question has necessarily been re- late nineteenth-century music, recent work has formulated, however, as a result of changes in provided more specific analytical information theoretical and analytical approaches over the in an effort to establish a firm technical basis for a better understanding of the emergence of the music of the twentieth-century avant garde.' 19th-CenturyMusic XI3 (Spring 1987).0 by the Regents of In this emergent phase (onehesitates even to the University of California. suggest that it was any kind of orderly evolu- I am indebted to the American Council of Learned Socie- ties and to the Nationale Forschungs- und Gedenkstatten der Klassischen Literatur in Weimar, Goethe- und Schiller- Archiv, for the opportunity in October 1984 to study Liszt's 'Ernst Kurth, Romantische Harmonik und ihre Krise in manuscripts, sketches, and letters. For bibliographical as- Wagners "Tristan" (Berlin, 1923). See especially pp. 183- sistance my thanks to Judith Silber. Liszt's sketches pub- 228. Two more recent studies are relevant: James M. Baker, lished by kind permission of the Goethe- und Schiller-Ar- Alexander Scriabin: The Transition from Tonality to Ato- chiv, Weimar. nality (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1977),and Allen Forte, Musical examples for this article were prepared by David "Schoenberg's Creative Evolution: The Path to Atonality," Budmen. Musical Quarterly 64 (19781, 133-76. 209 19TH tionary progression] the music of Liszt appears extent to which its unusual features exerted in- CENTURY MUSIC to have played an important precursory role. In- fluence upon them remains m0ot.l deed, there is a rather extensive specialized lit- Music in the experimental idiom exhibits erature concerned with what is regarded as his specific surface characteristics. For example, it main contribution to this transition, the late is often recitative-like, occurring in the intro- music (after 1880),and with certain of its strik- ductions to such longer works as the last tone- ing surface features, such as the "augmented poem, Hamlet. Very often it is threnodic in triad" and various exotic scales. quality, even when the title does not explicitly In view of these writings-many of which indicate an elegiac program, as it does in Am will be cited in the course of this article-it Grabe Richard Wagners. Finally, there is the may seem presumptuous to address, once again, definite impression that a specific tonal focus is the topic of Liszt's music as precursor of early in abeyance, or has at least become very attenu- twentieth-century music. Still, careful study ated-a feature that has been observed by other based upon more effective analytical tech- writers. Often the absence of a key signature un- niques may produce a deeper and more compre- derscores this characteristic, even though a con- hensive view of the music of Liszt that is most ventional key signature may appear later in the closely related to that of the early twentieth music when the more traditional idiom enters. century, the music composed in what I shall This brief description of some of the general call his experimental idiom. surface characteristics of the experimental id- Under the term "experimental" I mean to in- iom is intended only as the most casual kind of clude not only the radical late works, but also introduction to this extraordinary music. Far segments of earlier works, extending back into more penetrating analysis is required to reveal the pre-Weimar period, before 1848. This view its inner workings. is based upon the assumption that there are two That statement leads naturally to a brief general categories of music represented in overview of published analytical work relevant Liszt's ceuvre: the traditional music of triadic to the present study. Within this extensive liter- tonality and the experimental music, which ature, the writings that relate most directly to represents innovational departures from the the present one are those by James M. Baker, Ro- norms of tonal syntax. In the latter there is an bert P. Morgan, R. Larry Todd, and Paul increasingly stronger movement toward a dif- Wil~on.~It is no accident that these are all ferent sphere of sonic organization, one that American authors whose work reflects, to a came into full view some twenty-three years af- ter Liszt's death in the new music of Bartok, Schoenberg, Webern, Scriabin, and Stravinsky. It is not my intention to assert that there is a lBoth Schoenberg and Bartok published laudatory essays on Liszt in the centennial year 1911, some time after both had direct connection between Liszt's non-tradi- broken with traditionalmodes of composition. Of these, the tional music and the music of the avant-garde Schoenberg essay is the more suggestive. He writes, for ex- composers of the early twentieth century, but ample: "A man like this is no longer an artist, but some- thing greater: a prophet" ("Ein solcher Mensch ist nicht rather to show that when he created music that mehr ein Kiinstler, sondern bald etwas Grosseres: ein was remarkably similar in specific general Prophet"]. Arnold Schoenberg, "Franz Liszts Werk und We- structural aspects to the innovative music that sen," Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung 38 (19111, 1009-13, En- glish trans. in Style and Idea, ed. Leonard Stein (New York, followed the Iahrhundertwende, he anticipated 19751, 442-47; BCla Bartok, "Liszt zenCje Cs a mai kozon- a significant historical development. This dis- seg," NepmuvelBs (Budapest), 1911, pub. in English as claimer requires qualification, however, since, "Liszt's Music and Our Contemporary Public," New Hun- garian Quarterly 2 (19611, 5-8. In this encomium, Bartok with the exception of the late works (most of deplores the public's failure to perceive Liszt's true worth which were unpublished and unperformed and writes of Liszt's "almost fanatical striving for what is when the twentieth-century avant garde ap- new and rare" (p. 61. 3Baker, Scriabin; Robert P. Morgan, "Dissonant Prolonga- peared on the scene),Liszt's music forms part of tions: Theoretical and Compositional Precedents," Iournal the repertory of concert music of the later nine- of Music Theory 20 (19761, 49-91; R. Larry Todd, "Liszt, teenth century and was known to Schoenberg, Fantasy and Fugue for Organ on 'Ad nos, ad salutarem un- dam'," this journal 4 (19811, 250-61; Paul Wilson, "Con- Bartok, and others. Yet, in the absence of ex- cepts of Prolongation and Bartok's Opus 20," Music Theory plicit testimonials from those composers, the Spectrum 6 (19841, 78-89. greater or lesser degree, the influence of literature also often burdened with political and ALLEN Heinrich S~henker.~Additional references to FORTE ethnic platitude^.^ Liszt's their work as well as to the work of other Of greater significance, however, is the gen- Experimental scholars will appear at appropriate points be- era1 disregard of the concept of structural levels Idiom low. and its expression in large-scale linear motions In general, much of the literature that as they relate to details of structure-a disre- touches upon aspects of the experimental idiom gard that goes along with a seeming preoccupa- (primarily the late piano music, as noted above) tion with the identification of certain easily rec- is disappointing. Perhaps the most obvious of ognized entities, notably, the "augmented the defects is the virtual absence of studies of triad," the "diminished seventh chord," the complete composition^.^ Moreover, although whole-tone scale, and the "Hungarian" scale. many authors assert that the music has atonal Once these components have been identified, characteristics, they do not pursue the techni- no further conclusions ensue. Exceptions to cal implications of such an asserti~n.~In the this criticism, in addition to the publications by worst cases, the studies are desultory, impres- Morgan and Todd cited in footnote 2, will be sionistic, and based upon models that are de- mentioned as we proceed. monstrably inappropriate in that they do not The analytical technique employed in the produce substantive analytical results.' Prime present study derives from, but is not identical examples of the latter are the recent Hungarian to, the linear methods of Heinrich Schenker.
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