Liszt's so-called late style is famous for sparse textures, compact and repetitive phrases, dissonance, borderline post-tonality, and general oddness. It is largely a small group of miniature piano works—works in the mold of the iconic Nuages gris—that have sealed the reputation of this music for enigmatic, intransigent, and prophetic “lateness.” The smallness and stylistic narrowness of this repertoire, however, misrepresents Liszt's wider oeuvre from the 1870s and 1880s, a problem that has occasionally been raised and addressed in recent Liszt literature. James M. Baker, for example, has noted that works depicting “death, premonition, and mourning” have attracted disproportionate attention “thanks primarily to their daringly experimental harmony,” which has marginalized “other equally important pieces.” His more equitable survey of piano works from 1869 to 1886 serves as a partial redress. In her monograph Liszt's Final Decade, Dolores Pesce has similarly explored neglected repertoire, especially sacred works by Liszt, revealing a greater plurality of styles and affects in the composer's late oeuvre. And in my own research I have tried to counter a tendency to homogenize a “late style” through post-tonal analysis.

A general fascination with the aesthetic extremity of a single, overarching late style persists, nevertheless, and one important aspect of this aesthetic extremity seems to be defined by what Ralph P. Locke has conceptualized in this volume as “anti-virtuosity” (see chapter 10). This presents a special challenge for a study of virtuosity in the late solo piano works. The problem is no solved by merely pointing to the well-known fact that virtuosity can be found in many of these works, but to a lesser extent (none of the late solo-piano works is quite as technically demanding as the virtuoso works from c. 1830–63). We cannot get away from the predictable, generic context of virtuosity, which brings the whole issue of implicit incompatibility between Lisztian virtuosity and late style into sharp relief. To take only a few examples from the original works (table 11.1, below; transcriptions will be discussed later in this chapter), virtuosity is often aligned with genre, as in earlier decades of the nineteenth century.