My 1990 article “Liszt's Années de pèlerinage, Book 3: A ‘Hungarian’ Cycle?” argues that Liszt conceived the Années de pèlerinage: Troisième année as a true cycle, with musical and conceptual links to his homeland Hungary. Années 3 carries us through Liszt's reflections on death via its four threnodies and the consolation he found in Christianity via its three religious pieces. Années 3's multiple references to Hungary's second national anthem “Szózat” suggest that Liszt infused his metaphysical reflections with thoughts of his homeland. Années 3 is further unified through tonal and motivic features.

This essay offers an in-depth interpretation of two of the cycle's threnodies, Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este 1 and 2 (S. 162/2 and 3 / LW A283/2 and 3, 1877). Liszt's multiple surviving versions of the two works allow me to examine my interpretations against firsthand evidence. My analysis uncovers intersecting concerns on Liszt's part as he revises: how to “work out” each piece's seminal harmonic concept, how to enhance plaintive gestures, and how to bring virtuosic textures into play. With respect to the last, Liszt engages virtuosity in a multifaceted way. As a composer-performer, Liszt desires to “command” his instrument and have those who perform his music do likewise: as virtuosos, they expose the keyboard's sonic potential revealed through diverse textures, whether in lyrical or dramatic passages. Significantly, Liszt's revisions of the two threnodies often increase their sonic exploration of the keyboard not simply for its performative value but also as a vehicle for expression within each piece's overall affective trajectory.

In sum, this chapter proposes to show that the final version of each Cypress piece can be understood in terms of an affective journey. While each threnody evokes a tone of lament, of plaintiveness in its opening motive, neither is limited to a single affect. As Liszt develops a harmonic plan linked in some way to these germinal motives, he also traces an affective trajectory that complicates the lament theme. In Aux cyprès 1, on the one hand, the unstable opening motive yields to a stable lyrical melody. In the quietude of what follows, Liszt offers a glimpse of solace achieved through religious faith, though still tinged with the pain of grief.

THIS CHAPTER, devoted to how the motet functions in the thirteenth century, draws its examples largely from a motet family based on the chant fragment portare; this melodic segment appears in the Alleluia: Dulce lignum (M22) for the celebrations of the Cross: its Invention on 3 May and its Exaltation on 14 September. A number of Parisian chant sources, including F-Pn lat. 1112, fol. 169v, shown in Example 6.1, use the word sustinere instead of portare, a fact that is not necessarily significant because the words are employed interchangeability in the Office liturgy for the feasts of the Cross. As indicated below the example, the text and melody also appear in a Marian version, Alleluia: Dulcis virgo, for the Octave of the Assumption, with the word portare. In this contrafactum, the image of the Cross bearing the weight of Christ changes to one of Mary carrying him, presumably both before birth and later as the infant Jesus. Thus, the chant segment possesses both Marian and Christological connotations, an essential fact as we turn to the exegetical function of motets.

As discussed in Catherine A. Bradley's chapter, many of the earliest thirteenth-century Latin motets result from the addition of a syllabic text to the upper voice of discant clausulae of the Magnus liber organi or its supplements. These new Latin texts allude to the plainsong from which the tenor chant melisma is taken or even to other liturgical items for the same feast. These motets thus function as exegetical vehicles in which the hermeneutic modes are applied to the Scriptural passages associated with the feast. Of the four hermeneutic modes – historia, allegoria, tropologia, and anagoge – the tropological figures strongly in the early Latin motet repertory. A new Latin upper-voice text often tropes the tenor chant, giving it a moral interpretation or significance apart from its direct meaning.

Although Franz Liszt (1811–86) remains one of the world's most celebrated performers, he wanted more than anything else to be known and appreciated as a composer. To his abiding consternation and frustration, such recognition eluded him. The public yearned for the pianist Liszt after he relinquished that role in 1847; at the same time, the barbs cast at his music in the 1850s and 1860s festered within him. In confronting his self-image in the final decade before his death in 1886, Liszt crafted different public and private personae: before his public he was a musical luminary with significant artistic accomplishments to his credit and potential power to infl uence decisions in the musical world—in effect a musical elder statesman— while to his closest friends he revealed a vulnerable side that betrayed his insecurity as a composer. In exploring his self-presentation, beginning with its most overt manifestations and ending with his most private soul-searchings, I argue that this intelligent, articulate nineteenth-century musician of extraordinary talent was able to reconcile his inner conflicts with the aid of a personally constructed Christian moral philosophy.

Two reasons prompted my decision to concentrate on the years 1877 to 1886: they circumscribe Liszt's final decade, age sixty-five to seventy-four, when, by the reckoning of his time, he counted as an old man. 1877 also marks his vow to discontinue all public piano performance, even for charity events, in which he had continued to participate after his retirement from the concert stage in 1847. He maintained this resolve with very few exceptions. Having removed once and for all the chief catalyst that enabled critics to focus on his pianistic and ignore his compositional skills, Liszt still continued to fight his battle with the critics (and with himself) about his worth as a composer. The book explores how Liszt grappled with his self-image and its presentation to others in the final stage of his life.

Liszt's conflicted sense of self emerged as I read his correspondence with the two most important women in his life at this time, Carolyne von Sayn- Wittgenstein (1819–87) and Olga von Meyendorff (1838–1926).

Liszt played an active role in the complex business of social networking upon which musicians of his time relied, as they do today. This chapter examines Liszt's comments and decisions in support of certain individuals in his final decade, specifically those he discussed in his letters to Olga and Carolyne. It begins with his piano students and moves to his musician colleagues of the New German School, connected by a discussion of Liszt's support for Giovanni Sgambati, a former pupil who went on to reinvigorate the musical scene in Rome, at least in part by introducing some of the same repertory heard in Weimar, the heart of the New German School.

One event to which the chapter will return a number of times is the meeting of the Tonkünstler Versammlung in Weimar in 1884 under the direction of Liszt and the Leipzig choral conductor Carl Riedel (1827–88). The Tonkünstler Versammlungen were yearly gatherings of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein, the first national music society in Germany, founded in Weimar in 1861 (before Liszt's departure), with Franz Brendel as president and Liszt providing artistic leadership. The Versammlungen included festival concerts (Musikfeste), as well as public discussions and editorials by Brendel on the state of music in Germany and Austria. The Musikfeste were devoted to presentations of new music, which from the outset meant works by the New German School composers, particularly Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner. Not incidentally, the expression “New German School” had been coined by Brendel at the first Tonkünstler Versammlung in Leipzig in 1859; he preferred it to “music (or musicians) of the future,” which opponents had turned into a negative epithet. After Brendel's death in 1868, Riedel took over the presidency of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein. During his final decade, Liszt worked with Riedel on programming for some of the Musikfeste and hosted the event in 1884.

Liszt's dedication to promoting new music at the Musikfeste refl ected his life-long belief that society should support its artists, who in turn should pursue a mission to improve society through their creative contributions.

The preceding chapters have revealed many facets of the public and private Liszt. In public he cultivated above all else an image of dignified musical elder statesman, manifest in portraiture and in person, and in his advocacy for fellow musicians. But beneath this proud self-presentation was a vulnerability related to his need for public recognition as a composer in the aftermath of negative criticism in Vienna and various German cities in the late 1850s and Paris in 1866. Even as Liszt harbored an aversion to these locales, he craved public vindication of his works in their musical venues. This inner conflict reemerged each time one of the cities invited him to attend a performance of his music. Gradually Liszt confronted them all, culminating in his Paris success in the final year of his life. Yet he hesitated to accept the redemption of the two works that had suffered most at the hands of prior critics, the Dante Symphony (G14) and the Gran Mass (I2). The latter carried a painful memory of betrayal by his supposed friend Hector Berlioz, a hurt Liszt could not completely put behind him. These earlier experiences also colored his advocacy for fellow musicians. Though Liszt rarely missed an opportunity to hear Berlioz's music performed, he wavered when asked to support a memorial to the man. And though Liszt's kindness extended to many aspiring musicians, particularly those who subscribed to the aesthetics of the New German School, he at times singled out for support composers whom he expected to receive negative criticism. He empathized with their anticipated hurt.

In addition to past criticism of his music, the public's continuing desire for the pianist Liszt factored into the aging musician's vulnerable self-image. This study has explored his professional aspirations and modus operandi after he vowed in 1877 to perform publicly no longer. It has focused particularly upon Liszt's strong desire to contribute as a composer to the music of the Catholic Church. As we have seen, his publication efforts in the sacred music realm again sometimes encountered disappointing rejection.

This chapter lays out the theological and literary background for understanding Liszt's words in the remaining portion of the book. It reveals that the persona which Liszt presented to Carolyne, and in a somewhat lesser degree to Olga, was grounded in his three-fold spiritual identification with Christ, Job, and the Good Thief Saint Dismas, all of whom exemplify the topos of suffering. In his later years Liszt concentrated on a particular aspect of Christological signification, the suffering Christ who submitted himself to his father's will. Significantly, that very emphasis lies at the core of Saint Francis of Assisi's life and the Franciscan order, for both of which Liszt felt an affinity. Liszt was also attracted to the Good Thief Saint Dismas. Through the rhetoric of the Good Thief who suffered by Christ's side, Liszt could express both repentance for his faults and hope for his life to come. Liszt was also drawn to the Old Testament character of Job. On 19 February 1883, he wrote: “Job is my patron from the Old Testament, and the Good Thief Saint Dimas [Dismas], that of the New.” Although Job, like Christ, represented limitless suffering in life, he too played a part in Liszt's quest for spiritual consolation and positive resignation at the end of his life.

The chapter explores Liszt's association with these figures and how it was informed by the rhetoric of nineteenth-century Catholic thought as well as by the religious sentiment of the early Romantic writers Chateaubriand, Lamennais, and Lamartine. Whereas earlier in life Liszt had been drawn to, even identified with despairing individuals such as Byron, Werther, and Faust, he turned in these late years increasingly to religious figures of hope and consolation and essentially discarded his secular figures of despair.

Suffering in Nineteenth-Century French Thought

Because Liszt was one of the most painted and photographed Europeans in the second half of the nineteenth century, the varied and widely available images of the man enable us to look closely at the way he presented himself to the public as he grew older. This chapter specifically discusses the late portraits and photographs of Liszt and compares them to those from his earlier life. Liszt appears to have cultivated a public persona as proud musical elder statesman, someone recognized by dignitaries and the public for his significant artistic accomplishments. This image can be compared and contrasted with another aspect of Liszt's public persona, the benevolent figure in religious garb. These two images clashed most obviously when Liszt, on occasion, decorated his clerical robe with the honorific medals he coveted and accumulated. As we shall shortly see, the comments of one critic in particular (Eduard Hanslick) and various published cartoons reveal a skeptical reaction. Even absent the medals, the seeming incongruity of the clerically dressed Liszt participating in benefit concerts and sitting for portraits could raise doubts about his religious sincerity. Liszt did not always have the self-awareness of the “performing self,” who takes precautions against embarrassment. His pride sometimes overcame the humility he sought, feeding him into his critics’ waiting hands.

We turn first to Liszt's portraits from his virtuoso years. Dana Gooley argues that Liszt's dominant image during the 1840s played upon an association with Napoleon. A number of music critics commented that Liszt's physiognomy resembled Napoleon's, with specific reference to their heads and their profiles in particular. Perhaps more importantly, critics noted a strong similarity in character between the two charismatic figures: both projected independence, pride, determination, and an uncompromising sense of integrity. To suggest this character resemblance, some portrait painters showed Liszt with a tense mouth and a direct, almost accusatory gaze, while some posed Liszt with arms crossed on his chest, looking defiantly into the eyes of the beholder. According to Gooley, “It is possible that the crossed arms are an explicitly Napoleonic motif. More important, however, is the air of nobility and determination the arms convey, which signify those character traits most similar to Napoleon's.” The combination of physical resemblance, character-evoking pose and facial expression suggested Napoleon—the young, military, preimperial Napoleon— to a society steeped in his memory (see fig 1.1).