Lisztomania

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The poet, columnist and Paris correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung Heinrich Heine characterized the musically irrational, sensational and euphoric enthusiasm (" mania ") that the piano virtuoso Franz Liszt in Paris in 1844 with his word creation Lisztomania , which was already verifiable in a feature section in 1840 Aroused audience and thereby "excited the beautiful world of Paris". At the same time, Heine recalls Liszt's famous Berlin concerts in 1841/1842; Theodor Hosemann's colored caricature in the concert hall was created there in 1842 . About the excitement of the audience, Heine speculated: “But what is the reason for this phenomenon? The answer to the question may belong more to pathology than to aesthetics. "

Long before Heine adopted this term, an aura of the "great agitator" Liszt had formed. The virtuoso and the momentum (Lisztomania) of his Europe-wide fan base formed an artistic " unique selling point " in his time .

The term “Lisztomania” has recently been used in a clichéd way. Modified, it is used for the boundless euphoria of the audience at other events, such as the " Beatlemania " at the Beatles' performances .

Theodor Hosemann 1842: tumultuous enthusiasm “[i] m Concertsaale” of the Berlin Singakademie

Virtuosity and visual appearance

Traveling singers and instrumentalists have been known since the 18th century, and their popularity can be seen in contemporary visual reproductions. The “breakneck” singing skills of the castrati operas stimulated the caricatures in particular . In the 19th century music events shifted from the courtly stage to private ( salons ) or public concert halls, where they aimed at the public's taste in society; Franz Liszt is known to have a close relationship with his listeners. His phenomenal pianistic feats challenged contemporary painters to exaggerated caricatures, including detailed Hungarian drawings with satirical texts on Liszt's facial expressions and hand movements while playing.

Josef Danhauser : Liszt 1840, at his feet Marie d'Agoult ; standing (from left): Victor Hugo , Niccolò Paganini , Gioachino Rossini ; seated (from left): Alexandre Dumas the Elder , George Sand

Or he was painted (e.g. by Josef Danhauser ) with his head held high and his gaze transfigured (“aura”) in the direction of Beethoven (bust) at the time when he was serving his audience with his symphonies transcribed for the piano . Especially during his big concert tour from 1839 to 1847 across Europe, he was a target for cartoonists, humorists and satirists, who left us with rare impressions.

In the anonymous potpourri caricature, Liszt is referred to as diable de l'harmonie (German: Devil of Harmony ), alluding to his eccentric compositional style . The corresponding lecture piece is written on the picture: Liszt's [Grand] Galop chromatique [op. 12], which was one of his "rockets, the highlights of virtuoso fireworks". Liszt executes him on an imaginary horse with his hands splayed and his hair flowing, while he “chases along the dizzying abyss with the reins in place”.

Anonymous potpourri picture from a concert in Saint Petersburg in 1843

The picture from Saint Petersburg shows the Italian tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini in the left foreground , who gave a concert with Liszt, and in the background in front of a hinted orchestra a conductor whose physiognomy is reminiscent of Hector Berlioz .

Ludwig Rellstab with his music reviews of the Berlin concert season 1841/42 was one of Liszt's expert admirers among a myriad of overwhelming reviews. The oil painting by Josef Danhauser from 1840 illustrates Franz Liszt's charisma and importance as a European phenomenon. Liszt then forms the center of a fictional scene. All the people gathered in the picture or quoted as portraits and sculptures, as well as many objects, point to the primacy of Liszt's music.

Child prodigies

WA Mozart, 7 years old

During his childhood concert tours, Franz Liszt was celebrated by his audience as the new Mozart . His father Adam Liszt accompanied him , just as the ambitious father Leopold Mozart did with his son Wolfgang in the 18th century, to demonstrate his arts on the - then - harpsichord in the European music centers of Frankfurt , London , Paris , Vienna and many other places .

Paganini awakening experience

Niccolò Paganini , portrayed by Eugène Delacroix in 1832

The appearance of the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840) marked a turning point in virtuosity in music history . He was said to be “the demon of his playing on four strings” and he “elevated” his instrument - or “its sound” - to “a category of its own”. For the 20-year-old Liszt, who heard Paganini in Paris in 1832, this violinist became the “Paganini awakening experience”, during which “the narcotic sound […] became independent”. He was deeply touched: what suffering, what misery, what agony in these four strings . Liszt and his composer colleagues Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms a . a. and later Sergei Rachmaninoff were inspired to adapt works and themes by the violinist by transferring his sonic and technical experiments to the piano or the orchestra. In particular, its was a minor Caprice Op. 24 to a "Ohrwurm- topic " that even in 1941 by Witold Lutoslawski and 1947 by Boris Blacher was used.

Liszt stages himself and the piano

Érard's advanced piano repeater mechanics

Playing the piano was decisively further developed by Liszt and from then on the instrument played a major role in concert business: Liszt introduced the solo piano recital in London in 1840 , whereby - a novelty like his already playing by heart - he set up the opened grand piano towards the audience and lateral silhouette presented. Heinrich Heine paraphrased this poetically: “[he played] all alone, or rather only accompanied by his genius. And yet, how powerful, how shocking was its mere appearance! "

Even the child Liszt did not sit motionless in front of the keyboard while playing the piano, as his teacher Carl Czerny (1791–1857) in Vienna taught, but rather moved his whole body conspicuously while making music. Czerny also remembers how effortlessly the child played from sight and improvised with a “certain ingenious sense”. Liszt's piano style then developed parallel to the acoustic and structural development of the concert grand . In particular, Liszt's preferred instruments from the Parisian piano company of Sébastien Érard (1752–1831) with their advanced piano mechanics and seven octave range came in very handy. With his eccentric technique, Liszt often played to disgrace those grand pianos of that time that were still built without a cast-iron frame; this even increased the appeal of his performances. Heinrich Heine also commented on this in his own way, calling Liszt “ Attila , God's scourge of all Erardian pianos”. In the same breath, Heine mentions Liszt

"The ingenious Hans Fool, whose madness confuses our minds, and to whom we do our loyal service in any case, that we bring the great furore that he causes here to the public."

Liszt's Paganini Etudes: Introduction to No. I

Liszt's style developed for the piano is shown in his popular Grandes études d'après Paganini (1851) , which he has revised several times . From this opus comes La Campanella , which he called Paganini's La Clochette (little bell) under the first impression .

Heine described Franz Liszt as the "resurrected Pied Piper of Hamelin " because of the mass empathy that arose around him . The audience in the hall were sometimes made to stand up and run forward to find out the secrets of his tricks. But he complained about attributes of a "buffoon and salon amuseur": "How often have I not had to mount the Erlkönig mare" in the face of the "disgusting necessity in the virtuoso profession - this incessant ruminating on the same things!"

By the “Erlkönig mare” Liszt meant his famous piano arrangement - piano staging - of the Schubert song Erlkönig , which reproduces the pounding of horses in octave triplets of the father galloping through the forest with his child. To this rhythmic ostinato , the sung dialogues of father, child, Erlkönig - although without text for piano - are hauntedly translated into the (corresponding) sound regions of the piano: calming, fearful, ghostly.

End of Lisztomania

In a letter from 1842, in which he quoted Leporello's "No rest by day and night" from Don Giovanni with notes and text , Liszt complained about his virtuoso:

“[…] Always concerts! Always a slave to the public, albeit with reluctance! What a fate! What a job! [...] "

But it was not until 1848, after a nine-year concert tour that took Liszt from Vienna to France via Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, England, Scotland, Germany and Poland to Russia and Constantinople, that he ended at the age of only 36 "after a true triumphant advance" as " one of the most famous men in Europe at that time ”and with his final turn to the office of Weimar Kapellmeister, to composing and teaching, his career as a traveling virtuoso and with it the Lisztomania he aroused .

Heinrich Heine satirized this soberly in 1844 (even if not applicable to Liszt):

“But oh! let us not examine too closely the homage which the famous virtuosos received. After all, the day of their vain fame is very short, and the hour will soon strike when the titan of musical art may shrivel into a town musician of very low stature [...] The virtuoso's one-day reputation evaporates and fades, dreary, without a trace, like the wind of a camel in the desert."

In a letter to a younger musician in 1857, Franz Liszt warned that "the risk of displeasing the audience is far less than that of being determined by their whims".

See also

literature

Heinrich Heine 1.jpg
  • Hans-Georg von Arburg (ed.) In collaboration with Dominik Müller, Hans-Jürgen Schrader and Ulrich Stadler: Virtuosity: Cult and Crisis of Artistry in Modern Literature and Art. Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-89244-863-9 ( quotations for “Lisztomania” in the Google book search ).
  • Heinrich Heine works. Volume 3. Insel, Frankfurt / M. 1968 (= writings on France. Edited by Eberhard Galley; online at zeno.org ).
  • Liszt in Berlin . In: The Gazebo . Issue 13, 1888, pp. 218–219 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
  • Barbara Meier: Franz Liszt. 3. Edition. Rororo, Reinbek 2012, ISBN 978-3-499-50633-8 (first edition 2008).
  • Karl Schumann: Franz Liszt, virtuoso visionary European. In: Franz Liszt on the 100th anniversary of his death on July 31, 1986. Documentation, published by the city of Bayreuth, pp. 23–35.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Like the castrato Farinelli and the violinist Giuseppe Tartini .
  2. ^ Caricature of the mezzo-soprano Senesino .
  3. ^ Witold Lutosławski: Paganini Variations for two pianos .
  4. ↑ Boris Blacher: Orchestral Variations on a Theme by N. Paganini
  5. ↑ First wing with cast iron frame: 1856 Henry Steinway , USA.
  6. ↑ Played live 1997 by Kissin : knightLynderic: Evgeny Kissin - La Campanella on YouTube .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ p. 14.
  2. ↑ p. 23.
  3. ↑ p. 22/23.
  4. ↑ p. 56.
  5. ↑ p. 7.
  6. ↑ p. 148.
  7. ↑ p. 54.
  8. ↑ Compare p. 45.
  • Further evidence:
  1. ^ Yearbooks of the German National Association for Music and its Sciences. Second volume No. 15, April 9, 1840, p. 120. Accessed December 20, 2019.
  2. ↑ Ad. Burning glass: Franz Liszt in Berlin . A comedy in 3 acts. With a colored title copper from Ad. Burning glass (that's Adolf Glasbrenner ). Published by Ignaz Jackowitz, Leipzig 1842.
  3. ↑ a b Heinrich Heine works. Volume 3: Lutetia. Insel, Frankfurt / M. 1968, Appendix pp. 585-588.
  4. ↑ Anabelle Spanek: Lisztomania as a discourse about virtuosity, subjectivity and feeling . In: Christine Hoppe u. a. (Ed.): Exploring Virtuosities. Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst, Nineteenth-Century Musical Practices and Beyond. (= Göttingen Studies in Musicology / Göttingen Studies in Musicology) Olms, Hildesheim 2018. S. 376.
  5. ↑ Heine 1968, Volume 3. Lutetia , pp. 585/86.
  6. ↑ Minutely traced by Lina Ramann [1]
  7. ^ Text of the Budapest Liszt Festival 2016 on the 130th anniversary of Liszt's death. a. the excesses of the listening ladies in Liszt's time were rumored: Lisztomania and more at the Budapest Spring Festival. In: BachTrack.com. January 13, 2016, accessed September 27, 2019.
  8. ↑ Eight Liszt caricatures in: Gesa von Essen: … like a melodic agony of the phenomenal world: literary and feuillitonist Liszt paraphrases from the first half of the 19th century. In: Hans-Georg von Arburg (Ed.): Virtuosity. 2006, (pp. 202-203).
  9. ↑ See Lina Ramann .
  10. ^ "Hector Berlioz: Memoirs". Rogner et al. Bernhard, Munich 1979, p. 257.
  11. ↑ Thus quoted by Ludwig Rellstab after a parable in an "Elbinger Blatt" in: Ludwig Rellstab: Franz Liszt. Assessments - reports - sketch of life . Trautwein u. Comp., Berlin 1842. p. 21.
  12. ^ Ludwig Rellstab: Franz Liszt. Assessments - reports - sketch of life . Trautwein u. Co, p., Berlin 1842.
  13. ↑ Gerda Wendermann: Josef Danhauser "Liszt at the wing," 1840. In: Yearbook, the Berlin museums. vol. 53, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz 2011, pp. 111–115.
  14. ↑ Martin Kreisig (Ed.): Collected writings on music and musicians by Robert Schumann. 5th edition. Volume 1. Leipzig 1914, p. 27.
  15. ^ Karl Schumann: Franz Liszt. Virtuoso, visionary, European. Bayreuth 1986, p. 24.
  16. ^ Heinrich Heine works. 1968, Volume 3. Lutetia , p. 587.
  17. ^ Sylvia Schreiber: Paris - February 8th, 1824: Franz Liszt lets the strings break In: BR-Klassik . February 8, 2017, accessed September 27, 2019.
  18. ↑ Karl Schumann, Bayreuth 1986, p. 33; Quote p. 25.
  19. ↑ Margit Prahács: Letters from Hungarian collections: 1835-1896. Bärenreiter: Kassel [ua] 1966, p. 50
  20. ↑ Detlef Altenburg : Article: Liszt, Franz. In: The music in history and present (MGG 2). Volume 11. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2004, column 211 f.
  21. ^ Letter to Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski 1857. Based on: Gesa von Essen 2006, p. 207.