Liszt: Totentanz

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Totentanz


There were virtuosi before Liszt; but when we think of a superstar performer now, we are really thinking of the persona that Liszt created. His father was a musician in the service of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, who knew Haydn and Beethoven personally. He began teaching his son piano at 7, and Franz soon began to compose as well. Aged 11 he had his first composition published, one of 50 variations on a waltz by Diabelli that formed part 2 of Diabelli’s Vaterländischer Künstlerverein anthology (Part 1 consisted of Beethoven’s epic set of variations on the same theme). In 1832 Liszt saw Paganini perform, and determined to bring the same level of virtuosity to his piano playing. His career thereafter is the stuff of legend; a scandalous affair, an induction into the priesthood, and a punishing concert schedule in which he became the first musician to perform entire concerts by himself. Brahms declared that as far as piano playing went, ‘He who has not heard Liszt play really cannot speak on the subject. He leads the way, and then, a long way behind, there is no one else.’ The scenes of “Lisztomania” at his performances in the 1840s were unprecedented, in which audiences succumbed to the levels of hysteria that would later greet Elvis Presley and the Beatles. He was so successful that after he was 35 he never performed for money again, donating all his fees to charity.

Liszt’s Totentanz (Dance of Death) is in effect a bravura concerto. He first planned it in 1838, and revised it twice before it reached its final form in 1859. It received its first performance in 1865, when the soloist was Liszt’s son-in-law Hans von Bülow. The theme of the “Dance of Death” was a popular one in the 19th century, as the burgeoning Romantic movement developed a taste both for the medieval period and the macabre. Liszt’s piece is a set of variations on the “Dies Irae” plainchant that also appears in the finale of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, the first performance of which in 1830 Liszt had attended. The other inspiration was Francesco Traini’s fresco “The Triumph of Death” in the Campo Santo, Pisa, which Liszt visited in 1838 when he eloped to Italy with his mistress the Countess d’Agoult. A second theme, based on the opening of Mozart’s Requiem, appears in the middle and is the subject of a subsidiary set of variations before the “Dies Irae” returns to conclude the piece.

The piano part of the Totentanz is remarkable even now, and must have been truly shocking at the time. Instead of the smooth lyrical lines of most contemporary music, Liszt presents a violent, angular and percussive score which anticipates nothing so much as the music of Bartók - indeed the work was a mainstay of Bartók’s own repertoire as a soloist.