6 - Liszt's late piano works: larger forms

Summary

Nearly all of the compositions that Franz Liszt wrote later in life were smaller pieces, as opposed to the Faust Symphony, Piano Sonata, and oratorios that crowned his middle period. One might gather that by his later years Liszt had lost the mental acuity and creative energy to complete big projects. He certainly had suffered a crisis of confidence as he approached old age. Yet three collections of keyboard pieces written in his later years exhibit such substance and scope that they fully warrant consideration as major works on a par with his earlier acknowledged masterworks. These collections, Via Crucis, Historische Ungarische Bildnisse, and Années de pèlerinage, troisième année, all exhibit complex cyclic concepts carrying forward Liszt's work in three important categories: sacred, nationalistic, and programmatic music.

Via Crucis

The Via Crucis is unique among Liszt's larger late keyboard works. The question arises whether it ought to be considered a keyboard work at all. In many cases throughout his career it seems as if Liszt's compositional concepts were not wedded to a particular medium. He was in the habit of composing versions of a composition simultaneously for various media; in certain cases, no single version necessarily claims priority over the others – and the Via Crucis may be one of these cases. Liszt, being the pre-eminent producer of keyboard arrangements of large orchestral works, could have written the keyboard version of Via Crucis simply for the purpose of disseminating the music for individual study and appreciation (as was the case with his transcriptions of much of the symphonic repertoire of the time); such arrangements were a major source of income.