Preface

Summary

The relationship between Liszt's musical modernism and his verbunkos idiom, a musical idiom derived from the Hungarian-Gypsy tradition, has intrigued scholars on and off throughout the twentieth century; by the 1980s, it had become a somewhat dated and abandoned subject. In some respects, therefore, this book picks up a forgotten scholarly thread. It aims to start afresh, this time with methods and perspectives that were not available in the postwar years, when the discourse was at its height. Although there would be a point to writing a book that simply surveys the surprising breadth and prevalence of the verbunkos idiom in Liszt's oeuvre, the main aim of this book is to develop new perspectives and analytical tools for Liszt's “transcultural modernism,” that is, for a better understanding of the way this idiom was integral to his projects. Four main issues crisscross the seven chapters: (1)

Liszt's verbunkos idiom in historical context; (2) issues of cultural politics and identity; (3) a critique of past scholarship and theoretical truisms (especially in chapters 4 and 5); and (4) the development of new (and mainly tonal) analytical tools. The chapters are therefore linked in many ways. Chapter 3, which deals with Liszt's Hungarian identity, for example, can be read in tandem with chapter 6, which is about the verbunkos idiom in repertoire that is largely recognized as both modernist and Germanic. Chapter 1, which offers harmonic and structural features of the “classical” verbunkos idiom of the 1850s, can be read against chapter 7, which transposes the same kind of presentation to the 1870s and 1880s. However, as a book must proceed linearly, the introduction and first chapter address the central concepts of transculturation and transcultural modernism respectively, and thereafter the chapter order is roughly chronological.

Readers unfamiliar with the concept of transculturation—central to this book—are advised to read the introduction first; likewise chapters 1 and 2 introduce the verbunkos genre and its history. Chapter 1 is especially foundational in defining transcultural modernism and surveying harmonic and structural features of the verbunkos idiom that are mostly absent from scholarship in this area. I would also advise familiarity with the idiom itself before proceeding to the other chapters as that knowledge is a starting point for the cultural critique and analyses that ensue.