The Transcendental Etudes of Liszt: An Overview

We get it Liszt...

A stamp of Liszt by Post of Ajman - https://colnect.com/en/stamps/stamp/508538-Franz_Liszt_1811-1886-Paintings_Composers-Ajman, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115671220

I have written much about the etude as a piece of classical music, writing on those by Chopin and Rachmaninoff. For today, I want to write a bit on THAT set by Liszt which pushed not only the abilities of the pianist, but also that of the piano to the limit. Yes, it will be about his transcendental etudes.

As we know, our boy Liszt was not afraid to show off his skills as a pianist and composer. He was a virtuosic show off and an innovator in terms of how he treated harmony and themes in his music. For these etudes, they started off as simple exercises before creating an extremely difficult version —the Douze grandes etudes—before revising that into what we know now —only one work, Mazeppa, managed to be MUCH harder in the final revised version while everything else was made easier. The original premise of these monstrously difficult works was a whole set of etudes on all 24 major and minor keys —Liszt only managed to do one half of this, going through the flat keys and ending in B flat minor; Russian composer Sergei Lyapunov “completed” the other half in honor of Liszt. Here are all 12, dedicated to his teacher Carl Czerny:

1. Preludio

2. Molto vivace

3. Paysage

4. Mazeppa

5. Feux follets

6. Vision

7. Eroica

8. Wilde Jagd

9. Ricordanza

10. Allegro agitato molto

11. Harmonies du soir

12. Chasse-neige

If Chopin elevated the etude as a form for the concert hall and no longer for lessons and warmups, Liszt simply launched it into the stratosphere as programmatic pieces that are almost orchestral in texture, pushing the everything to the limit like a madman. I doubt there is anything pedagogical for focus in these twelve monsters. For examples of technical hurdles, the fifth etude —considered to be the most difficult— focuses on the agility of the fingers in playing double notes quietly, the fourth etude thunders away with runs and rapid double notes and octaves, and twelfth etude focuses on controlled tremolos while voicing the melody plus alternating octaves and chords in wide jumps. I pity pianists who have small hands…

Here is Yunchan Lim performing the whole set during the 2022 Van Cliburn Competition: