Franz Liszt: Sprache und Theatralität des Virtuosen / Franz Liszt: Langage et mise en scène de la virtuosité ed. by Thomas Betzwieser and Sarah Mauksch

Abstract

Reviewed by: Franz Liszt: Sprache und Theatralität des Virtuosen / Franz Liszt: Langage et mise en scène de la virtuosité ed. by Thomas Betzwieser and Sarah Mauksch Vincent Kling Thomas Betzwieser and Sarah Mauksch, eds., with the collaboration of Markus Schneider, Franz Liszt: Sprache und Theatralität des Virtuosen / Franz Liszt: Langage et mise en scène de la virtuosité. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2019. 200 pp. The right lens can often bring dim realities into sharp focus, as this volume of studies on Franz Liszt clearly attests. Until fairly recently, the label of "virtuoso" largely consigned him to the status of circus performer or showbiz phenomenon purveying trash with flash on a staggering technical level to advance his cult of personality. Thanks to the emergence of media studies, though, the phenomenon of virtuosity has yielded important new insights into composition and performance in the last century and a half. In their title, the editors candidly link theatricality to the virtuosic, and while they do not argue that there's no such thing as bad publicity, their lively, fascinating collection reveals the extent to which media superstardom (think Liszt's contemporaries Paganini and Lord Byron) is not incompatible with artistic legitimacy. Heinz von Loesch poses the question as to why Alfred Brendel or Martha Argerich, Clara Schumann or Johann Nepomuk Hummel are not called virtuosi while Liszt and others are. That question leads to his fourfold definition of the term (13–16), starting with the simple designation of the "virtuoso" as the professional performer, not the composer, and expanding to include technical mastery aimed at brilliance ("Pomp, Macht-und Klangfülle, Akkord-und Oktaventechnik," 15), and, at its highest, a "Phänomen der Selbstdarstellung […] eine Haltung, bei der der ausübende Musiker nicht eine Funktion des 'Werkes' ist, sondern umgekehrt das Werk die Funktion der Selbstdarstellung" (15). It is this latter aspect that has made Liszt in particular [End Page 79] seem so cheesy, a view that Loesch's reproductions of hilarious caricatures by Wilhelm Busch (19, 21) only bolsters. As to caricatures, it seems impossible to this reviewer that anyone could read Cécile Raynaud's article "Les premières caricatures de Liszt parues dans la presse et la littérature satiriques en France" with its many illustrations (149–66) without laughing out loud. The flying hair, the hieratic poses, the erotic posturing, the need for adulation are all captured in an article that offers vital insights into nineteenth-century concepts of art. However maliciously these caricatures may have been meant (though most have too much humorous good will to be nasty), they show from our present perspective that being lampooned is a form of triumph in itself. Reynaud has combed museums, archives, and journals from the time to give a lively picture (literally) of the extent to which Liszt as personality occupied public awareness. The scholar of literature will also be fascinated not only by writers' reactions to the Liszt phenomenon but also by the often reciprocal exercises in virtuosity that some writers evoked in Liszt. Francis Claudon's "Liszt et Hugo: romantisme et virtuosité" (45–54) provides examples of Victor Hugo's astonishing effects in language, citing "Les djinns" from Les orientales and then Les contemplations and Les voix intérieures for their highly effect-laden, masterful, dazzling complexity in rhythm and rhyme. "Mazeppa" from Les orientales (the poem inspired in turn by Lord Byron) is the basis of Liszt's staggering showpiece of the same title, the fourth of the Douze études d'execution transcendentales—that étude was then dedicated to Victor Hugo. One of the subtitles of Michelle Biget-Mainfroy's article "Quelques opinions sur la virtuosité da la fin du XVIIIe siècle aux années 1860" (25–43) suggests that virtuosi could be equated with performing monkeys ("un tour de singe savant?"); her question is validated by the extremes of linguistic excess Alkan indulges in his performance directions (29), for example, while Marie-Hélène Rybicki, in "Comment l'entendez-vous? Stylistique de la critique de la virtuosité, á l'exemple de Paganini et Liszt" (77–92) cites passages from Théophile Gautier and others (that section is subtitled "Fleurs de...