Virtuosity and the Musical Work: The Transcendental Studies of Liszt (review)

Abstract

WORKS, PERFORMANCE, CREATIVITY Virtuosity and Musical Work: The Transcendental Studies of Liszt. By Jim Samson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [viii, 240 p. ISBN 0-521-81494-4. $75.] Music examples, bibliography, index. For some time now, musicology has sought methodology that offers persuasive response to assertions of Critical Studies discipline (called Theory in U.K., as opposed to Music Theory) regarding musicology's insufficient acknowledgment and treatment of social, cultural, and economic context of work (sometimes called its context). The criticism has long history; it is true that musicological preoccupations were, for long time, bibliographical and editorial. It is also true that discipline's putative myopia regarding all other kinds of inquiry has been exaggerated to point of falsity, with the music itself and cognate phrases now carrying talismanic power to belabor discipline from within and conjure up Bad Old Days. An example of this would be Matthew Head's identification of a recourse to 'the musical' as one of contemporary musicological ploys that amount to an unscholarly resistance to ... cultural There is no scholarly escape route from this theory. (Musicology on Safari, Music Analysis 22/1-2 [2003]: 218.) According to this common paradigm, Theory first, then (maybe) music, as it relates to Theory. Whatever music, and whatever cultural complications, there is still good deal to be said for responsibility of discipline devoted to scholarly study of music to address music, and to do so without fear of kind of reflexive criticism that has sometimes resulted when discussion has wandered too far from particular political agenda, such as that just quoted. In this volume, Jim Samson meets challenge head on; as he says in introduction, I believe that direct, close-to-thetext engagement with musical materials is likely to prove more revealing than seductive of 1980s and 1990s, and that such an engagement may provide necessary ballast for more thoroughly grounded, evidence-based hermeneutics (p. 2). A more direct (yet still civil) statement of difference to some of recent trends in musicology and cultural criticism cannot be imagined. While Samson does not specifically offer this book as catalyst of major hermeneutic paradigm shift, that, it seems to me, is its potential: thick context (including musical context), musicking (i.e., understanding and treatment of music as practice), and tracing of genre's development in one composer's hands against backdrop of broader musical environment. Theory is here, too, and it informs some of questions asked and complications identified, but it is neither melody to Liszt's accompaniment nor treated with fundamentalist awe. Samson's book draws on traditions of two musicological genres: studies devoted to specific large work or group of small works, such as Cambridge Guides (same publisher, different series), and genre history such as William Newman's monumental, three-volume study of sonata. It is happy pairing, due to special history of Transcendental Studies; set was published in three different versions, each dating from crucial period in Liszt's life. The first incarnation was Etude en 12 exercices, op. 1 (1826; first published salvo of young virtuoso); 12 grandes etudes followed, dedicated to Carl Czerny (1837; from midst of his career as touring virtuoso); and finally Liszt revised it again, and it took its most familiar form, Etudes d'execution transcendante (1851), also dedicated to Czerny, and dating from crossover period when composer had stopped touring and was moving directly into more concentrated composition and conducting. He was also revising earlier versions of other works, such as Paganini Studies and what would become Hungarian Rhapsodies. …