Liszt as Transcriber

Franz Liszt's colleagues considered him to be one of the most accomplished and innovative practitioners in the field of musical reproduction, a reputation for which he is still admired today. Yet, while his transcriptions are widely performed, few studies have investigated the role that transcriptions played in Liszt's artistry, to say nothing of the impact they had on the music-making experience of his day. Using a host of interdisciplinary methods and primary source materials, this book provides a comprehensive survey of Liszt's lifelong involvement with the transcription, in which he assumed the roles of composer, collaborator, propagandist, commemorator, philosopher, and artist while simultaneously disseminating - often critically - the music of Beethoven, Berlioz, Schubert, Wagner, and other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century composers. By recognizing transcription as an extraordinarily flexible tool for Liszt and his contemporaries, Liszt as Transcriber provides numerous musical, cultural, and historical contexts for this fundamentally important practice of the period.

Jonathan Kregor is Assistant Professor of Music at the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. He specializes in music of the long nineteenth century, and his articles and reviews have appeared in many publications, including The Musical Quarterly, the Nineteenth-Century Music Review, and The Journal of Musicology. He has edited volumes of C. P. E. Bach's keyboard music for C. P. E. Bach: The Complete Works and is preparing an edition of Clara Schumann's unpublished piano transcriptions.