Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886) was a Hungarian composer,
virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic
period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than
six decades, he is considered to be one of the most
prolific and influential composers of his era, and his
piano works continue to be widely performed and
recorded. He gained renown during the 1830s for his
skill as a pianist. Regarded as one of the greatest
pianists of the time, he toured Europe during the 1830s
and 1840s, often playi...(+)
Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886) was a Hungarian composer,
virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic
period. With a diverse body of work spanning more than
six decades, he is considered to be one of the most
prolific and influential composers of his era, and his
piano works continue to be widely performed and
recorded. He gained renown during the 1830s for his
skill as a pianist. Regarded as one of the greatest
pianists of the time, he toured Europe during the 1830s
and 1840s, often playing for charity. In these years,
Liszt developed a reputation for his powerful
performances as well as his physical attractiveness. In
a phenomenon dubbed "Lisztomania", he rose to a degree
of stardom and popularity among the public not
experienced by the virtuosos who preceded him.
During this period and into his later life, Liszt was a
friend, musical promoter and benefactor to many
composers of his time, including Hector Berlioz,
Frédéric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann and
Richard Wagner, among others. Alongside Wagner, Liszt
was one of the most prominent representatives of the
New German School, a progressive group of composers
involved in the "War of the Romantics" who developed
ideas of programmatic music and harmonic
experimentation.
Liszt taught piano performance to hundreds of students
throughout his life, many of whom went on to become
notable performers. He left behind an extensive and
diverse body of work that influenced his
forward-looking contemporaries and anticipated
20th-century ideas and trends. Among Liszt's musical
contributions were the concept of the symphonic poem,
innovations in thematic transformation and
impressionism in music, and the invention of the
masterclass as a method of teaching performance. In a
radical departure from his earlier compositional
styles, many of Liszt's later works also feature
experiments in atonality, foreshadowing developments in
20th-century classical music.
Variation on a Waltz by Diabelli (French: Variation sur
une valse de Diabelli), S.147, is a variation by Franz
Liszt composed in 1822 and published in late 1823 or
early 1824 as Variation No. 24 of Part II of
Vaterländischer Künstlerverein, a collection of
variations by 50 composers. All the variations were
based on a waltz composed by Anton Diabelli, who also
published the work. It was this same invitation from
Diabelli to write a variation that inspired Ludwig van
Beethoven to write his 33 Diabelli Variations, Op. 120,
which formed the entirety of Part I of Vaterländischer
Künstlerverein. TIt is his first known and published
work; perhaps composed at the instigation of Carl
Czerny, his piano teacher, who also composed a
variation and a coda for the set. Liszt was virtually
unknown at the time of publishing and he was listed as
"Franz Liszt (Knabe von 11 Jahren) geboren in Ungarn"
(11-year-old boy, born in Hungary). At the time
Diabelli issued his invitations to write the variations
(May 1819), Liszt was aged only seven, but by the time
of publication, he had turned 12. He was the only child
composer to write a variation for the set.
The variation is written in C Minor, in 2/4 time, in
the form of an étude. It keeps to the original theme,
"in a flowing style of chord passages in an abundance
of notes but without any lofty sentiment" in the words
of Liszt's biographer Lina Ramann.
Liszt was one of the few of the 50 composers who varied
either the time signature or the key signature from
Diabelli's original. He changed Diabelli's C major to C
minor, and changed 3/4 time to 2/4.
Source: Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variation_on_a_Waltz_by_
Diabelli_(Liszt)).
Although originally written for Piano. I created this
Arrangement of Waltz in C Major a Variation On A Waltz
By Anton Diabelli (S.147) for String Quartet (2
Violins, Viola & Cello).
