Exploring Liszt’s Evolving Relationship to the Lied as a Genre through his Variants, Recompositions, and Resettings or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Textual Fluidity (2 Volumes)

Once seen as an important but ultimately shallow composer, Franz Liszt (1811–1886) is now commonly held to be one of the most dynamic and innovative composers of the nineteenth century. Since the 1970s, and especially since Alan Walker’s comprehensive three-volume biography was published, between 1983–97, the area of Liszt studies has increasingly become a fertile ground for musicological research. 2014 alone saw the publication three significant volumes on Liszt; Erika Quinn, Franz Liszt: A Story of Central European Subjectivity (Brill 2014), Fulvia Morabito, En Pèlerinage Avec Liszt (Brepols 2014), and Liszt Legacies (Pendragon Press 2014). Despite the reexamination that took place during the Romantic revival, which reintroduced such works as Eine Faust-Symphonie and Christus, it is still the case that the larger part of his musical output is not widely known. One such area which has not received attention commensurate with the stature of the composer, from either scholars or performers, is Liszt’s significant contribution to the Lied. This thesis seeks to redress this imbalance and draw attention to this rich and varied corpus of works by firstly exploring the reasons for their lack of wider adoption and also by introducing a new framework with which to view them. One obstacle familiar to Liszt scholars and especially to those who have examined the songs in any detail is what Rena Charnin-Mueller categorises as the Fassungprobleme: namely that many of the songs exist in multiple versions, sometimes radically altered, all of which have various claims to authenticity. Since this issue is often viewed as a barrier to performers and a hindrance to scholarly endeavours, I address it directly in this thesis by examining a selection of the Lieder that exist in multiple versions. It investigates the nature of the changes between versions and interprets how they reflect Liszt’s evolving relationship to the Lied as a genre. It places them within their historical context and takes into account the pertinent musicological issues of performance and reception