By the late 1840s, Liszt essentially turned away from virtuoso performance and began to refashion himself as a serious-minded composer, likely in response to harsh criticisms of his compositional skills (and of virtuosity in general) in the French and German press. Nevertheless, the 20-year compositional history of his “Dante” Sonata reveals that Liszt’s virtuoso pianism and improvisational skills continued to deeply inform his compositional process. Early sketches of the work can be understood as written-out “Phantasieren” on single motives and themes, and these procedures of motivic and thematic transformation show the influence of pedagogical works such as the Systematische Anleitung zum Fantasieren auf dem Pianoforte by Liszt’s teacher, Carl Czerny. Liszt’s designation of his “Dante” Sonata as a “Fantasia quasi Sonata” also suggests that he envisioned this piece as an inversion of Beethoven’s two “quasi una Fantasia” Sonatas, Op. 27: whereas Beethoven composed sonatas that had the character of fantasy-like improvisations, Liszt created fantasy-like improvisations and passages at the piano that eventually formed the building blocks of a written sonata. Additionally, the “Dante” Sonata’s manuscripts and the correspondence surrounding the work’s development reveal that Liszt easily moved back and forth between improvisation at the piano (either in private or in public) and composition “at the desk.” Liszt experimented with and gradually refined different fragments of the Sonata in both contexts, but “Phantasieren” was essential to the genesis, reworking, and transformation of the musical ideas that he would later organize into a more unified, polished composition.

Works: Liszt: Après une lecture du Dante. Fantasia quasi Sonata, S.161/7 (“Dante” Sonata) (54-60, 65-66, 70-93).

Sources: Czerny: Systematische Anleitung zum Fantasieren auf dem Pianoforte, Op. 200 (63-65, 70-75); Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 1 (“Sonata quasi una Fantasia”) (75-77), Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 2 (“Sonata quasi una Fantasia”/“Moonlight”) (75-77).

Index Classifications: 1800s

Contributed by: Matthew G. Leone