Uploaded August 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
Franz Liszt - Buch der Lieder II :Oh! quand je dors, S536
Performer: Jandó Jenő
The two Liszt Songbooks contain twelve of his early songs in very straightforward transcriptions, in the sense that the music basically follows the original song bar-for-bar, with a certain amount of cadential licence but without the addition of extended variation. Liszt makes every effort to preserve all of the character, if not the actual text, of the original accompaniment, and he adds the vocal line to the texture, often distributed between the two hands and sometimes doubled at the octave. All of these transcriptions are rarities, largely due to Liszt’s acute self-criticism in the matter of his songs. All six of the transcriptions in the first book follow upon an issue in one volume of the six original songs. But Liszt withdrew the songs and revised them, and allowed the transcriptions to fade away because they no longer represented his attitude to the poems. Eventually he made a transcription of the revised setting of Heine’s Die Lorelei which was for a time rather popular, but the others remained in only the one-piano version. The second book suffered a worse fate: all six transcriptions remained in manuscript. Four of the songs later underwent revision. The transcriptions were believed lost for many years, although they were tantalisingly mentioned in a few catalogues, and it was not until the excellent Neue Liszt-Ausgabe volume I/18 of 1985 that they were finally published.
Franz Liszt - Buch der Lieder II :Oh! quand je dors, S536
Performer: Jandó Jenő
The two Liszt Songbooks contain twelve of his early songs in very straightforward transcriptions, in the sense that the music basically follows the original song bar-for-bar, with a certain amount of cadential licence but without the addition of extended variation. Liszt makes every effort to preserve all of the character, if not the actual text, of the original accompaniment, and he adds the vocal line to the texture, often distributed between the two hands and sometimes doubled at the octave. All of these transcriptions are rarities, largely due to Liszt’s acute self-criticism in the matter of his songs. All six of the transcriptions in the first book follow upon an issue in one volume of the six original songs. But Liszt withdrew the songs and revised them, and allowed the transcriptions to fade away because they no longer represented his attitude to the poems. Eventually he made a transcription of the revised setting of Heine’s Die Lorelei which was for a time rather popular, but the others remained in only the one-piano version. The second book suffered a worse fate: all six transcriptions remained in manuscript. Four of the songs later underwent revision. The transcriptions were believed lost for many years, although they were tantalisingly mentioned in a few catalogues, and it was not until the excellent Neue Liszt-Ausgabe volume I/18 of 1985 that they were finally published.
